Charles Kuralt and television
Originally published, Sunday, February 11. 1996
In his heart, Charles
Kuralt must be more a writer than a television broadcaster.
The TV host who popularized being ``on the road'' despite his
assured deference to writer Jack Kerouac and singer Willie Nelson,
tells us as much between the lines of his latest travelogue.
Of course, I've always considered Kuralt a good writer; it showed
in his bearing before the camera that he was a man enamored with
the language written.
Not that TV and writing can't go together.
Kuralt's success as a writer of bestsellers undoubtedly owes much
to the recognition television affords him.
What never struck me until I read his latest book, however, is
the mild but persistent disdain Kuralt harbors toward television.
Kuralt's book, Charles Kuralt's America, details his trips and
has some telling comments tucked away amid his paeans of praise
and adoration for a near-dozen outstanding places in the United
States.
Unlike his previous outings across the states, Kuralt made this
latest sojourn by himself. Without any mobile caravan, without
cameras other than what he carried, without technicians, without
producer-directors, without public relations people; in fact,
without CBS, his long-term employer with whom, Kuralt says, he
carried on a 37-year love affair.
But, in his words, ``Then I woke up one morning and realized I
didn't love her anymore.''
So he resigned and planned ``a fanciful journey I had always wanted
to make.''
He planned to tour
the country in a perfect year. That, in fact, was his book's working
title, ``The Perfect Year.'' He planned January in New Orleans;
February in Key West; March in Charleston, S.C.; April in California
until a butterfly and a narcissus changed his plans and sent him
to Connecticut; May in his native North Carolina; and so on. Along
the way, the book called ``The Perfect Year'' became Charles Kuralt's
America.
For the most part, Kuralt's book is like his other ``On the Road''
adventures as a CBS-TV newsman, but every now and then the author
tucks in a wry comment that suggests his love affair with television
and CBS had not only ended, it had unleashed his disdain.
The book contains a somewhat odd introduction for a book about
traveling the country.
Kuralt chooses to tell us how and why he came to break-off his
association with CBS-TV News.
First of all, he makes clear that his announced and ballyhooed
``retirement'' in 1994 was never intended to be a retirement,
although he never made a big issue of the network's choice --
through anchorman Dan Rather -- to announce it as such.
``Even the word `retirement' suggested a withdrawal I was nowhere
near ready for,'' Kuralt writes. The choice to take the seeming
drastic step of resigning, he confesses, came abruptly.
``When I was younger, I thrived on the chatter and commotion of
television,'' he writes. ``Suddenly, I found I'd had enough of
it. A desire for substance and reality came over me. Maybe, sooner
or later, this craving hits everybody. It hit me hard.''
I don't think I'm
reading between the lines here when I interpret Kuralt's words
as expressing an anti-television conclusion. Clearly, he felt
television was not the place to be in his search for ``substance
and reality.'' I'm not sure Kuralt or I know exactly where those
virtues are found in the media, but Kuralt clearly thinks -- and
I concur -- they are not in television
This conclusion finds support elsewhere in Kuralt's words. In
his chapter detailing his perfect-year visit to Vermont, a visit
saddened by his loss of his father in North Carolina, Kuralt relates
watching and conversing with a likeable Vermont potter.
As they chatted, tourists repeatedly interrupted and requested
opportunities to photograph Kuralt.
Finally, the somewhat baffled potter asked, ``Who are you?''
``I used to work in television,'' Kuralt answered.
``Oh,'' the potter responded, ``sorry, I never got into television.''
To which Kuralt candidly and tellingly responds: ``This made me
like him more.''
Kuralt began as
a writer. He was a history major (which probably assured he'd
be a better journalist) at the University of North Carolina and
became editor of the school's newspaper, The Daily Tar Heel.
After graduation, he joined the Charlotte News, across the state
from his native Wilmington, and in 1956 won the Ernie Pyle Award
for his well-crafted and stylish writing.
His writing got him a job at CBS in New York, but almost before
the year was over he had wrangled a job on the news assignment
desk. The following year he became the youngest CBS newsman ever
to be given the title of news correspondent.
Anyone who's read Kuralt's 1990 autobiographical A Life on the
Road knows he loved the correspondent's life, and anyone who's
watched him on ``Sunday Morning'' knows he brought a touch of
high-brow culture to the so-called cultural ghetto of Sunday morning
programming.
His love affair with the network over, Kuralt seems ready to admit
he's been in an uphill struggle with the electronic medium.
Probably nowhere has Kuralt made this clearer than last year when
he accepted an award for excellence in journalism at the University
of South Dakota.
After his upbeat address, Kuralt answered questions from his audience
about the career of journalism, about radio talk shows, about
the war in Vietnam and about television.
He was asked what he liked to watch for news and entertainment
on television.
``I don't watch television,'' Kuralt told the astonished students.
``I used to watch television, but I don't find much that engages
me on there anymore.''
He allowed that he catches snippets of CNN (that's not a typo,
he said CNN!) and loves watching baseball games, but concluded,
``I found there's another world out there . . . sometimes it's
best to just go out and contemplate the soft spring evening .
. . .''
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Allan R. Andrews can be contacted at andrews852@verizon.net