John Chancellor
Chancellor at the White House in 1970
Born	John William Chancellor (1927-07-14)July 14, 1927 Chicago, Illinois, U.S.
Died	July 12, 1996(1996-07-12) (aged 68) Princeton, New Jersey, U.S.
Nationality	American
Occupation	Journalist
Years active	1956–1993
Known for	NBC Nightly News (1970-1982 as anchor) (1982-1993 as editorials/commentaries)
Spouse	Connie Chancellor[1] Barbara Upshaw (second wife)

John William Chancellor (July 14, 1927 – July 12, 1996) was a well-known American journalist who spent most of his career with NBC News. He served as anchor of the NBC Nightly News from 1970 to 1982 and continued to do editorials and commentaries for NBC Nightly News with Tom Brokaw until 1993.

Early career[link]

Chancellor attended the University of Illinois Navy Pier campus (precursor to UIC) which specified completing the last two years of instruction at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1949. Originally a reporter for the Chicago Sun-Times, he first started his career in national television news as a correspondent on NBC's evening newscast, the Huntley-Brinkley Report.

Early years, NBC/Voice of America[link]

John Chancellor, Frank Blair and Edwin Newman in The Today Show, 1961.

Chancellor covered issues of national importance while on The Huntley-Brinkley Report, such as the 1957 integration of the Little Rock Central High School. He spent a number of years as a foreign correspondent in Europe, with postings in Vienna, London, Moscow, and Brussels (NATO Headquarters).

In July 1961, Chancellor replaced Dave Garroway as host of NBC's Today program, a role he filled for fourteen months. Never comfortable with the genial persona required of a Today anchor, Chancellor asked for, and was granted, a release from his contract with the show in the summer of 1962. He left the program in September, and assumed a role as political correspondent for NBC News. He, Frank McGee, Edwin Newman, and Sander Vanocur comprised a team that covered the national political conventions in the 1960s so well, they were dubbed by industry observers as the "Four Horsemen."

At the 1964 Republican National Convention, he was arrested for refusing to cede his spot on the floor to "Goldwater Girls," supporters of the Republican presidential candidate, Barry Goldwater. When security came to get him, he was forced to sign off: "I've been promised bail, ladies and gentlemen, by my office. This is John Chancellor, somewhere in custody." He then became the director of the Voice of America in 1965, at the request of President Lyndon Johnson, a spot he held until 1967.

[edit] Anchor, NBC Nightly News

However, he returned to NBC in 1968 as senior correspondent on the Huntley-Brinkley Report and, two years later, became an anchor on the NBC Nightly News, a spot he held from 1970 to 1982; this job became the defining point of his career. Inaugurating the name and setting the pace of the format of Nightly News, from 1970 to 1971, Chancellor, along with David Brinkley and McGee, was one of three anchors who rotated in a co-anchor duo format, held over from Huntley-Brinkley. NBC arranged the rotation by having McGee always broadcast from New York City and Brinkley continue at his customary Washington desk. If McGee did not anchor on a broadcast, Chancellor did from New York; if Brinkley did not, Chancellor filled in from Washington. NBC did not have separate weekend anchors during this period, as it had just inaugurated a Sunday evening newscast in August 1970, so this format was employed seven days a week.

A perceived lack of stability in this arrangement prompted NBC to go with Chancellor full time (McGee later moved to The Today Show). From August 9, 1971 to June 4, 1976, Chancellor became the sole weeknight anchor (Garrick Utley and others took over weekend duties), stationed at the New York NBC headquarters, with Brinkley reduced to contributing pre-recorded commentaries, titled David Brinkley's Journal, about two to three times per week from Washington. Facing the continued popularity of top-rated CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite, NBC Nightly News returned to a co-anchor format from June 7, 1976 until October 9, 1979 with Brinkley resuming his old role at the NBC Washington desk; internal disputes within NBC management prompted the network to remove Brinkley from Nightly News, assigning him to occasional documentaries until his departure for ABC in 1981.

Although Chancellor was a respected, well-spoken journalist and noted author in his own right, his broadcast ratings were eclipsed by Walter Cronkite in the 1970s, when CBS Evening News had become the most popular of the three network weeknight broadcasts. Toward the end of Chancellor's tenure, ABC, for the first time ever, became competitive with NBC and CBS with its World News Tonight.

"Red" and "blue" state concepts[link]

Chancellor does have the distinction of creating the idea of using colors to represent the states won by presidential candidates in presidential elections. For the 1976 presidential election Chancellor suggested to his network's engineers that they create a large electronic map of the United States and place it in the network's election-night news studio. If Jimmy Carter, the Democratic candidate, won a state it would light up in red; if Gerald Ford, the Republican candidate, carried a state it would light up in blue. When ABC began using a color scheme four years later, it reversed the colors because "Republican" and "red" both began with "R," and its scheme eventually became the standard for all networks.

[edit] Later years, post-Nightly News

Chancellor anchored the Nightly News through April 2, 1982, when he was succeeded by a co-anchor team of Tom Brokaw and Roger Mudd. Brokaw became sole anchor a year and a half later. Chancellor remained on the program, providing editorial commentaries before retiring from NBC on July 9, 1993.

Chancellor was the narrator of Baseball, an award winning documentary by Ken Burns.^[2] He also wrote a book, Peril and Promise, which was published in 1991. Upon retiring, Chancellor moved to New Jersey, where he died of stomach cancer in 1996, two days shy of his 69th birthday. Chancellor was survived by the former Barbara Upshaw, his second wife. He had two daughters and a son.

