The biggest adjustment ABC has made since last November's debut of the post-Ted Koppel "Nightline" may simply be recognizing that there's another show tomorrow.
Not everything has to fit in tonight. While "Nightline" has rarely retreated to the single-topic format that Koppel made distinctive, it no longer makes you feel as if its correspondents were double-parked.
"We were criticized in the early days for trying to pack too much into the show, and I think we quickly realized that the show was at its best when we let it breathe a little bit," said James Goldston, "Nightline" executive producer.
The new "Nightline" marks its five-month anniversary Friday. It's a work in progress, still to be tested by a huge news event. Ratings indicate neither success nor failure, although it has shown signs of attracting a younger audience.
"I think we're beginning to do it in a way that's convincing our audience that we're going to remain serious," said Terry Moran, one of the trio of hosts with Martin Bashir and Cynthia McFadden. "It's beginning to jell with people and it's beginning to jell with us, too."
"Nightline" is essentially a mini-newsmagazine, a few notches less sober than "60 Minutes." As such, it may have fallen unexpectedly into a niche. Prime-time newsmagazines are slowly fading away, with those remaining obsessed with true crime tales or celebrity chats. "Nightline" has less and less competition for the types of stories it does.
Last Wednesday's show typified the balance "Nightline" is trying to strike. In the opening report, Chris Bury contrasted the attitude toward illegal immigration in Arizona's Cochise and Yuma counties: a tall fence and night-vision equipment guarding the border at one end of the state, with buses lined up to cart Mexican laborers to farms at the other.
The story ran 10 minutes, as did McFadden's report on the Metropolitan Museum of Art's return of a stolen vase to Europe. The night ended with a two-minute "sign of the times" piece about odd video available on the Web, including actress Keira Knightley tapping out a song on her teeth.
Koppel's oft-stated concerns about softer and less relevant news programs are being borne out by the new "Nightline," said Matthew Felling, spokesman for the Center for Media and Public Affairs in Washington.
"`Nightline's' selling point used to be its continuity," he said. "When you used to turn to `Nightline,' you knew what you were going to get. Now you don't know if you're going to get bird flu, Craig's List or Keira Knightley."
Former NBC News President Neal Shapiro, a longtime "Dateline NBC" producer, said the new "Nightline" strikes a good balance between serious journalism and lighter pieces.
(MSNBC is a joint venture of Microsoft and NBC.)
"People underestimate just how difficult transitions are," Shapiro said. "When you are succeeding something that has worked for a long time and someone who has been there for a long time, it's really difficult. The audience has huge expectations and they have a personal connection with the person who is leaving."
Critics were generally harsh at first. The Washington Post's Tom Shales, who notably panned Koppel only to offer a later mea culpa, called it "`Night-Lite,' a sallow shallow shadow of its former splendid self."
On his last "Nightline," Koppel urged his viewers to give the new show a chance, and he pledged to keep his own opinions quiet until it was established. Both Koppel and his longtime producer, Tom Bettag, declined interview requests by The Associated Press for this article.
Through April 16, the new "Nightline" has averaged 3.56 million viewers a night, down 2 percent from the same period a year ago, according to Nielsen Media Research. Ratings among the 25-to-54-year-old demographic are up 2 percent, an important goal for ABC. During the week of April 10, "Nightline" had its most-watched week since the launch (3.74 million), Nielsen said.
The numbers indicate, at the very least, that Koppel's departure did not provoke large-scale viewer defections.
The "Nightline" triple-anchor team is rarely seen together. Bashir anchored last Monday's show alone, for example, while Moran introduced Bury's piece on Wednesday. McFadden then appeared after a commercial break and anchored the rest of the show.
The danger, as critic Frazier Moore of the AP noted, is that it "gives the program an unstable, who's-in-charge-here feel."
Goldston said the format enables "Nightline" to use the anchors' reporting ability; the determination of who will be in the studio is often determined by who is not on the road. It also diffuses the pressure of succeeding Koppel.
"It was smart for them to have said, `let's not have somebody else play (Koppel's) role,'" Shapiro said.
The new regime corrected early mistakes like keeping interviews too short, said reporter Bury, who also worked with Koppel.
"I truly didn't know what to think going in," he said. "What I found is that my job hasn't changed very much. The journalism that I'm doing now is no different from what I did before."
It was important to keep the "Nightline" tradition of narrative storytelling intact, to take viewers to stories instead of talking about them from a studio, Goldston said. That was on display in two stories about the immigration debate — Bury's last week and Moran's April 10 report on the experiences of a Los Angeles family that had arrived illegally from El Salvador two decades ago.
David Wright also memorably reported from Benin on how the bird flu epidemic is approaching a country where 60 percent of the people believe in voodoo. Some drink gin mixed with chicken's blood — "a voodoo cocktail with a hell of a kick," he said.
The "sign of the times" features can be hit-or-miss, like the one on Internet video. And the British Goldston may have misjudged Americans' tastes with two features on the British royal family in the past month.
"There's no formula on the show, maybe that's the difference," Moran said. "Sometimes you tune into some of these newsmagazines and after the first 45 seconds, you know what the next 10 minutes are going to be like."
The next big story is likely to be a key moment, he said.
"I think that's what people will date the new `Nightline' from," Moran said. "How do we perform? How do we do? I also think our challenge remains to start leading the news, breaking news, and I'd like to see us do more of that. But it will come."