Peter Jennings, longtime US news anchor

NEW YORK – Peter Jennings, the suave, Canadian-born broadcaster who delivered the news to Americans each night in five separate decades, died on Sunday.

He was 67. Jennings, who announced in April that he had lung cancer, died Sunday at his New York home, ABC News President David Westin said in a statement.”Peter has been our colleague, our friend, and our leader in so many ways,” Westin said.”None of us will be the same without him.”With Tom Brokaw and Dan Rather, Jennings was part of a triumvirate that dominated network news for more than two decades, through the birth of cable news and the Internet.His smooth delivery and years of international reporting made him particularly popular among urban dwellers.”Peter was born to be an anchor,” Brokaw said Monday on NBC’s ‘Today’.He said he met Jennings in 1966 covering Ronald Reagan’s campaign for California governor and “we had an instant friendship”.Rather, appearing on ABC’s ‘Good Morning America’ tribute to Jennings, noted that beneath Jennings’ polished exterior was a fierce competitor.”If Peter was in the area code, I didn’t sleep,” Rather said.Jennings dominated the ratings from the late 1980s to the mid-’90s, when Brokaw surpassed him.He remained a Canadian until 2003, when he became a US citizen, saying it had nothing to do with his politics – he did it for his family.”He was a warm and loving and surprisingly sentimental man,” said fellow ABC anchor Ted Koppel.Jennings deeply regretted dropping out of high school, and he would have wanted that lesson passed along, Koppel said.He made up for it by becoming a student of the world, studying cultures and their people for the rest of his life.”No one could ad lib like Peter,” said Barbara Walters.”Sometimes he drove me crazy because he knew every detail….He just died much too young.”Jennings was wherever the big story was.He logged more than 60 hours on the air during the week of the September 11 2001, terrorist attacks, offering a soothing sense of continuity during a troubled time.”There are a lot of people who think our job is to reassure the public every night that their home, their community and their nation is safe,” he told author Jeff Alan.”I don’t subscribe to that at all.I subscribe to leaving people with essentially – sorry it’s a cliché – a rough draft of history.Some days it’s reassuring, some days it’s absolutely destructive.”Jennings’ announcement four months ago that the longtime smoker would begin treatment for lung cancer came as a shock.”I will continue to do the broadcast,” he said, his voice husky, in a taped message that night.”On good days, my voice will not always be like this.”Although Jennings occasionally came to the office between chemotherapy treatments, he never again appeared on air.Broadcasting was the family business for Jennings.His father, Charles Jennings, was the first person to anchor a nightly national news programme in Canada and later became head of the Canadian Broadcasting Corp’s news division.A picture of his father was displayed prominently in Jennings’ office off ABC’s newsroom.Charles Jennings’ son had a Saturday morning radio show in Ottawa at age 9.Jennings never completed high school or college, and began his career as a reporter at a radio station in Brockville, Ontario.He quickly earned an anchor job at Canadian Television.Sent south to cover the Democratic national convention in 1964, the handsome, dashing correspondent was noticed by ABC’s news president.Jennings was offered a reporting job and left Canada for New York.As the third-place news network, ABC figured its only chance was to go after young viewers.Jennings was picked to anchor the evening news and debuted on February 1 1965.He was 26.”It was a little ridiculous when you think about it,” Jennings told author Barbara Matusow.”I was simply unqualified.”Critics savaged him as a pretty face, and the experiment ended three years later.He later described the humbling experience as an opportunity, “because I was obliged to figure out who I was and what I really wanted to be”.Assigned as a foreign correspondent, Jennings thrived.He established an ABC News bureau in Beirut, Lebanon, and became an expert on the Middle East.He won a Peabody Award for a 1974 profile of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat.Jennings returned to the evening news a decade after his unceremonious departure and became the evening news anchor in 1983.Starting in 1986, Jennings began a decade on top of the ratings.- Nampa-APJennings, who announced in April that he had lung cancer, died Sunday at his New York home, ABC News President David Westin said in a statement.”Peter has been our colleague, our friend, and our leader in so many ways,” Westin said.”None of us will be the same without him.”With Tom Brokaw and Dan Rather, Jennings was part of a triumvirate that dominated network news for more than two decades, through the birth of cable news and the Internet.His smooth delivery and years of international reporting made him particularly popular among urban dwellers.”Peter was born to be an anchor,” Brokaw said Monday on NBC’s ‘Today’.He said he met Jennings in 1966 covering Ronald Reagan’s campaign for California governor and “we had an instant friendship”.Rather, appearing on ABC’s ‘Good Morning America’ tribute to Jennings, noted that beneath Jennings’ polished exterior was a fierce competitor.”If Peter was in the area code, I didn’t sleep,” Rather said.Jennings dominated the ratings from the late 1980s to the mid-’90s, when Brokaw surpassed him.He remained a Canadian until 2003, when he became a US citizen, saying it had nothing to do with his politics – he did it for his family.”He was a warm and loving and surprisingly sentimental man,” said fellow ABC anchor Ted Koppel.Jennings deeply regretted dropping out of high school, and he would have wanted that lesson passed along, Koppel said.He made up for it by becoming a student of the world, studying cultures and their people for the rest of his life.”No one could ad lib like Peter,” said Barbara Walters.”Sometimes he drove me crazy because he knew every detail….He just died much too young.”Jennings was wherever the big story was.He logged more than 60 hours on the air during the week of the September 11 2001, terrorist attacks, offering a soothing sense of continuity during a troubled time.”There are a lot of people who think our job is to reassure the public every night that their home, their community and their nation is safe,” he told author Jeff Alan.”I don’t subscribe to that at all.I subscribe to leaving people with essentially – sorry it’s a cliché – a rough draft of history.Some days it’s reassuring, some days it’s absolutely destructive.”Jennings’ announcement four months ago that the longtime smoker would begin treatment for lung cancer came as a shock.”I will continue to do the broadcast,” he said, his voice husky, in a taped message that night.”On good days, my voice will not always be like this.”Although Jennings occasionally came to the office between chemotherapy treatments, he never again appeared on air.Broadcasting was the family business for Jennings.His father, Charles Jennings, was the first person to anchor a nightly national news programme in Canada and later became head of the Canadian Broadcasting Corp’s news division.A picture of his father was displayed prominently in Jennings’ office off ABC’s newsroom.Charles Jennings’ son had a Saturday morning radio show in Ottawa at age 9.Jennings never completed high school or college, and began his career as a reporter at a radio station in Brockville, Ontario.He quickly earned an anchor job at Canadian Television.Sent south to cover the Democratic national convention in 1964, the handsome, dashing correspondent was noticed by ABC’s news president.Jennings was offered a reporting job and left Canada for New York.As the third-place news network, ABC figured its only chance was to go after young viewers.Jennings was picked to anchor the evening news and debuted on February 1 1965.He was 26.”It was a little ridiculous when you think about it,” Jennings told author Barbara Matusow.”I w
as simply unqualified.”Critics savaged him as a pretty face, and the experiment ended three years later.He later described the humbling experience as an opportunity, “because I was obliged to figure out who I was and what I really wanted to be”.Assigned as a foreign correspondent, Jennings thrived.He established an ABC News bureau in Beirut, Lebanon, and became an expert on the Middle East.He won a Peabody Award for a 1974 profile of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat.Jennings returned to the evening news a decade after his unceremonious departure and became the evening news anchor in 1983.Starting in 1986, Jennings began a decade on top of the ratings.- Nampa-AP