"Meet the Press" at 60: Still the same, only completely different

“Meet the Press,” TV's longest-running public affairs program, is 60 years old this month.

But ask its current moderator, Tim Russert, how much has changed since 1947, and he'll tell you of sitting down with one of the show's creators, journalist Lawrence Spivak, after Russert got the moderator job in 1991.

“Lawrence Spivak told me the mission in 1947 was the same as it was in 1991,” Russert recalled in a recent interview. “Learn as much as you can about your guests, and the positions they take, and take the opposite stance. And though I do it in a persistent way, I try to do it in a civil way. I don't think I've changed very much.”

Other than his jowls, which do seem to hang a little heavier these days, he may be right about that.

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Then as now, the show often creates its own news. John F. Kennedy made his “Meet the Press” debut in 1954, the first in a string of TV-friendly presidents to appear there. Sen. Joe McCarthy routinely used “Meet the Press” to advance his anti-Communist campaign -- though he apparently didn't trust the people running the show, as evidenced by the gun he wore on his thigh through one appearance.

But “Meet the Press” sure has changed cosmetically. Before Russert, it was a dour half hour that looked like it was being shot in a closet at NBC's Washington bureau. The moderator presided over a panel of journalists who did most of the questioning (David Broder was a favorite).

ABC, not NBC, was the network that changed the Sunday-morning TV game. Its high-flying news president Roone Arledge paid David Brinkley a fortune to leave NBC in 1981 and gave him a one-hour interview show, “This Week,” built around him. All through the 1980s, “This Week” ruled the roost with its panel of columnists and personalities who shared the limelight with their political guests.

Then along came the ex-priest John McLaughlin, whose PBS show, “The McLaughlin Group,” hit Washington like a nor'easter and made stars out of its panel, including onetime “Meet” mainstay Robert Novak. They were the “buckrakers,” hard-news nobodies who were suddenly movers and shakers. Off air they drew five-figure speaking fees to go to conventions and argue with each other.

Meanwhile “Meet the Press” was churning through five moderators in seven years (including current “Fox News Sunday” host Chris Wallace). On air, the show exuded, in the words of Washington Post critic Tom Shales, “funereal peace and quiet.”

When NBC promoted Russert, a burly former aide to Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan turned journalist, he knew what he had to do. “In 1991 the show in terms of audience was third among the networks,” Russert said. “I thought it was my role to reinvigorate the show.”

That visit to Spivak reminded him that Sunday morning TV used to be more of a bare-knuckle brawl. Brinkley wouldn't, and couldn't, do that kind of show over at ABC.

“The other programs were doing a lot of taped setup pieces,” Russert said. “We reverted back to the original 'Meet the Press': Put a guest in the seat, turn on the lights, turn on the camera, and go at it. Let people finish their thoughts, but be persistent.”

“Preparation, organization, persistence” was Russert's mantra in politics and it carried over to his journalism. His M.O. was simple: Read widely from the public record, pull quotes most likely to trip up a guest, put each one up on the screen and keep asking about it until the guest fashioned a decent response, then move on to the next.

On “Meet the Press” his first year, Russert flummoxed presidential hopeful H. Ross Perot by barraging him with policy questions for which the Texas tycoon had no answers.

At the end of the 1992 campaign, Russert persuaded NBC to expand “Meet the Press” to one hour, the same length as Brinkley's show. “Meet” overtook “This Week” and ruled the ratings among Sunday-morning newsmaker shows from the latter part of the 1990s to the present. Russert was also the right man at the right time. The Clinton Administration, talk radio and the Internet all took off in the 1990s, and together they took political discourse in a more combative and, many have thought, more entertainment-driven direction.