The John Chancellor Award for Excellence in Journalism^[3] was established in 1995 and administered by the Annenberg Public Policy Center until 2004. It is now awarded by the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: John William Chancellor

• YouTube clip of Chancellor anchoring final five minutes of NBC Nightly News, July 4, 1972
• Oral History Interview with John Chancellor, from the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library
• John Chancellor at Find a Grave
• FBI file on John Chancellor

David McClure Brinkley (July 10, 1920 – June 11, 2003) was an American newscaster for NBC and ABC in a career lasting from 1943 to 1997.

From 1956 through 1970, he co-anchored NBC's top-rated nightly news program, The Huntley–Brinkley Report, with Chet Huntley and thereafter appeared as co-anchor or commentator on its successor, NBC Nightly News, through the 1970s. In the 1980s and 1990s, Brinkley was host of the popular Sunday This Week with David Brinkley program and a top commentator on election-night coverage for ABC News. Over the course of his career, Brinkley received ten Emmy Awards, three George Foster Peabody Awards, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom.^[1]

He wrote three books, including the critically acclaimed 1988 bestseller Washington Goes to War, about how World War II transformed the nation's capital. This social history was largely based on his own observations as a young reporter in the city.

Early life[link]

Brinkley was born in Wilmington, North Carolina, the youngest of five children born to William Graham Brinkley and Mary MacDonald (née West) Brinkley. He began writing for a local newspaper, the Wilmington Morning Star, while still attending New Hanover High School. He attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Emory University, and Vanderbilt University, before entering service in the United States Army in 1941. Following his 1943 discharge, he moved to Washington, D.C., looking for a radio job at CBS News. Instead, he took a job at NBC News, became its White House correspondent, and in time began appearing on television.

Career[link]

In 1952, Brinkley began providing Washington reporting on NBC Television's evening news program, The Camel News Caravan (the name changed over time), hosted by John Cameron Swayze. In 1956, NBC News executives considered various possibilities to anchor the network's coverage of the Democratic and Republican political conventions, and when executive J. Davidson Taylor suggested pairing two reporters (he had in mind Bill Henry and Ray Scherer), producer Reuven Frank, who favored Brinkley for the job, and NBC's director of news, Joseph Meyers, who favored Chet Huntley, proposed combining Huntley and Brinkley. NBC's top brass consented, but they had so little confidence in the team that they withheld announcing it for two months.^[2] Their concern proved unfounded.

The pairing worked so well that on October 29, 1956, the two took over NBC's flagship nightly newscast, with Huntley in New York City and Brinkley in Washington, D.C., for the newly christened Huntley–Brinkley Report. Brinkley's dry wit offset the serious tone set by Huntley, and the program proved popular with audiences turned off by the incessantly serious tone of CBS's news broadcasts of that era. Brinkley's ability to write for the ear with simple, declarative sentences gained him a reputation as one of the medium's most talented writers, and his connections in Washington led CBS's Roger Mudd to observe, "Brinkley, of all the TV guys here, probably has the best sense of the city--best understands its moods and mentality. He knows Washington and he knows the people."^[3] Most often described as "wry," Brinkley once suggested on the air that the best way to resolve the controversy over whether to change the name of Boulder Dam to "Hoover Dam" was to have former president Herbert Hoover change his name to "Herbert Boulder".

Another example of Brinkley's seething wryness was evinced on the third night of Chicago's infamous Democratic Convention of 1968. After continuous abuses made on the floor of the convention of NBC correspondents – namely, interference and shadowing of the media staff by supporters of Hubert Humphrey, presumably with connections to political boss Richard J. Daley – voiced a protest of Daley's behavior and his alleged interference with freedoms of the press following Senator Abraham Ribicoff's stormy nomination of George McGovern. Perhaps in reply to a control room for objectivity, referencing Daley's refusal to be interviewed by John Chancellor earlier in the evening, Brinkley can be heard over the McGovern demonstration to have scolded "Mayor Daley had his chance!"^[4]

The catchphrase conclusion to each evening's broadcast, "Good night, Chet; Good night, David," entered the language, and it was followed by the beginning of the second movement of Beethoven's 9th Symphony, played as the program credits rolled. The Huntley–Brinkley Report was America's most popular television newscast until it was overtaken, at the end of the 1960s, by the CBS Evening News, anchored by Walter Cronkite. Brinkley and his co-anchor gained such celebrity that Brinkley was forced to cut short his reporting on Hubert Humphrey in the 1960 West Virginia primary because West Virginians were more interested in meeting Brinkley than the candidate.^[5] From 1961 to 1963, Brinkley anchored a prime time news magazine, David Brinkley's Journal. Produced by Ted Yates, the program won a George Foster Peabody Award and two Emmy Awards.^[6]

When Huntley retired from the anchor chair in 1970, the evening news program was renamed NBC Nightly News, and Brinkley co-anchored the broadcast with John Chancellor and Frank McGee. In 1971, Chancellor was named sole anchor and Brinkley became the program's commentator, delivering three-minute perspectives several times a week under the title David Brinkley's Journal. By 1976, though, NBC decided to revive the dual-anchor format, and Brinkley once again anchored the Washington desk for the network, until October 1979. However, the early years of Nightly News never achieved the popularity Huntley-Brinkley Report had enjoyed. For its part, NBC attempted to launch several news magazine shows during the 1970s with Brinkley as anchor; none of them succeeded. An unhappy Brinkley left NBC in 1981; NBC Magazine was his last show for that network.

