Tom Shales

Wearing apparel, fancy sets and gimmicky format changes aside, NBC is doing a better nightly newscast than CBS (Sorry, Charlie – Charlie Gibson of ABC News – for now I can only watch two network newscasts a night).

Tonight (Thursday, Sept. 21), for instance, NBC’s produced pieces were better on virtually every story that appeared on both networks. Katie wasted time with a disappointingly deferential interview with billionaire Richard Branson, who made a big donation to fight global warming – a soft news story – while NBC reporters were looking deeper into such big stories of the day as the drop in drug prices announced by Wal-Mart.

NBC at least pointed out that Wal-Mart has been heavily criticized for the health plans available to its own employees, a relevant fact in this story. On two or three other major items of the day, the NBC reports had more substance than the corresponding CBS stuff.

And NBC anchor Brian Williams had better feature material too, including a media-wise piece on “Dr. Z (Dieter Zetsche),” the Chrysler CEO whom the company’s ad agency has been trying to pass off as a cute commercial spokesman a la the late Dave Thomas of Wendy’s. The campaign has been a huge flop, mainly because the Teutonic “character” of Dr. Z is creepy. Ad whiz Jerry della Femina said in a sound bite: “This guy looks like he’s going to hurt me.”

Excuse me for trying to sound like a smarty, but I said roughly that to myself the very first time I saw one of the commercials. Dr Z looked mean, and he snarled at a group of children. Also, I thought he was selling Mercedes Benzes, not Chryslers, with that German accent and hokey mustache. So Dr Z goes back to the boardroom. And I go back to watching network news, hoping to compare ABC’s with CBS’s in the near future. So far, Williams and NBC are clearly superior; the CBS evening news is nightly, weakly.