Top 20 Geek Novels | Main | Movies Lately

November 22, 2005

Twenty-Five years of Nightline anchored by the great Ted Koppel ends tonight

I've been watching Ted Koppel and Nightline since the program began in 1980 as America Held Hostage covering the Iran hostage crisis and since almost the very beginning Ted has been my favorite journalist (from before my time Cronkite and Murrow are the other two great TV journalists). He is both an amazing interviewer and a very interesting thinker in his own right. I was probably one of the happiest people on campus when he was chosen as the commencement speaker for my graduation from Penn in 1991.

For years I was a regular watcher of Nightline but at this point I am actually glad Ted is leaving it. For a long time, he has had replacement anchors (who are not nearly as good or interesting IMHO) much of the time and now competes with Charlie Rose (whose long interview with Ted last night made me realize that tonight is Ted's last night as Nightline's anchor) who I don't think is as good as Ted but does a full hour program without commercials while Nightline is only like 20 minutes, only sometimes has Ted, and does a fair number of lesser stories. My guess is that Ted will leave to do irregular specials but these will allow his editorial comments through more (which I really like) and only be the interesting topics and not the grind of _having_ to put out a show every day.

Thanks for the 25 years of Nightline and I look forward to what is to come.

Posted by aarondf at November 22, 2005 12:11 PM

Comments

Post a comment