Almost immediately after leaving NBC, Brinkley was offered a job at ABC. ABC News President Roone Arledge was anxious to replace ABC's Sunday morning news program, Issues and Answers, which had always lagged far behind CBS's Face the Nation and NBC's Meet the Press. Brinkley was tapped for the job, and in 1981 began hosting This Week with David Brinkley. This Week revolutionized the Sunday morning news program format, featuring not only several correspondents interviewing guest newsmakers, but also following up with an opinionated roundtable of discussion. The format proved highly successful and was soon imitated by Brinkley's NBC and CBS rivals, as well as new programs which later came into existence.

Retirement[link]

Days before his announced retirement from regular news coverage, Brinkley made a rare on-air mistake during evening coverage of the 1996 presidential election, at a moment when he thought they were on commercial break. One of his colleagues asked him what he thought of Bill Clinton's re-election. He called Clinton "a bore" and added, "The next four years will be filled with pretty words, and pretty music, and a lot of goddamn nonsense!" One of his team pointed out that they were still on the air. Brinkley said, "Really? Well, I'm leaving anyway!" Brinkley worked this mistake into a chance for an apology as part of a one-on-one interview with Clinton that followed a week or so later.

Brinkley stepped down from hosting This Week on November 10, 1996, but continued to provide small commentary pieces for the show until 1997. He then fully retired from television. He had been an electronic journalist for over fifty years and had been anchor or host of a daily or weekly national television program for just over forty years. His career lasted from the beginning of broadcast news to the information age.

During his career, he won ten Emmy Awards and three George Foster Peabody Awards. In 1992, President George H. W. Bush awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor. Bush called him "the elder statesman of broadcast journalism"; but Brinkley was much more humble. In an interview in 1992, he said "Most of my life, I've simply been a reporter covering things, and writing and talking about it".

Brinkley is the father of historian and Columbia University Provost, Alan Brinkley, and of Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and Stanford professor, Joel Brinkley.

Brinkley died in 2003 at his home in Houston, Texas, from complications after a fall. His body is interred at Oakdale Cemetery, Wilmington, North Carolina.

Television career[link]

• 1951–56 Camel News Caravan (correspondent)
• 1956–70 NBC News/The Huntley-Brinkley Report
• 1961–63 David Brinkley's Journal, produced by Ted Yates, aired on Monday evenings.
• 1971–76 NBC Nightly News (commentator only)
• 1976–79 NBC Nightly News (co-anchor)
• 1980–81 NBC Magazine with David Brinkley
• 1981–96 This Week with David Brinkley
• 1981–98 ABC World News Tonight (commentator)

Pop culture references[link]

David Brinkley was mentioned in the Scrubs episode, #4.23, "My Faith in Humanity". There's a patient named Betty talking to her neighbor, Jake, and J.D. walks in. Jake says, "Betty even let me in on a few of her romantic trysts from her younger days. You familiar with Mr. David Brinkley?" J.D. replies with a disbelieving "No way."

David Brinkley was mentioned in the Buffy the Vampire Slayer musical-episode "Once More, with Feeling" in the song "I'll Never Tell". Anya says "When I get so worn and wrinkly / That I look like David Brinkley".

In the episode of the cartoon show Johnny Bravo, "The Sensitive Man", Johnny asks a park go-er he if he's "...as studly as the statue of David..." to which she responds that he's "...as studly as David... Brinkley."

References[link]

External links[link]

• David Brinkley obituary by Richard Severo, The New York Times.
• with Brinkley by Ron Steiman, (1960–1961).
• David Brinkley collection at the Wisconsin Historical Society – Over 150,000 documents covering Brinkley's career
• Booknotes interview with Brinkley on A Memoir, December 10, 1995.
• David Brinkley at Findagrave.com

Barbara Walters
Barbara Walters in New York City, June 2011
Born	Barbara Jill Walters (1929-09-25) September 25, 1929 (age 82) Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.
Occupation	Journalist
Years active	1961–present
Notable credit(s)	Co-anchor and contributor of ABC Evening News and ABC World News Today show anchor (1961–1976) Not For Women Only host (1971–1976) ABC Evening News anchor (1976–1978) 20/20 host (1984–2004) The View creator/co-host (1997–present)
Salary	$12 million (2007)[1]
Spouse	Robert Henry Katz (m.1955–1958; annulled) Lee Guber (m.1963–1976; divorced) Merv Adelson (m.1981–1984; divorced) Merv Adelson (m.1986–1992; divorced)
Children	1

Barbara Jill Walters^[2] (born September 25, 1929) is an American broadcast journalist, author, and television personality. She has hosted morning television shows (Today and The View), the television news magazine (20/20), former co-anchor of the ABC World News, and current contributor to ABC News.

Walters was first known as a popular TV morning news anchor for over 10 years on NBC's Today, where she worked with Hugh Downs and later hosts Frank McGee and Jim Hartz. Walters later spent 25 years as co-host of ABC's news magazine 20/20. She was the first female co-anchor of network evening news, working with Harry Reasoner on the ABC Evening News, and continuing as a contributor to the network news division and its flagship program, ABC World News.

