Under That Desk, Big Shoes To Fill

Brian Williams has already spent two years as Brokaw's heir apparent, but he will likely face viewer skepticism because of perceived "inexperience." (Mitsu Yasukawa For The Washington Post)

NEW YORK -- Tom Brokaw has a message for Brian Williams, one he's been delivering regularly to his successor: Don't read the television critics who pan your performance.

When he, Dan Rather and Peter Jennings took over, the NBC anchor says, "we all went through the same baptism of fire: We weren't worthy. The way you alter that is you put your head down and do the work."

Publicly, at least, NBC is doing its best to play down the passing of the baton. Network executives say Brokaw will sign off from "NBC Nightly News" in midweek -- Wednesday, Dec. 1 -- with no video tributes, and Williams takes the chair the next day. There will be no new set, no snazzy music, no fancy graphics.

"It's enough of a change for viewers after two decades of inviting this man into your home, and now it's going to be this other man you're familiar with," Williams says. "There's no need to change a hair on this broadcast's head."

Behind the scenes, though, Williams has been courting local affiliates and cutting promotional spots, while executives have been testing their planned advertising with focus groups.

"In the long term, I'm very optimistic," says NBC News President Neal Shapiro. "In the short term, I expect there to be some flipping. People look around whenever there's a change made."

There is no getting around the fact that Williams is nowhere near as well known as Brokaw, even after years of serving as his principal substitute and anchoring a now-defunct news hour on MSNBC and CNBC. And he hasn't wowed some of the critics whom Brokaw says he should ignore. Newsday's Marvin Kitman has called Williams "generic as a journalist, weightless in the anchor chair."

Brokaw says he offered Williams this advice: "Think about three or four issues and themes you really care about and want to be associated with in the audience's mind."

Williams, 45, plans a few tweaks over time. Describing network news as too "Eastern-centric," he says: "The coasts are a dangerous place to live when your job is to cover America. I want to keep traveling and take the broadcast on the road so we remain a good mirror of the country."

The incoming anchor is also a presidential history buff -- he's working on a book about the death of a 19th-century president he won't identify -- and hopes to occasionally include lessons of the past in modern-day reporting.

If Brokaw, from South Dakota, is a man of the West, Williams is a man of small-town New Jersey, a NASCAR buff and former volunteer firefighter. Since he and his wife, Jane, have a 16-year-old daughter, 13-year-old son, a dog and a rabbit, he brings a family sensibility to his job -- so much so that when the Monica Lewinsky story broke, colleagues heard Williams wondering how he was going to explain it to the kids.

Network executives believe they have done everything they can to prepare their new star. Williams has been dispatched to the Middle East, to Florida hurricanes, to the conventions and debates. And he's been around the news track a few times: When Challenger exploded, the former White House correspondent was filling in for Brokaw and spent hours on the air without a script.

Still, his bosses expect him to get higher negative ratings from focus groups because he is viewed as less experienced. Of course, it's hard to prove yourself when you're warming the bench or just another correspondent in the field. "He's impatient, I'm sure, to get it on," Brokaw says. "I don't blame him. Being backup quarterback is a tough job."

NBC anointed Williams as the network's next anchor more than two years ago. "Was that a disservice to Brian?" asks Steve Capus, executive producer of "NBC Nightly News." "It put an enormous amount of pressure and scrutiny on him. It forced us to do what we wanted to do, which is get him on 'Nightly News' a lot. . . . Brian is getting to do the job he's always wanted to do."

Shapiro notes that his nightly newscast has been No. 1 for eight years. "We're changing the driver, but people also like the car," he says.

The shrinking network news audience is growing older, which Brokaw, 64, has alluded to by joking that the length of the broadcast "depends on how many Polident commercials we're able to sell." NBC executives hope Williams can appeal to younger viewers. And they spin the handover this way: They're avoiding the gossip and speculation at the other networks about who will graduate to the anchor chair. No heir apparent has emerged for ABC's Jennings, but with CBS's Rather facing a contract expiration in 2006, the buzz has centered on White House correspondent John Roberts and "60 Minutes" correspondent Scott Pelley.

While this is the first turnover of one of the Big Three anchor jobs in 22 years, NBC executives insist that any shift in their signature newscast is likely to be evolutionary. "Brian's humor can be much more wry, a little toward the Jon Stewart side of comedy, and I don't know how we fit that into the show," Shapiro says. Williams isn't sure he can, given the seriousness of the times.

The man who once covered Northern Virginia for Washington's WTTG has visited about 30 NBC affiliates this year -- including stations in Boston, Philadelphia, Chicago, Denver, St. Louis and Minneapolis -- and taped promos with their local anchors. This is the equivalent of a presidential candidate building a base of support with county chairmen.

"Replacing Tom means I have to now become the hardest-working man in this building," Williams says. As for how he will be perceived, Williams calls television "the ultimate subjective business. I hope to gain everyone's trust, and the only way I can do that is hours in the chair."