Tom Bettag is known mostly for his work as an executive producer in "Nightline",
ABC's signature late-night news show that he left in 2005 together with a long-time acquatance of his, Ted Koppel. Bettag (pronounced "B'tag") was born in 1944, in Evansville, Indiana, but now lives in Washington D.C. with his wife and two sons. Bettag is a proud receipient of numerous awards, including 30 Emmys. After graduating the University of Notre Dame in Illinois, Bettag was to become a newspaperman. However, his professor - Fred Friendly - convinced him to join the television business, and rightfully so. Now, we are waiting for the next thing to come out of Tom Bettag, who was the executive producer of "Nightline" for a whopping fourteen years.
Tom Bettag joined
CBS in 1969 and worked mostly in news shows, but was made the executive producer of
CBS's evening news in 1986. Bettag was dismissed from the show in 1991, and quit
CBS right away, a quite shocking move for a 46 year old who has worked in a single television company for his entire career. Bettag later claimed that the motifs behind his departure were simple:
CBS weren't producing real news anymore, and had went an entirely different direction than he was. He was quite lost, but Bettag's career took a big turn right after he quit
CBS. His long-time partnership with Dan Rather of the evening news he produced paid off. After a few calls, he was made executive producer of "Nightline", a god tier news program at the time.
Bettag was keen on making changes, and knew exactly what needed to be done with "Nightline" to preserve Koppel's unique stature, but skyrocket the ratings at the same time. Tom Bettag introduced innovations like 30 minute documentaries, profiles, and much more. Highlight moments of his work in
ABC's "Nightline" include covering the Bosnian crisis, covering the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, and many more. In 2005, however, Bettag's reign in "Nightline" was put to an end as Ted Koppel quit the show. The departure from "Nightline" was made because
ABC wanted to turn the show into a different direction than Koppel and Bettag wanted to. Again, no one doubts that they were making good news - as Bettag himself stated, the television companies do everything they can to preserve income, and if that involves treating news as a consumer product, they'll do it.
Shortly after the departure from "Nightline", Bettag went to Discovery together with Koppel. Highlights from that show include beautiful reports from China, and politic reports from Iran, tentatively titled "Iran, The Most Dangerous Nation?” Discovery and Koppel (and that means - Tom Bettag too) went their separate ways in 2008, mainly because of the failing ratings.
Bettag can be described as a classic journalist. He defines the late generation of journalists that, instead of trying for drama, made good news with solid headlines and top-notch unbiased content.
ABC still can't retain the aura they had when Koppel was in charge of "Nightline", and we can just wonder how much the success of Koppel was actually success of Tom Bettag.