In 1996, Walters was ranked #34 on TV Guide's 50 Greatest TV Stars of All Time.^[3]

Early life[link]

Walters was born in 1929 in Boston, the daughter of Dena (née Seletsky) and Louis "Lou" Walters (born Louis Warmwater).^[4] Her parents were both Jewish^[5] and descendants of refugees from the former Russian Empire, now Eastern Europe.^[6] Walters' paternal grandfather, Abraham Isaac, was from what is now Łódź, Poland, and first immigrated to England, changing his name first to Warmwater and later to Abraham Walters (the original family surname was Waremwasser).^[6][7][8] Walters' father was born there c. 1894, and moved to the United States with his family in 1900.^[9] In 1937, her father opened the New York version of the Latin Quarter; he also worked as a Broadway producer (he produced the Ziegfeld Follies of 1943).^[10][11] He also was the Entertainment Director for the Tropicana Resort and Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada, where he imported the "Folies Bergere" stage show from Paris to the resort's main showroom.^[12] Walters' brother, Burton, died in 1932 of pneumonia.^[13] Walters' elder sister, Jacqueline, was born mentally disabled^[14] and died of ovarian cancer in 1985. She has another half sister, Walda Walters Anderson, born to a different mother.^{[citation needed]}

According to Walters, being surrounded by celebrities when she was young kept her from being "in awe" of them.^[14] When she was a young woman, Walters' father lost his nightclubs and the family's penthouse on Central Park West. As Walters recalled, "He had a breakdown. He went down to live in our house in Florida, and then the Government took the house, and they took the car, and they took the furniture." Of her mother, she said, "My mother should have married the way her friends did, to a man who was a doctor or who was in the dress business."^[15]

After attending Ethical Culture Fieldston School and Birch Wathen Lenox School^[16][17] private schools in New York City,^[13] Walters graduated from Miami Beach High School in 1947. In 1951 she received a B.A. in English from Sarah Lawrence College.^[18]

Career and accolades[link]

From left: Gene Shalit, Barbara Walters, and Frank McGee in The Today Show, 1973.

After a brief period as a publicist with Tex McCrary Inc. and a job as a writer at CBS News, Walters joined NBC's The Today Show as a writer and researcher in 1961.^[14] She moved up to become that show's regular "Today Girl", handling lighter assignments and the weather. In her autobiography, she describes this era before the Women's Movement as a time when it was believed that nobody would take a woman seriously reporting "hard news". Previous "Today Girls" (whom Walters called "tea pourers") included Florence Henderson, Helen O'Connell, Estelle Parsons and Lee Meriwether.^[19] Within a year she had become a reporter-at-large developing, writing, and editing her own reports and interviews.^[14] When Frank McGee was named host, he refused to do joint interviews with Walters unless he was given the first four questions. She was not named co-host of the show until McGee's death in 1974, when NBC officially designated Walters as the program's first female co-host.

Walters has seldom minced words when describing the visible, on-the-air disdain her co-anchor, Harry Reasoner, displayed for her when she was teamed up with him on the ABC Evening News in 1976–78. Reasoner had a difficult relationship with Walters because he disliked having a co-anchor, even though he worked with former CBS colleague Howard K. Smith nightly on ABC for several years. In 1981, five years after the start of their short-lived ABC partnership and well after Reasoner returned to CBS News, Walters and her former co-anchor had a memorable (and cordial) 20/20 interview on the occasion of Reasoner's new book release.^{[citation needed]}

Walters is also known for her years on the ABC newsmagazine 20/20 where she joined host Hugh Downs in 1979.^[14] Throughout her career at ABC, Walters has appeared on ABC news specials as a commentator, including presidential inaugurations and the coverage of 9/11. She was also chosen to be the moderator for the third and final debate between candidates Jimmy Carter and Gerald Ford, held on the campus of the College of William and Mary at Phi Beta Kappa Memorial Hall in Williamsburg, Virginia, during the 1976 Presidential Election.^[20] In 1984, she moderated a Presidential debate held at the Dana Center for the Humanities at Saint Anselm College in Goffstown, New Hampshire.^[21] Many of her regular and special programs are syndicated around the world. As of 2004, she is in semi-retirement as a broadcast journalist, but remains a correspondent for ABC News as well as a host of ABC's special programs.

Awards[link]

On June 14, 2007, Walters received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. She has won Daytime and Prime Time Emmy Awards, a Women in Film Lucy Award, and a GLAAD Excellence in Media award. Her impact on the popular culture is illustrated by Gilda Radner's "Baba Wawa" impersonation of her on Saturday Night Live,^[14] featuring her idiosyncratic speech with its rounded "R". In 2008, she was honored with the Disney Legends award, an award given to those who made an outstanding contribution to The Walt Disney Company, which owns the network ABC. That same year, she received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the New York Women's Agenda. On September 21, 2009, Walters was honored with a Lifetime Achievement Award at the 30th Annual News and Documentary Emmy Awards at New York City's Lincoln Center.

Interviews[link]

Walters interviewing President Gerald Ford and Betty Ford in 1976.

Vladimir Putin giving an interview to Walters in 2001 at the Kremlin.

On March 7, 2010, Barbara Walters announced she would no longer hold Oscar interviews, but will still be working with ABC and on her show, The View.^[22]

In a November 2010 episode of The View, while interviewing Larry King on his retirement from CNN, Walters alluded to her impending retirement, stating, "I know when my time's coming."