Since getting Perot to stammer, “May I finish?”, Russert has created a clip reel of “Meet” moments, the most memorable coming between 2003 and 2005. In that short time, he took a scalp from then-media darling Howard Dean; got Dick Cheney to tell Russert, in almost a conspiratorial tone, that American troops would be “greeted as liberators” in Iraq; watched on his monitor as a State Dept. factotum tried to cut off a satellite interview between himself and Colin Powell (“I don't think that's appropriate!” Russert barked); and did a heartbreaking interview with Aaron Broussard, the mayor of flood-ravaged Jefferson Parish, La., who was in tears, wailing, “Nobody's coming to get us!”

To be sure, those moments don't come every week, and some people think that PR specialists have gotten to be better students of Russert's inquisitorial method. Slate magazine editor Jack Shafer even wrote a piece called “How To Beat Tim Russert” in 2003, showing how guests like ex-Klansman David Duke and then-Senator Carol Moseley Braun were able to walk through the “Meet” minefield unscathed.

“If people are paying attention, I think that's extremely helpful,” said Russert. “It's a sign of respect for the tradition of the program. Guests often tell me that the day before they will spend six, seven hours with staff doing a simulated 'Meet the Press.' The stakes are high.”

And talk is no longer cheap at “Meet the Press,” which earns more than $1 million in profit every week for NBC News, according to an industry estimate. All those image ads for Boeing, Grant Thornton and Archer Daniels Midland add up.

Inevitably, Russert became a star himself. Don Imus made him part of his stable of regular guests on his radio and MSNBC show. When Imus fell into trouble earlier this year after making a racial slur on the air, Russert seemed to abandon him. I asked him if he planned to go on “Imus in the Morning” when it returns to radio and RFD-TV on Dec. 3.

Russert was firmly noncommittal. “If he asked me to come back and talk about political developments, I would absolutely do that,” he told me. “I haven't raised that with the folks at NBC -- but I will, if I'm asked.”

After I published those remarks on TV Barn last week, an NBC spokesman told the Huffington Post that permission to rejoin the I-man depended on “which Imus we get.” Fans of Imus who posted comments on my site were uniform in saying good riddance.

“I am not interested in anything Tim Russert has to say now,” wrote one. “I wanted to hear him in April. I hope that Imus moves on to other, more deserving, guests.”

But the very fact that Russert would even be linked to Imus, that the “Meet the Press” moderator himself is a political celebrity, says a lot about what's happening to journalism.

“I think the information spectrum is broad and big, and that's good,” said Russert. “Every time I watch something political, from Jon Stewart to C-SPAN, I learn something. … Me, I just do my job. It's not going to change what I do.”

There's much more on television at KansasCity.com (click on TV Barn).

Sixty years of 'Meet the Press'

First broadcast: Nov. 6, 1947 (began on Mutual Radio in 1945)

First broadcast as an hour show: Sept. 20, 1992

Creators: Martha Rountree and Lawrence Spivak

First moderator: Rountree

Longest lasting moderator: Tim Russert (Dec. 1991-present)

First guest: Postmaster general and Democratic operative James A. Farley

Most frequent guest: Bob Dole (63 appearances)

Longest lasting guest: Ted Kennedy (first appearance March 1962, most recent Jan. 2007)

Airs: 9 a.m. Sunday on KSHB-TV, repeats 5 p.m. Sunday on MSNBC and 24/7 at MSNBC.com, along with a Web extra “Take Two”

Comments

[Mark Jeffries]

The funny thing is that "The McLaughlin Group" was created for WRC, the NBC-owned station in Washington, and was probably shot (and may be still shot) at the same closet "Meet" shot in. WRC and WNBC in New York are, AFAIK, the only commercial stations that carry the show--WNBC carried it before WTTW in Chicago brought it to public television (not PBS, it's distributed by American Public Television).

[Aaron]

It's been that way forever, too. You'd think being in that close proximity to Fr. John would've done something for Roger Mudd or Garrick Utley ... no such luck.

Meet The Press *used* to have moderators - in the days when journalists were actually on the show.
Isn't the *correct* term for Tim Russert "host"? (just like Tom Bergeron or Drew Carry).

[Aaron]

See for yourself.