• by David Kaplan , April 6, 2005

Peter Jennings' disclosure that he has been diagnosed with lung cancer and will anchor ABC's "World News Tonight" broadcast intermittently will not have an appreciable effect on the evening news ratings race, media buyers say.

Jennings, 66, the chief "ABC News" anchorman for more than 20 years, said he will begin outpatient treatment next week, and he will continue to anchor the broadcast when he feels up to it as he begins chemotherapy, a network spokeswoman said.

Jennings canceled a scheduled speech at a luncheon for the Television Bureau of Advertising's annual marketing conference last Thursday due to illness, and was replaced at the last minute by ABC colleague Barbara Walters. He last appeared on the anchor desk of "World News Tonight" Friday, but was said to be too ill to work Saturday during the network's special report on Pope John Paul II's death.

"There will be good days and bad, which means some days I may be cranky and some days really cranky," he told "ABC News" employees in an e-mail. Charlie Gibson--the co-anchor of "Good Morning America," who is in Rome for the pope's funeral--and Elizabeth Vargas will be Jennings' primary substitutes on the evening news, the ABC spokeswoman said.

Eyes have been focused more intently on Jennings as the last of the "great anchormen" that dominated broadcast network news divisions over the last two decades, as NBC's Tom Brokaw stepped down last year and CBS's Dan Rather left the evening news last month. In another loss last week, Ted Koeppel, anchor of ABC's long-running "Nightline" news show, announced that he too would be leaving his anchor desk.

"Both Rather and Jennings had a chance to capitalize on the departure of Tom Brokaw, who reigned in that time slot for years, and bad luck and bad timing has hurt them both in trying to do that," said one media buyer.

Still, a number of media buyers said that the evening news daypart is more notable for other programming.

"To put the evening news in context with other programming, "Wheel of Fortune," which airs at the same time, has ratings that are 2-to-1 higher than the news," said Jason Kanefsky, vice president, account director, in MPG's national broadcast department. "That tells you something about the popularity--or lack thereof--of the news."

Or in another example of the steep decline of network news, looking at 1982, the year both Brokaw and Jennings began anchoring, Nielsen Media Research noted that 72 percent of Americans regularly watched a network newscast. Now, only 30 percent do.

The fact that all of the aforementioned anchors passed into senior citizen status recently could present opportunities for networks to renew the news broadcasts to better compete with younger fare, like Jon Stewart's popular "Daily Show" on Comedy Central, and even the more serious 24-news cycle offered by CNN and Fox News Channel.

"In a way, it's sad to call it an opportunity, but the loss of these established anchors could allow younger talent to spring up and help revive the evening news broadcast," Kanefsky said.