Walters is known for "personality journalism" and her "scoop" interviews.^[14] In November 1977, she achieved a joint interview with Egypt's President, Anwar Al Sadat, and Israel's Prime Minister, Menachem Begin. Her interviews with world leaders from all walks of life are a chronicle of the latter part of the 20th century.^[14] They include the Shah of Iran Mohammad Reza Pahlavi and his wife the Empress Farah Pahlavi; Russia's Boris Yeltsin; China's Jiang Zemin; the UK's Margaret Thatcher; Cuba's Fidel Castro, as well as India's Indira Gandhi, Václav Havel, Muammar al-Gaddafi, King Hussein of Jordan, King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, Bashar al-Assad president of Syria among many others. Other interviews with influential people include pop icon Michael Jackson, Katharine Hepburn, Anna Wintour, and in 1980 Laurence Olivier. Walters considered Dr. Robert Smithdas, a deaf-blind man who spent his life improving the life of other individuals who are deaf-blind, as her most inspirational interview.

Walters was widely lampooned in 1981 (and often since) for having posed the question, during an interview with actress Katharine Hepburn: "If you were a tree, what kind would you be?" But as she has often pointed out (and the video clips confirm) Hepburn initiated the discussion by saying that she would like to be a tree, and Walters merely followed up with the question, "What kind of a tree?"^[14][23]

During a story about Cuban leader Fidel Castro, Walters claimed that "for Castro, freedom begins with education." Some critics^[who?] point to her characterization of Castro as freedom-loving and argue that it painted an inaccurate picture of his government.^{[citation needed]}

On March 3, 1999, her interview of Monica Lewinsky was seen by a record 74 million viewers, the highest rating ever for a journalist's interview. Walters asked Lewinsky, "What will you tell your children about this matter?" and Lewinsky replied, "I guess Mommy made some mistakes," at which point Walters brought the program to a dramatic conclusion, turning to the viewers, saying, "And that is the understatement of the year."

[edit] The View

Walters is a part-time host of the daytime talk show The View, of which she is also co-creator and co-executive producer with her business partner Bill Geddie.^[14] Walters described the show in its original opening credits as a forum for women of "different generations, backgrounds, and views." She added, "Be careful what you wish for..." The show's current co-hosts are Whoopi Goldberg, Joy Behar, Elisabeth Hasselbeck and Sherri Shepherd. Previous co-hosts include Meredith Vieira, Lisa Ling, Rosie O'Donnell, Star Jones, and Debbie Matenopoulos.

In 2007 Barbara defended co-host O'Donnell about remarks the latter made against Donald Trump and the winner of the Miss USA pageant. Trump firmly responded by saying, "Barbara is off the list..."^[24]

Personal life[link]

Walters has been married four times to three different men. "I'm convinced that you stay married when the sex is bad, only because you really want to be," she told The New York Times in 1996. "But I always had an out. I had this job, and this life and enough money. I didn't have to fight the bad days."^[15] Her husbands were:

• Robert Henry Katz, a business executive and former Navy lieutenant. They married on June 20, 1955, at The Plaza Hotel in New York City. The marriage was reportedly annulled in 1958.^[2][25]
• Lee Guber, theatrical producer and theater owner. They married on December 8, 1963, and divorced in 1976. They have one daughter, Jacqueline Dena Guber (born 1968, adopted the same year).
• Merv Adelson, the CEO of Lorimar Television. They married in 1981 and divorced in 1984 and were married again on May 10, 1986, and divorced in 1992.

She dated gay lawyer^[26][27] Roy Cohn in college, and the lawyer said that he proposed marriage to Walters the night before her wedding to Lee Guber, but Walters denied this.^[13] She explained her lifelong devotion to Cohn as gratitude for his help in her adoption of her daughter, Jacqueline.^[28] In her autobiography, Walters says that Cohn got her father's warrant for "failure to appear" dismissed.^[29]

Walters dated future U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan in the 1970s,^[30] and was linked romantically to United States Senator John Warner in the 1990s.^[31]

In Walters's autobiography, Audition, she claimed that she had an affair in the 1970s with Edward Brooke, then a married United States Senator from Massachusetts. It is not clear whether Walters also was married at the time. Walters said that the affair ended to protect their careers from scandal.^[32]

She announced on the May 10, 2010 episode of The View, that she would be undergoing open heart surgery to replace a faulty aortic valve. Walters added that she knew for quite a while that she was suffering from aortic valve stenosis, even though she was symptom-free. The procedure to fix the faulty heart valve "went well, and the doctors are very pleased with the outcome," Walters' spokeswoman, Cindi Berger, said in a statement on May 14, 2010.^[33]

On July 9, 2010, it was announced that Walters would return to The View and her Sirius XM satellite show Here's Barbara in September 2010.^[34][35]

Walters has been close friends with Fox News head Roger Ailes since the late 1960s.^[36]

Books[link]

In the late 1960s, Walters wrote a magazine article, How to Talk to Practically Anyone About Practically Anything, which drew upon the kinds of things people said to her, which were often mistakes.^[37] Shortly after the article appeared, she received a letter from Doubleday expressing interest in expanding it into a book. Walters felt that it would help "tongue-tied, socially awkward people — the many people who worry that they can't think of the right thing to say to start a conversation."^[37] She published the book in 1970, with the assistance of ghostwriter June Callwood.^[38] To Walters' great surprise, the book was a phenomenon. As of 2008, it had gone through eight printings, sold hundreds of thousands of copies worldwide, and had been translated into at least 6 different languages.^[37]

In 2008, she published her autobiography, Audition: A Memoir.

