‘Meet the Press’ at 60: Aging Gracefully, or Past Its Prime?

By Peter Johnson

The longest-running show on TV, top-rated NBC’s Meet the Press, turns 60 today, continuing to draw politicians and newsmakers who are pushing agendas.

In this media-cluttered age of partisan blogs and contentious face-offs on cable and talk radio, Meet the Press “is a place where people can finish their thoughts and complete their sentences,” says Tim Russert, moderator since 1991. “I think there’s an appreciation for that. The information spectrum out there is big and broad, but I think there’s room for everybody.”

Mirroring an overall decline in network viewership, ratings for Meet the Press and most of its Sunday competitors are down from a decade ago.

But Meet, This Week, CBS’ Face the Nation, Fox News Sunday and CNN’s Late Edition are inexpensive to produce and “offer something to the bottom line” to respective networks, says Tom Rosenstiel of The Project for Excellence in Journalism. (Meet nets a tidy $60 million profit for NBC, the others less.)

Networks also discovered years ago “that they could make news by having newsmakers come on,” Rosenstiel says. “You get in the Monday morning newspapers, and the morning shows feature clips with your logo.”

“The core audience of Sunday morning TV is a key audience,” says This Week host George Stephanopoulos. “It is people who vote, who volunteer, who make policy. Politicians and policymakers know when they come on they’ll get some tough questions, but they also get a chance to shape the agenda for the week.”

Yet challenges loom for the Sunday public affairs shows as younger viewers are increasingly drawn to alternatives to network TV.

“Presidential candidates still covet a spin in the Sunday spotlight, and I think few events resonate more loudly in the political universe than a stint in the Sunday morning hot seat,” says Bill Nichols, managing editor of Politico.com, a political news website.

But, he says, “the traditional Sunday shows, like all of us who cover politics, have to be more creative and more urgent in trying to connect with a growing slice of the American electorate that gets its news in non-traditional ways, wants more transparency in how we cover politics and aren’t necessarily transfixed by a bunch of Washington insiders in suits — or pantsuits — yakking at each other.”

Networks note that all of their Sunday talk shows are available on the Web and are getting traction from viewers who watch them online or download them onto their iPods. “You don’t need to be wedded to our specific time slot,” says Late Edition host Wolf Blitzer. “You can download us and walk around or jog and listen.”

Stephanopoulos notes that he has taken This Week on the road many times in the past three years — six trips to Iowa since May — and “getting away from the studio and a bunch of guys in blue suits going back and forth. You can present a broader and richer story when you can show them (politicians) in different environments, interacting with voters.”

Fox News Sunday kicked off a new series Sunday called “American Leaders” with host Chris Wallace talking to former president Bush at his presidential library in Texas about issues beyond current politics. “We think the audience is getting tired of never-ending conversations about who’s up and who’s down and process,” says Wallace.

But the meat and potatoes of politics and public policy is what all the Sunday talk shows are about, says Bob Schieffer, host of CBS’ Face the Nation, founded in 1954 and now the second-longest-running show on TV, behind Meet the Press.

“There are no bells and whistles,” he says. “Just basic police-reporter questions. It’s the last place on TV where people can say three paragraphs.”

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