'Chicago Tonight' celebrates a quarter-century of fairness, vitality

It's somehow comforting, in these uncertain times, to recall that great things often arise out of great calamity.

As if any Chicagoan ever needed to be reminded of that.

Just as ABC's long-running "Nightline" grew out of the protracted Iranian hostage crisis of 1979 and 1980, 25 years ago WTTW Channel 11's "Chicago Tonight" grew out of the so-called Council Wars, the struggle between newly elected Mayor Harold Washington and Eddie Vrdolyak's 29 aldermen who held sway in the Chicago City Council. The entrenched political infighting between the progressive forces of reform and the powers that be defending the status quo got Chicago labeled "Beirut on the Lake." Yet it also produced "C2N," which debuted 25 years ago today with Callaway interviewing Mayor Washington.

Callaway had paved the way for the show about a year before in a meeting with producer Bruce DuMont and Channel 11 President Bill McCarter.

"Bruce and I went to Bill and said, 'You have a political revolution going on in your city,'" Callaway recalls. "'You need to get back in the nightly or seminightly news business. And we need to interview these people as the story unfolds.'"

"C2N," however, didn't just spring fully formed from those three putting their heads together. Its origins lay a decade before in "The Public Newscenter," an ambitious nightly newscast for which Callaway was originally brought over from WBBM Channel 2. The independent reporting staff the station tried to put together for "TPN" proved unsustainable, and it closed up shop after about three years. So, when Callaway made his pitch to McCarter in 1983, he proposed something closer to his original conception of "TPN."

"I had spoken with somebody from Time magazine who wisely said, 'Don't try to make this thing work with a bunch of reporters. Try to make it work with analysts,'" he recalls.

Thus, the half-hour "Callaway" was born, airing four days a week at midnight, with Callaway interviewing a newsmaker or reporter or some sort of expert on a timely issue, on a no-frills set DuMont estimates cost less than $200.

Callaway remembers McCarter saying, "The only problem with this is it's going to be successful, and we'll have to move it into prime time." In that, he proved prophetic. By the end of the year, he was talking with Callaway and DuMont about doing basically the same show at 10:30 p.m., and it debuted as "Chicago Tonight" on April 24, 1984 - on a set with furniture bought from Scandinavian Design. Eventually it would move to 7 p.m., then 6:30, then back to the 7 o'clock hour it occupies now.

The choice of Washington as first guest was inspired and set a standard for fairness and objectivity the show has striven to live up to ever since. It's commonly forgotten today, but at the time most of the mainstream political reporters at the downtown dailies and on most of the local network TV affiliates gave favorable coverage to the Vrdolyak 29. (See Gary Rivlin's book "Fire on the Prairie" for the worst offenders.) DuMont, by contrast, had worked with the Washington forces in negotiating and producing the televised mayoral debates the previous year.

"I think we had a more balanced perspective," he recalls. "I think there was a respect for what we did."

"I think Washington perceived us as being straight and being fair," Callaway adds.

That remains a trademark of the show, as Phil Ponce has tried to carry on Callaway's probing objectivity since replacing him as host 10 years ago. "He laid the groundwork. He laid the foundation that gave this program such credibility," Ponce says. "People knew that if they came to 'Chicago Tonight' they'd be given a fair hearing." Ponce has taken pride in sustaining the "spirited, but respectful format" Callaway originated.

Although it began with Callaway doing one-on-one interviews - a skill he still excels at and typically showcases on Fridays - it quickly evolved into the nightly panel of experts familiar to viewers ever since. In that, it was following the format created by McCarter and Chicago journalist Peter Lisagor in "Washington Week in Review" at WETA-TV in D.C., a format McCarter had already repeated at Channel 11 with Joel Weisman's "Chicago Week in Review." Encouraged by both Callaway and McCarter, DuMont stepped out from behind the camera to do political pieces and frequently join the panel himself.

Otherwise, however, the panel had the cost benefits Callaway had planned. By bringing in political reporters from the newspapers and TV stations - such as the Daily Herald's own Madeleine Doubek, a frequent guest - the show could draw on their expertise while someone else paid their salaries. Politicos like Rahm Emanuel, who first appeared on DuMont's "Inside Politics" radio show (later "Beyond the Beltway"), then made the leap to "C2N," also were regulars, and it's worth noting that Barack Obama appeared on the show 16 times as he began his rise to the presidency.