Awards and nominations[link]

Daytime Emmy Awards

• 1975 Award for Daytime Emmy for Outstanding Talk Show Host (Today)
• 1998 Nomination for Best Talk Show (The View)
• 1998 Nomination for Best Talk Show Host (The View)
• 1999 Nomination for Best Talk Show (The View)
• 1999 Nomination for Best Talk Show Host (The View)
• 2000 Nomination for Best Talk Show (The View)
• 2000 Nomination for Best Talk Show Host (The View)
• 2001 Nomination for Best Talk Show (The View)
• 2001 Nomination for Best Talk Show Host (The View)
• 2002 Nomination for Best Talk Show (The View)
• 2002 Nomination for Best Talk Show Host (The View)
• 2003 Award for Best Talk Show (The View)
• 2003 Nomination for Best Talk Show Host (The View)
• 2004 Nomination for Best Talk Show (The View)
• 2004 Nomination for Best Talk Show Host (The View)
• 2005 Nomination for Best Talk Show (The View)
• 2005 Nomination for Best Talk Show Host (The View)
• 2006 Nomination for Best Talk Show (The View)
• 2006 Nomination for Best Talk Show Host (The View)
• 2007 Nomination for Best Talk Show (The View)
• 2007 Nomination for Best Talk Show Host (The View)
• 2008 Nomination for Best Talk Show (The View)
• 2008 Nomination for Best Talk Show Host (The View)
• 2009 Award for Daytime Emmy for Outstanding Talk Show Host (The View) (with Whoopi Goldberg, Joy Behar, Elisabeth Hasselbeck and Sherri Shepherd)
• 2010 Nomination for Best Talk Show Host (The View)

NAACP Image Award

• 2009 Award for Best Talk Series (The View)
• 2010 Nomination for Best Talk Series

Women in Film Crystal + Lucy Award

• 1998 Lucy Award in recognition of her excellence and innovation in her creative works that have enhanced the perception of women through the medium of television.^[39]

See also[link]

	Biography portal
	Journalism portal

• Barbara Walters' 10 Most Fascinating People

References[link]

External links[link]

Find more about Barbara Walters on Wikipedia's sister projects:
	Definitions and translations from Wiktionary
	Images and media from Commons
	Learning resources from Wikiversity
	News stories from Wikinews
	Quotations from Wikiquote
	Source texts from Wikisource
	Textbooks from Wikibooks

• Barbara Walters at the Internet Movie Database
• ABC News' "Time Tunnel" page containing clips of numerous newscasts on which Walters appeared
• Excerpts from 2008 autobiography, Audition: A Memoir
• Barbara Walters Archive of American Television Interview

Skip Bayless
Born	John Edward Bayless II (1951-12-04) December 4, 1951 (age 60) Oklahoma City, Oklahoma
Education	Vanderbilt University
Occupation	Television Sports Commentator (ESPN) commentator, sportswriter, sportswriter
Notable credit(s)	ESPN First Take (see Cold Pizza) 1st and 10
Website
http://www.espnmediazone.com/bios/Talent/SkipBayless-Bio.htm Skip Bayless on ESPN

Skip Bayless (born John Bayless II on December 4, 1951) is a sports journalist and television personality. Bayless regularly appears on ESPN2's ESPN First Take and its afternoon show 1st and 10. Bayless previously wrote regular columns for ESPN.com and its "Page 2" section. He is perhaps best known for his strong opinions and sometimes controversial stances on professional athletes.

Schooling and family[link]

Bayless was born in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. The first child of John and Levita Bayless, he was named John Edward Bayless II on his birth certificate, but his father immediately began calling him Skip or Skipper. The name stuck, and Skip Bayless was never called John by his parents. He eventually had his name legally changed to Skip. His brother is the chef, restaurateur and TV personality Rick Bayless.

Bayless as a junior, along with Jerry Waugh, Jim Hill, and Tony Robinson led Junior Varsity (JV)'s Northwest Classen High School basketball team. ^[1]

Bayless averaged 1.4 points per game as a senior playing basketball at Northwest Classen High School. ^[2]

Bayless graduated from Northwest Classen High School and Vanderbilt University where he majored in English and History and was a member of Phi Kappa Sigma.

Bayless is a member of the inaugural class of the Vanderbilt Student Media Hall of Fame.^[3]

Writing career[link]

Bayless went directly from Vanderbilt to The Miami Herald, where he wrote sports features for two years before being hired away by the Los Angeles Times. There, he was best known for investigative stories on the Dodgers' clubhouse resentment of "golden boy" Steve Garvey and his celebrity wife Cyndy and on Rams owner Carroll Rosenbloom's behind-the-scenes decisions to start different quarterbacks each week (James Harris, Pat Haden or Ron Jaworski). Bayless also won the Eclipse Award for his coverage of Seattle Slew's Triple Crown.

At 25, Bayless was hired by The Dallas Morning News to write its lead sports column, and two years later, the rival Dallas Times Herald hired him away by making him one of the country's highest paid sports columnists—prompting The Wall Street Journal to do a story on the development. Bayless was voted Texas sportswriter of the year three times.

