Ted Koppel To Leave ABC As 'Nightline' Changes Format

ABC News President David Westin speaks at the Television Critics Association press tour last July with Peter Jennings, Ted Koppel and George Stephanopoulos. (Nick Ut -- AP)

Westin said he is "confident," after speaking with Anne Sweeney, co-chairman of Disney's Media Networks division, that "Nightline" will retain the 11:35 p.m. time slot, rather than forfeit it to an entertainment or sports show, as the company had been contemplating. But the shape of the new "Nightline" remains up for grabs. Widely considered one of the most serious and far-ranging programs in television news, "Nightline" draws 3.7 million viewers -- down about 4 percent since last year -- compared with 5.8 million for NBC's "Tonight Show With Jay Leno" and 4.6 million for CBS's "Late Show With David Letterman."

"Nightline" will need a new host, or more likely, an ensemble of hosts. These could include Chris Bury, who has long been Koppel's principal substitute, or Stephanopoulos, the former Clinton White House aide whose show has slid to third in the Sunday morning ratings since he succeeded Sam Donaldson and Cokie Roberts three years ago. Stephanopoulos declined to comment. Westin, for his part, said Stephanopoulos "has grown enormously" and will continue to fill in at "Nightline." "I have complete confidence in him," Westin said.

One ABC executive, who declined to be identified while discussing sensitive personnel matters, said: "If George was pushed aside for Ted, that doesn't say George isn't good. It says there was a huge heavyweight they wanted to keep at the network."

After Westin solicited proposals for revamping "Nightline," several videotapes were made as prototypes of a faster-paced program. One from the existing staff, dubbed the "Washington proposal," featured Bury, John Donvan, Michel Martin, Jake Tapper and Laura Marquez as a rotating corps of correspondents in the "60 Minutes" mold. It mixed hard news with features, including a profile of the pop singer Beck, along with a brief look at "what's on your iPod."

Two other videotapes, made in New York, were called the "Times Square proposal." One paired Tapper, a former Salon.com correspondent, with Bill Weir, co-host of the weekend "Good Morning America." The other, as reported by Broadcasting & Cable, used a nightclub set with a live audience, jazz quintet and smoke machine, and was hosted by reporters John Berman and Jessica Yellin.

Koppel said he has long been working on a smooth transition, which he signaled five years ago by cutting back to anchoring three nights a week. "I'm confident, if given the opportunity, they can make a go of it," he said, although the conditions for a retooled "Nightline" are "clearly not under my control."

Westin said the show will likely stay in Washington and "remain a program of substance" based on reporting. "The key DNA will remain," he said. Westin added that the half-hour show could not expand to an hour until ABC affiliates are persuaded to carry the second half.

Bury said he and the staff have been "working through a number of ideas" that would take the show "in a new direction" while "keeping the basic faith that Ted has laid out." He described his longtime boss as "extremely fair and nuanced and smart."

Launched in 1979 as "America Held Hostage" during the Iranian hostage crisis, "Nightline" under Koppel scored interviews with the likes of Nelson Mandela and Muhammad Ali, Larry Flynt and Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker, and a bevy of presidential and vice presidential candidates. Koppel pressed Gary Hart about adultery, told Michael Dukakis he didn't understand why his campaign was failing, and hit the road last year with John Kerry. The onetime Vietnam War and State Department correspondent loved to parachute into hot spots around the country and the world, tackling difficult subjects from AIDS in Zimbabwe to prison violence to race relations, and covered the Iraq war as an embedded correspondent in 2003.

Koppel has won 41 Emmy awards, 11 George Foster Peabody awards, 12 duPont-Columbia awards, 10 Overseas Press Club awards and two George Polk awards, mostly for his "Nightline" work.

" 'Nightline' invented a lot of what the cable model is," said CNN anchor Aaron Brown, who occasionally hosted the program while at ABC. Koppel "did it for 25 years better than any of us can do it. . . . He blended his incredible confidence -- he's the most confident person I've ever known in my life -- to conduct a live interview program with his reportorial talents."

Former "Nightline" producer Leroy Sievers recalled being "in the field with him in Iraq, Somalia, Kosovo. He could write on the fly. What Ted liked to do most is head out, and whatever happened that day is what we'd report, which is a little scary because there's no safety net."

Koppel rejected criticism that "Nightline" became less unique as the rise of the 24-hour cable networks made the live satellite interviews he helped pioneer a television staple. "Tell me a program out there that does one subject for a half-hour a night," he said.

But he understands that the economics of television have been working against him. "My salary has been going up for 25 years," Koppel said. "I'm an expensive commodity. It is in the nature of all news programs . . . and whether you look at Letterman's numbers, the 'Tonight Show's' numbers, 'Nightline's' numbers -- all have been going down because television has become fragmented. . . . In the last few years, we have been hurt by the fact that ABC's prime-time ratings have been in the tank."

Another possible factor in the decline, Koppel said, is that "perhaps people are getting tired of the program."