Since his unceremonious departure from the CBS Evening News more than a year ago, Dan Rather has been in the business of making news. Now, however, he's back to reading it. The veteran newsman returns to the airwaves tonight in his inaugural installment of Dan Rather Reports, a weekly news program on HDNet.
The program, which will repeat three times on the cable net during the week, was the brainchild of Rather and Mark Cuban, the billionaire media mogul who created the hi-def channel.
Last July, just three weeks after severing all ties with CBS, the 75-year-old newsman signed a three-year contract with the cable purveyor in which the anchor will get full creative and editorial control over the hourlong newscast, featuring field reports, investigative stories and one-on-one interviews with political heavyweights.
But while Rather will continue, hopefully with his trademark non-sequiturs and down-home verve, to report the big stories, this time around, he'll be doing it for a much smaller audience.
The downside to the otherwise ideal gig is that just three to four million Americans have access to the cable channel. Not that the newsman seems too bothered.
"I have no illusions about this," Rather told Reuters. "I consider this going into the wilderness; it's a pioneering network.
"The broadcast will be seen by far fewer people than I was talking to when I was anchor and managing editor at CBS. In the beginning here, it would not surprise me if I was speaking to a couple of hundred thousand people."
Rather told the wire service that he was looking forward to his debut, which he embraces as a step away from the "Hollywoodization of the news," something he hints may have befallen his former newscast.
Speaking with the St. Petersburg Times, Rather said he has watched his CBS Evening News successor Katie Couric helm the broadcast a handful of times since her debut in September and that "they're still in the early stages of deciding...what sort of news personality they want her to be. I've seen it some nights when I think they're trying to do the Today show in the evening."
As for his own program's inspiration, Rather said he has used Edward R. Murrow's '50s-era newscast, See It Now, as his benchmark for success, tackling the topic of Washington lobbyists in one of his first shows.
Rather's return comes more than 18 months after stepping down as anchor of CBS' nightly newscast and five months after cutting ties with the network completely, due to the fact that the news department brass reportedly stopped giving him assignments.
The news vet's reputation suffered a swift but lasting tarnishing in 2004, when an un-backed report on President George W. Bush's military record, deemed "Memogate," made it onto air.
However, Rather is already in the throes of a comeback. In addition to his eponymous newscast, the anchor also dropped by the Daily Show last week to provide live commentary during the show's Midterm Midtacular. And, like his fellow back-from-retirement newscasters Tom Brokaw and Mike Wallace, he shows no signs of slowing "We love the news," he told the Times. "We have a passion for the news that's in our marrow...hell, I want to wear out, not rust out."
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