In 1989, Bayless wrote God's Coach, about the rise and fall of Tom Landry's Dallas Cowboys. Following the Cowboys' Super Bowl victory in 1993, Bayless wrote The Boys, which broke the story that coach Jimmy Johnson and owner Jerry Jones were not "best friends" and correctly predicted that Jones would fire Johnson no matter how much success the team had. (Jones fired Johnson after the Cowboys won another Super Bowl the following year.)^{[clarification needed]}

Following a third Cowboys Super Bowl win in four seasons, Bayless wrote the third and final book of his Cowboys trilogy, Hell-Bent: The Crazy Truth About the "Win or Else" Dallas Cowboys. After covering the Cowboys through the 1996 season, Bayless chose to leave Dallas after 17 years and become the lead sports columnist for the Chicago Tribune. In his first year in Chicago, Bayless won the Lisagor Award for excellence in sports column writing and was voted Illinois sportswriter of the year.

Bayless eventually had a highly publicized dispute with the Tribune's executive editor, Ann Marie Lipinski, over limiting all Tribune columns to just 650 or so words. Bayless quit over the policy and was immediately hired by Knight Ridder Corporation to write for its flagship newspaper, the San Jose Mercury News.^[4] While in San Jose, Bayless became a fixture on ESPN's Rome is Burning and in a weekly Sunday Morning SportsCenter debate with Stephen A. Smith, "Old School/Nu Skool." ESPN hired Bayless full-time in 2004 to team with Woody Paige on ESPN2's Cold Pizza and to write columns for ESPN.com. In 2007, Bayless stopped writing columns to concentrate on what is now called ESPN First Take (formerly Cold Pizza) and on ESPN's afternoon show, First and 10.

Radio and television[link]

Skip Bayless has occasionally substituted as host for syndicated radio program The Jim Rome Show. He has also previously contributed to ESPN as a recurring panelist on The Sports Reporters, NFL Prime Monday (now ESPN Monday Night Countdown) in the 1990s, and Jim Rome is Burning. For three years (1998–2001), Bayless was a contributor at major championships for the Golf Channel.

KTCK Sports Radio 1310 "The Ticket"[link]

In 1994 Bayless left his show at KLIF in Dallas to help start the city's first sports talk radio station, KTCK Sports Radio 1310, "The Ticket." For two years Bayless was the primary host on the 6–9 a.m. morning show as "the Ticket" became one of the country's most successful sports stations. Bayless also was an original investor and when the ownership decided to accept a lucrative offer to sell the station, the new owners bought out Bayless' contract. He immediately became a regular on ESPN Radio's first national show, The Fabulous Sports Babe, and later co-hosted a weekend show on ESPN Radio with Larry Beil. He was also a regular on Chet Coppock's show on Sporting News Radio.

[edit] Cold Pizza/ESPN First Take

Bayless is featured in debate segments on what is now known as ESPN First Take (formerly Cold Pizza), and the segments are re-aired as First and 10 in the afternoons. Bayless debates the day's 10 hottest sports topics with a rotation of sportswriters and ex-athletes including Stephen A. Smith, Rob Parker, Jon Ritchie, Lomas Brown, Hugh Douglas, Kordell Stewart, Greg Anthony, Jalen Rose, Marcellus Wiley, Shaun King, and 2 Live Stews (Ryan and Doug Stewart). Terrell Suggs, Donovan McNabb, Chad Ochocinco, Donnie Wahlberg, and rappers Lil Wayne, Bow Wow, Wale have also taken on Bayless. Recently, Bayless has been tagged with the nickname "Skip Tebow" by many of his guests based on his unrelenting support of New York Jets quarterback Tim Tebow. Bayless openly embraces the nickname.

Bayless is a regular twitter user, and he tweets on the topics and points he made on the ESPN First Take show. He also posts the Podcast from the show regularly from his twitter account.

Bayless has a "I Heart @RealSkipBayless" shirt. This shirt is given to the fans of the show, or if someone who comes to the show and loses a bet to Bayless. The person who loses the bet has to appear on the show and wear the shirt. So far, the shirt is undefeated.

Bayless lists his top five NBA players as of June 15, 2011: Dwyane Wade, Dirk Nowitzki, Kobe Bryant, Kevin Durant, and Carmelo Anthony.^[5]

Cultural references[link]

Bayless, along with Woody Paige and Jay Crawford, appeared in a cameo role in the film Rocky Balboa. The three are seen on their First and 10 segment discussing a possible fight between a retired Balboa and current heavyweight champion Mason Dixon. Bayless opines that Balboa "was completely overrated" and mocks his age.

He appears in the ESPN 30 for 30 film Pony Excess, the story about the Southern Methodist University football scandal, covering the Mustangs while writing for both Dallas Morning News and the Dallas Times Herald.

Bibliography[link]

• God's Coach: The Hymns, Hype, and Hipocrisy of Tom Landry's Cowboys, Simon and Schuster, 1990. ISBN 0-671-70581-4.
• The Boys: The Untold Story of the Dallas Cowboys' Season on the Edge, Simon and Schuster, 1993. ISBN 0-671-79359-4.
• Hell-Bent: The Crazy Truth About the "Win or Else" Dallas Cowboys, HarperCollins Publishers, 1996. ISBN 0-06-018648-8.

