The brave new face of American TV

WHEN broadcaster Connie Chung takes her place beside veteran television anchor Dan Rather on the CBS Evening News for the first time next month, American television will take a new direction. For not only will 46-year-old Chung be the first woman charged with delivering a network's flagship news broadcast since an unsuccessful ABC experiment with the legendary Barbara Walters nearly 20 years ago, she will also break the mould of White Anglo-Saxon Protestant (WASP) newsreaders - and confirm her position as the highest-profile Asian in US broadcasting. Hongkong viewers will be able to judge Chung's performance for themselves as TVB Pearl carries the CBS news every morning. At a salary said to be in the region of US$2 million (HK$15.6 million) a year - Rather earns just over US$3 million - it means a hefty rise in pay as well as status. It is also prompting questions about whether Chung, who publicly cut down her workload three years ago in a bid to have a baby, has given up all hope of starting a family with her husband, chat-show host Maury Povich. Only two months ago she was reported to have undergone a test-tube pregnancy attempt. But after the unexpected announcement of her new job, she is said to have agreed to stay childless. ''Connie's no-baby pact is top secret and strictly unofficial,'' a friend told an American magazine. ''CBS is investing a lot of money in her and the last thing the CBS executives want is their top co-anchor taking time off.'' Becoming a female version of Walter Cronkite, Rather's predecessor of 19 years and the most trusted figure ever in American television journalism, is the culmination of more than 20 solid years of paying her dues, starting as a newsroom assistant at a local television station in her native Washington DC. The youngest of five daughters of a Kuomintang diplomat who stayed on in the United States and became a financial manager after the 1949 Chinese revolution, Chung went to school with Watergate investigator Carl Bernstein and actress Goldie Hawn, and then on to the University of Maryland. She started work at a time when America was experimenting with positive discrimination for women, blacks and other ''minorities'', and the pretty, shy woman made the most of it. ''I would definitely say being a woman and a minority helped me get hired,'' she admits. ''It was a male-dominated profession and we took a bit of teasing.'' In fact, an old Connie Chung story has it that when she first applied for promotion from news assistant to writing, she was turned down - not because of her talents, but because she was tailor-made for another job designated for a double minority. Undeterred, she is said to have gone to the bank during her lunch break, waited until a black female assistant was free and asked if she fancied a career in television. With a ready-made replacement, she was on her way. From her local station she moved to the CBS network as a news correspondent, where the work done by her old school pal Bernstein became her inspiration. ''To me, Watergate was the story of the decade,'' she says. ''It was the unravelling of the presidency, a textbook course in responsible reporting and a lesson in truth. ''I felt the weight and responsibility to be fair and accurate because we were dealing with the future of the presidency of the United States. I developed a standard for myself.'' After six years of experience in Washington she got itchy feet and headed west to Los Angeles. That meant saying goodbye to her friend Povich, then a married network star, although they remained friends. In Los Angeles, working for the local CBS affiliate, she quickly became a star. Again, her double minority status undoubtedly helped, as she found herself a key member of a four-person anchor team, joining an avuncular, WASP senior anchor, an athletic, young black sports anchor and a cheerful Latino weatherman. She filled the slots for women and Asians. But life in the entertainment capital of the United States eventually proved to be less appealing that the political world of the East, where she was brought up. After seven years on the west coast, she headed to New York, taking a reported US$200,000 pay cut to US$400,000 a year, to join the morning news show on rival channel NBC. She ruffled feathers by taking the job, replacing Jane Pauly - wife of Doonesbury cartoonist Garry Trudeau - and Bryant Gumbel in the morning, and bumping another popular female newscaster, Jessica Savitch, off NBC Saturday Evening News as well. She also worked as a reporter for NBC Nightly News. Quick to refute the ''workaholic'' label, she also bristles at suggestions that one motive for her move back East was to be closer to Povich, by now divorced, whom she had met again in Los Angeles. By this time she was the bigger star. He was fired from the LA station where they both worked because of a ratings slump. However, by the time she moved back East, he was hosting a Washington-based talk show. Two years later she and Povich married in a Jewish ceremony, and started married life commuting between her Central Park apartment in New York and his two-bedroom condo in Washington. Her career continued to soar with a switch back to CBS in 1989 to host her own show, Saturday Night with Connie Chung, followed by Face to Face with Connie Chung. Then she fell victim to the American career woman's nemesis - the ticking of her biological clock. Announcing in a press release that she was cutting back on work to ''take a very aggressive approach to having a baby'', she infuriated other Asian journalists by not turning up at a conference where she had been booked for a year. Instead she sent a videotaped apology, at which the delegates hissed. But no baby arrived, and the word spread that she and her husband were becoming increasingly anxious. This anxiety forced her cancellation of an appearance on the television comedy Murphy Brown, when three real-life television anchors were guests in an episode about the fictional anchor's baby, after Brown's single pregnancy had been singled out by then-Vice-President Mr Dan Quayle as symbolic of America's moral decline. Then, earlier this year, she and Povich, who has two daughters from his first marriage, made their test-tube attempt. Despite the disappointment over the way she cancelled an appearance at the Asian American Journalists' Association (AAJA) at the last minute, Asian journalists have generally welcomed Chung's promotion. Ms Valerie Chow Bush, executive director of the AAJA, said: ''We're thrilled because she is probably the most visible Asian woman - no, she is the most visible Asian woman - in television.'' The number of Asians in the US has doubled in the last decade to 7.3 million, or three per cent of the population; the Chinese are the largest Asian group. ''She has been a role model for a while,'' said Ms Chow Bush. ''A whole generation of Asian-American women have looked to her. That's very obvious, especially when you talk to young women. ''And she's worked hard and paid her dues. Our only concern is that for every Connie Chung there are probably lots of people who would be just as good but who aren't given the opportunity. ''We're also concerned by the under-representation of Asian men on television. There seems to be a problem accepting an Asian man in that position. But we hope that will change in view of the fact that Asian-Americans are one of the fastest-growing minority groups in America. ''I think Connie Chung's position will help spread that positive image. Television and film are so important in this society.'' San Francisco television business reporter David Louie agreed. ''Connie Chung said after the appointment was announced that she wanted to thank the wives of CBS executives for sensitising their husbands to the need for a woman anchor,'' he said. ''Now I hope she will in the same way sensistise them to the need for Asian men in similar positions.'' ''I certainly hope she succeeds. She's worked hard to achieve what she has done so far.'' And Mr R. E. Shafbach, vice-president of a CBS affiliate station in Portland, Oregon, added: ''I think it's a great idea that will give a new spark and a contemporary look to CBS Evening News. I think Connie Chung will be able to attract some younger viewers and more female viewers.'' Chung's new appointment has not also earned her criticism. ''I'd rate her about 'B' as a journalist,'' one CBS observer told the Los Angeles Times. ''She's not Dan Rather. But she's not some bimbo either - she's terrific at anchoring. She's very steady, even when everything hits the fan.'' With Chung in the chair, Rather will do more reporting of national and international stories, leaving the way open for her eventually to replace him as sole anchor. This may be a prospect that worries her more than she is revealing. Only last week veteran San Francisco commentator Herb Caen revealed that after finishing an interview with famed San Francisco lawyer Mr Melvin Belli, a very media-friendly figure, her nerves were so shaky she cadged a cigarette from a stranger she met outside his office. The stranger turned out to be Stu Smith, owner of a restaurant called The Whale. She accepted a margarita and a cigarette before she went on her way, pleading with him: ''Don't tell anybody; Maury doesn't know I smoke.''