Prime-Time Coverage Would Be a Real Coup

Satellite television is such an infant technology that it’s still astonishing to sit at home in front of a small screen and watch history roll out before you like a red carpet.

Muscovites erect barricades at the Russian Federation headquarters. Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin stands on a tank, defying the coup that ousted Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. When the coup fails, armored columns rumble away with their tankers smiling and waving. Gorbachev returns, but Yeltsin looms largest. Hundreds of thousands of cheering Soviets spread into a human sea. On Thursday, Gorbachev meets the international press: “I hope there will never be a press conference like this again.”

You gasp!

Yet TV’s extraordinary global communication loop was shamefully under-used by the Big Three networks during this week’s Soviet crisis that fixed all eyes and thoughts on Moscow. And what they did was critical because CNN--which was steadily on the scene--is still inaccessible to perhaps 40% of the nation.

When on the air fitfully covering these three days of intensified chaos, ABC, CBS and NBC performed capably in most instances. The trouble is they weren’t on the air nearly enough--or at the right times--to meet the needs of a public unhealthily reliant on TV for much of its information about the world.

Wednesday found NBC giving a prime-time hour to The Little Coup That Couldn’t and CBS devoting an entire “48 Hours” program to the topic. Very nice. And ABC’s “PrimeTime Live” was planning Thursday to squeeze in an entire 20-minute segment on the Soviet upheaval (“Diane Sawyer in Moscow . . . Diane Sawyer is there!”). Whoopee.

Otherwise, though, this possible defining moment in Soviet history--a profound event that many feel will echo stereophonically into the next century--has been mostly relegated to daytime and late-night viewing on ABC, CBS and NBC.

You have a day job? You’re home in time for the networks’ 22-minute nightly newscasts, but find them and even PBS’ “MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour” not up to the challenge? You find prime-time local newscasts more of an adventure than an education? You hit the sack before “Nightline” and the 11:30 specials?

Sorry.

Journalists have been known to impale themselves on their own snap judgments. Yet if NBC anchorman Tom Brokaw is anywhere near correct about this story being a “historic moment not only in the Soviet Union but in our time,” then surely it merited more exposure than it got. It merited--demanded--extensive coverage in prime time, when the largest possible audience was watching.

If live TV had been present for the 1917 Russian Revolution that toppled obsolete czarism en route to a Soviet state that later was to make life miserable for much of the world, would the networks have limited coverage to off hours?

This will sound really far-fetched only because we’ve been programmed to have such low aspirations for TV news, but why not a three-hour block in prime time--something along the lines of ABC’s occasional wee-hours “town hall” programs hosted by Ted Koppel--addressing the coup not merely as three days that affirmed democracy, but viewing what has happened within the context of Soviet history?

It would be a cultural coup, a visionary program that collected not only the great pictures from this week but also great minds to assess their significance, and, yes, even politicians who think only pragmatically.

There were little dabs of this throughout the week, but hardly enough.

Of course, the grand prime-time program won’t happen, not now or when the smoke clears, because it would cost a bundle in lost ratings for the network that ran it. Unless there’s a hot war to cover, news is a secondary concern to networks grounded in entertainment.

It’s in this context that the economically depressed, cutback-weakened news divisions at the Big Three networks struggle to maintain life, relevance and credibility in an age that is as perilous for them as the last few days have been for the Soviet Union.

But Diane Sawyer will always have Moscow.

BAD RAP: It will take more than this week to assess damage from budget and personnel cutbacks at the three network news divisions. Would coup coverage have differed qualitatively in an earlier era? Perhaps not.

In that regard, ABC took an unearned rap in some quarters for having correspondent Sheila Kast pop on the screen for initial coup coverage.

Actually, Kast is an experienced reporter who just happened to have been new to the Moscow bureau when the coup broke. Bad luck. The network had to rely initially on Kast in the opening hours not because there was no one more familiar with the Soviet Union at the bureau, but because bureau chief Jim Laurie was on vacation in London. He quickly returned.

TERRIFIC TWOSOME: Princeton scholar Stephen Cohen and anchorman Dan Rather were an especially effective team on CBS. On retainer to the network as a consultant, Cohen was eloquent and informative in providing historical perspective even as speeding events seemed to be outdistancing him as he spoke. And Rather, instead of hogging attention for himself, skillfully drew Cohen out while acknowledging his own confusion over some of what was happening.

PROMOTION MILL: Sawyer’s heavily advertised “exclusive” interview with Yeltsin in the barricaded Russian Federation building on Tuesday appeared to be nothing more than a few words of conversation in passing. Nevertheless, Sawyer was treated as an authority on Yeltsin’s inner thoughts when she appeared on that evening’s “Nightline.”

And what in the world was NBC doing superimposing its peacock logo and “exclusive” over its pictures of Moscow street scenes during coup days? Had NBC purchased rights from the Kremlin or what? Hardly. The other networks were running virtually identical pictures.

PRESS PUSHOVERS: At a press conference following the coup, Soviet reporters asked members of the junta tougher questions than the White House press corps asked President Bush when the latter performed masterfully for the media on Wednesday.

Yes, of course, the Soviet coup leaders had infinitely more to account for than did Bush. Just the same, shouldn’t there have been at least one question to Bush about his double standard in reponding differently to this attack on democracy in the Soviet Union than to the brutal crushing of China’s pro-democratic movement in 1989?

NAME CALLING: After frequently misidentifying the Soviet Union as Russia in the past, TV this week has had to unravel its own weave of misinformation to explain that Yeltsin is president of Russia--the largest of 15 Soviet republics--and Gorbachev is president of the entire nation.

And thanks to KABC Channel 7 commentator Bruce Herschensohn for noting that those being called the far right in the Soviet Union are actually the far left--rigid Communists. Which makes them conservative within the Soviet Union but not. . . .

Well, maybe we should just skip the labels.

SHOTS FROM THE HIP: When events are volatile and fast moving, there’s a tendency on TV to play dangerous rumor roulette. On Tuesday, CBS’ able Moscow correspondent Jonathan Sanders quoted two reliable sources as saying that Gorbachev had been returned to Moscow. Almost simultaneously, CNN quoted the usually reliable Soviet news agency Interfax as saying the same thing. Both were wrong.

WHAT NEXT?: Isn’t it time for a daytime talk show to do an hour on Kremlin transvestites? And any bets on who will be the “Person of the Week” on tonight’s edition of ABC’s “World News Tonight”? Darryl Strawberry? Guess again.