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Television Review | 'Nightline'

Like Gaul, Divided in 3 Parts

Published: December 13, 2005

It is a little painful watching Cynthia McFadden, Terry Moran and Martin Bashir on ABC's new "Nightline." They look like Kerensky's provisional government right before the October Revolution - well meaning but doomed.

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ABC/Donna Svennevik

Cynthia McFadden, one of the three anchors on "Nightline."

Probably sooner than later, the 11:35 slot that Ted Koppel held on to for 25 years is bound to fall to a late-night entertainment show. And now, there is no real reason to bemoan that loss.

The new "Nightline" isn't terrible, and some of the more recent segments have been quite good. But over all, the revised show is surprisingly ordinary, a flimsy, fast-moving magazine show like "20/20" that omits the kind of sustained, intelligent inquiry that turned Mr. Koppel's "Nightline" into a landmark.

Most nights, the half-hour is divided into three parts to give all three anchors a chance to be on air, which results in short, hurried segments - even on nights when one of them is off on assignment. There isn't much even Mr. Koppel could do in a five-minute interview, but his successors don't try very hard. Ms. McFadden kept looking down at what seemed to be notes during her perfunctory interview with Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

In the premiere show, Ms. McFadden appeared to cling to preselected questions about a new Vatican document banning homosexuals from ordination, even when one of her guests, a gay Roman Catholic priest, the Rev. Fred Daley, said, "And so, it's, I think, a sad day for the many gay priests and bishops and cardinals of the church who are struggling to live good lives."

Many gay cardinals? Really? It's the kind of remark that begs amplification, but Ms. McFadden was so wedded to her script and time limit she did not appear to even hear it.

ABC News clearly seeks security in numbers. Unable to decide on a single person with sufficient pizazz to replace Peter Jennings, who died last summer, the network settled on two anchors: Elizabeth Vargas and Bob Woodruff. It is a compliment to Mr. Koppel that his bosses figured it would take three people to replace him. But it was fuzzy math, because if Mr. Koppel proved anything it was that less is more. His was a bare-bones operation, with visual effects that were about as dazzling as radio. Yet Mr. Koppel had a gift for asking incisive questions in a conversational tone, then zeroing in on tendentious or contradictory replies with a sneaky follow-up question.

"Nightline's" new anchors are more like United Nations interpreters: they smoothly ask questions, nod knowingly at the reply, no matter how fatuous, then move onto the next topic on their scripts.

Mr. Moran, who began his first week reporting from Baghdad, tries a little harder, but not much more effectively. He recently did a portrait of the Iraqi deputy prime minister Ahmad Chalabi. Mr. Moran tried to prompt him to admit he misled the United States government about Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction, but lacked the time and determination to break the old pro's tough hide. Instead, he resorted to sarcasm. When Mr. Chalabi said, "We liberated Iraq," Mr. Moran snapped back: "We? You, and what army?"

Mr. Bashir, most famous for his unctuous, unsettling 2003 interview with Michael Jackson, has so far chosen to lie low, doing heartwarming feature pieces on a team of deaf football players and Christian themes in the movie "Narnia."

Some of the best reports have been from seasoned ABC correspondents. Last week, Brian Ross, ABC's chief investigative correspondent, was on "Nightline" with an exclusive look at a security-camera tape of a terrorist attack in 2004 on an American consulate in Saudi Arabia that took the lives of five consular employees. The contents of the tape and its significance could have easily filled the full half-hour.

Ms. McFadden experimented with a version of Mr. Koppel's famous town meetings, devoting last Friday's episode to "Mothers of the Fallen," a gathering of women whose sons have died in Iraq; some support the war, others do not.

There are few sights sadder than a bereaved parent, and Ms. McFadden did a good job of handling the raw emotion in the room, but she didn't quite match Mr. Koppel's skill at eliciting debate as well as feeling.

It is of course a bit churlish to compare newcomers to a revered predecessor; a bit like Mrs. Danvers snakily reminding the heroine of "Rebecca" that she is not at all like "the first Mrs. de Winter." But at its best, "Nightline" was different from all other shows. Now, it is too much like everything else.

Nightline

ABC, weeknights at 11:35, Eastern and Pacific times; 10:35, Central time.

Directed by Jeffrey Kay; James Goldston, executive producer; Jeanmarie Condon, Gerry Holmes, Dan Green, David Scott and Michael Baltierra, senior producers. Produced by ABC News.

WITH: Martin Bashir, Cynthia McFadden and Terry Moran.

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