Koppel Wasn’t Too Old For News — He Was Just Too Old For Network TV

NPR senior vice president for programming Jay Kernis fired off an e-mail expressing interest in Ted Koppel a scant two minutes after learning he was leaving ABC, and that’s only because “it took us those two minutes to get his e-mail address.”

Phil Rosenthal writes: “So the guy goes from three nights a week on ‘Nightline’ to three jobs. Some retirement. Either he doesn’t have a lot of faith in Social Security or he really wants to work — or both.

Guess Koppel wasn’t too old for the news game, after all. It was network TV for which he was too old. And maybe it got old for him, too.

Surely it’s no coincidence ABC hired a trio of 40-somethings to replace him on Nightline, which he anchored for 25 years, and another two 40-somethings on World News Tonight, which the late Peter Jennings anchored for more than 20 years.

Tough to imagine NPR and The New York Times tripping over themselves to sign, say, Martin Bashir or Elizabeth Vargas the way they have for Koppel’s increasingly valuable time…”