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77 9 From Commentator to . . . Anchor! Home from the convention in the fall of ’72, I’m at my desk in the Merchandise Mart when my direct line rings. “Walter? It’s Van Sauter.” Van Gordon Sauter, a name from the past, prominent in Chicago during his years as a reporter for the Daily News, and then news director at WBBM Radio. He’s back in town to take over Channel 2 News. I don’t know him well, so I’m surprised to hear him on the telephone. “How about our getting together?” he asks. “Sure, Van. It’d be great to talk to you. Anytime.” He’s just resigned his prestigious position as director of special events for CBS Radio News in New York to come to Chicago to lug Channel 2 up from the dregs of terrible ratings (barely half the audience Flynn-Daly has on Channel 7 or Kalber has on Channel 5). Why does Van Gordon Sauter want to get together with me? To ask what I know about Channel 2, about the local news scene, the mayor’s chances of being reelected next year? You never know in this business why somebody wants to get together with somebody. He can’t be thinking about bringing me back to Channel 2, can he? He knows why I was fired by 2, and he can turn on his television any evening at five o’clock, and see how happy I am as commentator number 2 on Channel 5. Stranger still, he says let’s meet not for lunch or dinner, but for a drink later at night, not downtown, but anywhere else. And he’d like to bring along his general manager, Robert Wussler, whom I’ve never spoken with, or ever even met. I feel like I know him, though, because of who he’s been at CBS: executive producer of CBS News, coverage supervisor of space shots and two presidential campaigns. Sauter says they’ll pick me up at my home in Lincoln Park. And they do, arriving at about 10:15 in a limousine. We’re in my neighborhood , so they ask me where we can get that drink. Four Farthings, I say. It’s a cozy little bar and restaurant half a block away. We walk. I’m baffled. 78 F R O M C O M M E N TAT O R T O . . . A N C H O R ! “Nice place,” says Sauter, sitting down at a small, round oak table in a quiet corner of the room. The bar is an antique of old carvings in dark wood, twenty feet long, at which four or five neighbors, familiar but unknown, are sitting on stools on a wood floor. “Farthingshasbeenhereforever,”Sautersays.“Iusedtocomeintwo,threetimesa week.”Apause,andthen:“We’dlikeyoutocomebacktoChannel2toworkwithus.” Just like that, out of the blue. “Come back to work with us.” I’m stunned. “Why? What do you want me to do?” “Anchor the ten o’clock news.” I’m even more stunned. “Anchor the ten? Are you serious?” Silence, glances all around. “Guess you are serious, or we wouldn’t be here. Right?” Now I pause. “I’m not an anchor. You think you’re in trouble now? Make me the face and voice of Channel 2 News, and you’ll be in trouble forever, or gone before you can get me on the air.” “We’re going to make you a star,” says Van. A shooting star, I think. Off into nowhere. Wussler isn’t saying anything. Starched into a gray suit, he’s just listening, but looking serious enough for me to take him seriously. With a Budweiser and popcorn, Van’s doing the talking. “We want to team you with Bill Kurtis at ten. And we have plans for a six o’clock you’ll love to hear. What you’ve always wanted, Walter. An hour. You and Kurtis for an hour. Chicago news, in depth.” “Have you talked to Kurtis? What does he say?” “He’s in Seattle on a story. We’re going there tomorrow. Think about it.” The big question in my mind, that I believe should be in the minds of Sauter and Wussler, is: Why me? Chicago is major league, World Series, Wimbledon, the Olympics of local television news. Anchors here are professionals. They come not from Peoria, but from Denver, Dallas, Cleveland, Miami. Sometimes they come from backup anchoring in New York or Los Angeles. They know how to handle...

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