See also[link]

• Rick Bayless – celebrity chef and brother of Skip Bayless

References[link]

External links[link]

• Skip Bayless ESPN Bio
• Skip Bayless at the Internet Movie Database

Stephen A. Smith
Born	(1966-10-14) October 14, 1966 (age 45) Hollis, Queens, New York, USA
Education	Winston-Salem State University
Occupation	Sports journalist, television host, radio host
Website
stephena.com

Stephen A. Smith (born October 14, 1967) is an American sports reporter for ESPN, columnist, radio host, and television personality. He currently hosts The Stephen A. Smith Show on ESPN Radio 710 Los Angeles and ESPN Radio New York 98.7FM and is a featured columnist for both ESPNLA.com and ESPNNY.com. Smith also is a regular on ESPN's First Take along with Skip Bayless.

Early years[link]

Smith was raised in the Hollis neighborhood of the New York City borough of Queens. He lived with his parents and four older sisters.^[1]

He attended Winston-Salem State University, a historically black university in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. While in college, he played some basketball under Hall of Fame coach Clarence Gaines. He later wrote an article for the university newspaper suggesting that Gaines retired due to health issues.^[1]

Career[link]

Print media[link]

In 1993, Smith was a sportswriter for the Daily News in New York City.^[1]

Since 1994, Smith has had a position as a writer for The Philadelphia Inquirer. He was initially a general sportswriter for the Inquirer before he gained positions as their reporter for the Philadelphia 76ers as their NBA columnist, and eventually, as a general sports columnist. On August 23, 2007, the Inquirer announced that Smith would no longer be writing columns and would instead be demoted back to the position of general assignment reporter. Prior to his job with the Inquirer, Smith has had positions with the Winston-Salem Journal, the Greensboro News and Record and the New York Daily News. In 2008, the Inquirer ended its relation with Smith, which coincided with Smith starting his own blog. In February 2010, Smith returned to the Philadelphia Inquirer after winning an arbitrator's ruling that he was to be reinstated, but having to agree to remove all of his political views from his website and from cable news shows.^[2]

Radio[link]

On April 11, 2005, Smith became the host of a weekday noon to 2 p.m. radio show on WEPN in New York City with his "right hand man B.T. (Brandon Tierney)". On September 20, 2007, his radio show was shifted to the 2 p.m. – 4 p.m. slot, with the second hour being broadcast nationally on ESPN Radio, replacing The Dan Patrick Show (Mike Tirico took over the first two hours). The show came to an end in April 2008 as Smith sought to expand his career in television, and beginning May 1 Scott Van Pelt began hosting in the 3–4 p.m. hour that was previously Smith's.

In November 2009, Smith became an on-air contributor to Fox Sports Radio, and was the one who broke the story of Allen Iverson's retirement on the Chris Myers-Steve Hartman afternoon show on November 25. Iverson later ended his short retirement, and re-joined the Philadelphia 76ers on December 2.

Smith became a Fox Sports Radio morning show host on January 4, 2010, replacing popular longtime Washington, D.C.-based host Steve Czaban. Smith can also be heard from time to time as a caller to the Mark Levin and Sean Hannity radio shows.

In early 2011, Smith became a resident FSR NBA insider and ended his morning show, which was replaced by the Indianapolis-based Zakk and Jack show.

It was announced on February 1, 2011, that he would be returning to ESPN as a columnist for ESPN.com and host weekday local radio shows on 1050 ESPN Radio New York (WEPN-AM) at 7–9 p.m. ET as well as 710 ESPN Radio Los Angeles (KSPN-AM) at 6–8 p.m. PT. April 24th, 2012 was Smith's last show for LA 710 ESPN. ^[3]

Television[link]

Smith started his television career on the now-defunct cable network CNN/SI in 1999.

Smith is frequently seen as a basketball analyst and talk show host on ESPN and ESPN First Take. In August 2005, he started hosting a daily hour-long show on ESPN called Quite Frankly with Stephen A. Smith. After the show was cancelled in January 2007, he mainly concentrated on basketball, serving as an NBA analyst.

Smith has appeared on other ESPN shows as well, including the reality series Dream Job, as well as a frequent guest (and guest host) on Pardon the Interruption, Jim Rome is Burning and as a popular participant on 1st and 10 . He has appeared as an anchor on the Sunday morning edition of SportsCenter, but on April 17, 2009 announced on his website that he would be leaving ESPN on May 1, 2009. The Los Angeles Times reported that ESPN commented that, "We decided to move in different directions."^[4] Though according to Big Lead Sports a source says that ESPN and Smith went to the negotiating table and couldn’t reach an agreement.^[5] Apparently, ESPN’s offer was considerably lower than Smith’s previous contracts – which were multi-media faceted – and Smith passed. He was then offered the decision to work through the remainder of his contract, or walk away and still get paid, and a source says Smith decided to work. Since then, Smith has returned to ESPN.

Smith appeared on MSNBC Wednesday July 8 and 9, 2009 as a special commentator on the Michael Jackson memorial funeral service. He provided a unique commentary on the choice of public funding for the celebration contrasted to the victory parade after the Los Angeles Lakers won the NBA championship. Smith has recently become a regular guest on the MSNBC's Morning Joe, The Dylan Ratigan Show and The Ed Show.

On 30th April 2012, it was announced on air that Smith would be joining First Take on a permanent, five-day per week basis.

Acting career[link]

Smith made his acting debut in a cameo appearance as a television reporter on the February 2, 2007 episode on the ABC soap opera General Hospital. Later that year, he appeared in the Chris Rock motion picture I Think I Love My Wife, during a double-date scene.^[6]

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Stephen A. Smith

• Official website
• Stephen A. Smith at the Internet Movie Database