Anchor was a calming voice

Jennings succumbs to lung cancer at age 67

By JOSEF ADALIAN

Jennings

Longtime ABC News anchor Peter Jennings died Sunday night at his Gotham home, barely four months after announcing that he was battling lung cancer. He was 67.

Alphabet broke into regular programming on the West Coast at about 8:40 p.m. PDT, with Charles Gibson telling viewers, "It is with a profound sadness and true sorrow that I report to you Peter Jennings has died." Gibson said Jennings' wife, children and sister were with him at the time of death.

"Peter died with his family around him, without pain and in peace," said a statement released by the Jennings family shortly after his death. "He knew he had lived a good life."

Gibson noted that Jennings' "involvement in 'World News Tonight' was considerable right up to the end," with the anchor regularly calling in with advice and criticism. Indeed, one ABC exec said that Jennings was particularly involved in the net's coverage of the London terror bombings last month -- not a surprise, given his extensive overseas expertise.

ABC has been filling the anchor chair on a rotating basis since Jennings revealed his illness, and his death means the net must implement a clear succession. That challenge comes amid a historic window in broadcast news following the retirement of Tom Brokaw at NBC and the departure of Dan Rather from CBS' evening news, ending a 20-year period in which those three men presided over the nightly newscasts.

Jennings had anchored "World News Tonight" solo since 1983. For five years prior, based in London, he was part of a triumvirate of anchors for the broadcast, working with Frank Reynolds and Max Robinson under a planned dreamed up by then ABC News chief Roone Arledge.

Almost immediately after joining ABC News in 1964, the Canadian-born Jennings was a star. He covered the civil rights movement and then -- in a move Gibson said Sunday night "said a lot about the desperation of a third-place network" -- Jennings was tapped to anchor the net's nightly newscast in 1965, when he was just 27.

Two-year experiment, dubbed "Peter Jennings with the News," failed, and Jennings -- all but begging his bosses to take him out of the hot seat -- then set out to hone his skills as a foreign correspondent. He established the first U.S. news bureau in the Arab world, running the Beirut outpost for seven years.

It was during his solo run as anchor of "World News Tonight" that Jennings became a household name to U.S. viewers, however.

ABC had never been a force in the nightly news wars, with NBC and CBS typically dominating. But under Arledge and Jennings, "World News Tonight" finally rose to the top of the ratings by 1986, holding the lead for the better part of a decade.

More recently, Jennings won kudos for his rock-solid coverage of the 9/11 terror attacks.

While Gibson noted that Jennings was "enormously competitive" and a "man of iron will," there was another side to the anchor.

"He was a warm and loving and surprisingly sentimental man," ABC News "Nightline" anchor Ted Koppel said of Jennings last night during ABC's special report, noting that Jennings always regretted dropping out of high school.

Barbara Walters told Gibson that while all at the net knew how sick Jennings was, news of his passing was nonetheless "heartbreaking for all of us. We just prayed that he would make it."

ABC News president David Westin issued a statement calling Jennings "our colleague, our friend, our leader in so many ways. None of us will be the same without him."

"I don't know anyone who could command an audience the way that he did," Walters added.

ABC's Diane Sawyer noted that Jennings' knowledge of the world always left his colleagues in awe.

"You lived in terror because you knew that you didn't know the pronunciation of a street in Beirut that he did," she said. "It is customary to say (of the dead), 'He will not come again.' Peter Jennings will not come again."

Westin noted that shortly after learning of his cancer, Jennings "moved straight into an aggressive chemotherapy treatment. He knew that it was an uphill struggle. But he faced it with realism, courage, and a firm hope that he would be one of the fortunate ones. In the end, he was not."

Jennings' on-air announcement four months ago that he would begin treatment for lung cancer came as a shock. "I will continue to do the broadcast," he said, his voice husky, in a taped message that night. "On good days, my voice will not always be like this."

It would end up being Jennings' final broadcast.

Broadcasting was the family business for Jennings. His father, Charles Jennings, was the first person to anchor a nightly national news program in Canada and later became head of the Canadian Broadcasting Corp.'s news division. A picture of his father was displayed prominently in Jennings' office off ABC's newsroom.

The younger Jennings had a Saturday morning radio show in Ottawa at age 9. He began his career as a news reporter at a radio station in Brockton, Ontario. He quickly earned an anchor job at Canadian Television before moving to ABC in 1964. He became a U.S. citizen in 2003.

Jennings is survived by his wife, Kayce Freed, and two children.

(The Associated Press contributed to this report.)