Yet the program's success enabled it to rebuild its reporting staff as well. Not coincidentally, Elizabeth Brackett will be inducted into the Silver Circle of the Chicago/Midwest Chapter of the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences today, recognizing her career achievement, largely for her work as reporter and host on "C2N."

"Elizabeth is indefatigable," Ponce says. "She has the enthusiasm of a rookie."

The reporting staff has been filled out over the years by Ponce, Rich Samuels, Eddie Arruza, Christian Farr and, last but not least, Carol Marin, who in many ways tried to do a "C2N"-style 10 p.m. newscast at Channel 2 before leaving that station and hooking on with Channel 11 three years ago.

"She went straight to the source, and we're glad she did," Ponce says. "From Day One, she seemed like a veteran of 'Chicago Tonight.' She gets the role we play."

"One of the reasons for the longevity of 'Chicago Tonight' is its ability to grow and sustain, and I think Carol Marin has been very important in that," Callaway adds. "She has brought an amazing sense of credibility and a range of sensibility as regards politics and corruption. She was the right person at the right time."

Yet the same could be said both of Callaway in the show's early days and Ponce over the last decade. Callaway actively recruited Ponce after he had left Chicago for PBS' nightly "NewsHour" newscast. "I went to Washington and got him back," Callaway boasts, "and I think that's the smartest thing we ever did." He made sure of a smooth transition when Ponce became host. And Ponce was equally welcoming when, after about a year, Callaway returned to the station as host of "Chicago Stories," which eventually was wrapped back into "C2N," renewing Callaway's involvement in the program.

"After I stepped back in '99, another man had a vision of 'Chicago Tonight.' He'd had it for some time. And that's Dan Schmidt," Callaway says. "He had this vision of 'Chicago Tonight' as an hour."

Both Callaway and Ponce admit the doubled running time originally seemed daunting. What's more, Schmidt, McCarter's successor, planned to fill out the hour by giving the second half to former disc jockey and morning TV host Bob Sirott, resulting in fears from many loyal viewers that the show would be dumbed down. Yet Ponce again graciously greeted the change, and the result, while Sirott has since moved on to news anchor at WMAQ Channel 5, has been that "C2N" has expanded its range in filling the hour time slot.

"I think we were all on the same page in terms of wanting to produce the best possible show," Ponce says. "Bob is a smart broadcaster, and he has a feel for what interests viewers."

"The really grand thing Bob brought to his part of this story is this infectious, absolutely contagious love of Chicago," Callaway says. "Bob I think brought a more focused Chicago to the head."

From the beginning, "C2N" had been more than politics. DuMont remembers McCarter saying, "I want it to be a show that responds to everything of importance that happens in Chicago." That's what enabled it to thrive even after Mayor Richard Daley (the younger) brought stability to the local political scene. Callaway, however, saw Chicago at the hub of national and international news. Sirott for a while narrowed that focus. "Now we're back to the more global, the local-global sensibility," Callaway feels. "You can't be in a city with the sort of intellectual and cultural resources we have and just be parochial." This widened vista, he says, plays to Ponce's skills.

"He's a longtime hard-news guy," Callaway says, "but anybody who saw his work at Channel 2 saw his real expertise was in the arts. So now with an hour program you have somebody who can do anything in hard news, but he's just brilliantly blessed with arts experience and interests. So at the back of the program you have these great strengths, too."

"My main thing was to continue to keep the show relevant and moving forward. What is the water-cooler conversation? What is it people are talking about that they would like hearing some analysis?" Ponce says. "We don't break news. Our forte and our niche is the analysis part of it. - We tend to emphasize the 'why.' That's why people turn to us."

"I'm very impressed by it," DuMont says, now from a historical perspective as founding president of Chicago's Museum of Broadcast Communications. "There really is nothing like it anywhere in the country, where a station has committed that level of resources."

So, to come full circle, it makes sense that "C2N" should thrive, with no end in sight, in hard times when so many other news media are in flux. "If anything, the show is becoming more relevant than ever," Ponce says. "Whatever the vehicle for disseminating information looks like in 25 years, there's going to be a need for smart, engaging analysis. So, God willing, 'Chicago Tonight' will exist in some incarnation."

"Chicago Tonight"

Weekdays at 7 p.m., rerun at midnight and 5 a.m. the following day.

WTTW Channel 11