Dan Rather, Ready For His HD Close-Up

Dan Rather finds his HDNet job "liberating." His news show debuts Nov. 14. (By William Regan -- Associated Press)

NEW YORK -- Dan Rather says he no longer dwells on his tumultuous 44-year career at CBS News. Well, almost never.

"Obviously there are moments when I look in the rearview mirror," he admits.

But in a barren temporary office on Park Avenue, he is eager to talk about the new program he is building, piece by piece. "I have found it liberating, and more so than I thought it would be," Rather says of his venture for the high-definition channel HDNet, which debuts Nov. 14. His new boss, billionaire entrepreneur Mark Cuban, "has given me in writing total, complete, absolute journalistic control. This is unprecedented in my experience."

During the quarter-century that he anchored the "CBS Evening News," Rather had a small army of producers, reporters, researchers and assistants tending to his every need. His new staff numbers 16, including freelancers, and he has to supervise such mundane matters as finding office space and installing phones. In fact, he is struggling to master this newfangled device called a BlackBerry.

"One should not underestimate -- I probably did underestimate -- the chaos factor," Rather says.

Rather knows what his legions of critics are saying -- that he was driven out of CBS because of his badly botched report on President Bush's National Guard service, and is now trying to redeem himself by resurrecting his journalistic career.

"I understand how some people may view it that way. I don't," Rather says. Instead, the 74-year-old warhorse says, he simply wants to be a reporter "as long as God gives me my health. And even if my health deteriorates, I want to do news."

Wayne Nelson, a CBS veteran who is executive producer of the new show, puts it this way: "I don't want to see his legacy be the last story he had on television. He has brought so much to this industry, to be remembered that way would be really unfortunate. I think he's got several good laps left."

Rather says he remains "puzzled" why CBS had no interest in having him continue at "60 Minutes," where he landed after yielding the anchor chair. "To stay at a place -- even as storied a place as CBS News -- and not be able to do work, or very much work, was not something I'm interested in," he says.

Rather has christened his new company News and Guts, which more or less captures his self-image. He says that the weekly "Dan Rather Reports" will have a hard edge and that he is trying to land interviews with major newsmakers. "We're hunting big game," he says.

The focus of these hour-long shows, he says, will be largely on three areas: veterans, politics and -- "I hate the phrase 'middle class' -- regular Americans who are neither in poverty nor well-off. People struggling to make it, meet the house payments, make their car notes."

Already, Rather has been to Latin America to examine what he calls "narco-states" and interviewed soldiers at Fort Hood, Tex., who have fought in Iraq. A story on state medical associations failing to police doctors is in the works. There may also be an election night special before the show debuts.