> Update: 3:02pm: “The Dan Rather special might get a larger audience if it was broadcast on the moon on the Friday before labor day long weekend. That Friday is about the worst night of the year in terms of audience,” an e-mailer notes…
When Dan Rather departed CBS in June, the network promised the anchorman a going-away special in primetime. “Dan Rather: A Reporter Remembers” will air the Friday before Labor Day, Sept. 1 from 9 to 10pm, four days before Katie Couric‘s grand entrance.
“The special is a candid memoir of the newsman’s extraordinary career, told primarily in his own words. Rather takes viewers through his historic tenure at CBS News — discussing recently what it was like to leave the anchor chair and the organization and what his future holds,” CBS says.
Susan Zirinsky is the EP, Al Briganti is executive editor, and Judy Tygard and Michael Rosenbaum are the producers. Click continued to read Rather’s carefully-worded quotes…
“Not only was I lucky to be at CBS, I was lucky to be there when I was there. I came to CBS at a time when television news was really in an adolescent state. I came to maturity while I (was) working at CBS.
“Time moves on, and you move on. What’s changed is the location where I’m working, but the nature of the work doesn’t change. I’m a lifetime reporter. That’s what I’ve always dreamed of being, and I was very lucky to live my dream, and I’m still living it in some v important ways. So I’ve moved on to new work. I still hope and I believe that some of my best work is ahead of me.
“The CBS News audience, they stuck by me through sunshine and storms, and through the good times and bad times. The loyalty of the CBS News audience was never about me, it was never to me. It was really to what CBS News had aspired to, tried to do, and in many ways had done, since Ed Murrow and the Murrow boys invented electronic journalism as we know it.”