The Comeback Kid. Slick Willie. The Creep.
And, now, Two-Network Bill.
The president legendary for his outsized appetites is being sent out of the White House with a legacy program that gobbles up the air time of two competing news organizations.
ABC’s “Nightline” and PBS’s “Frontline,” two of TV news’ finest, have joined in an unusual resource-sharing arrangement to sum up our eight years on the Bill Clinton roller coaster and make sure TV viewers don’t miss the fact that the ride is coming to an end. Please wait until the car comes to a complete stop before exiting.
Known on both programs as “The Clinton Years,” and running Monday-Friday on “Nightline” (10:35 p.m., WLS-Ch. 7) and a week from Tuesday on “Frontline” (9 p.m., WTTW-Ch. 11), the 4 1/2-hour doubleheader is a fitting homage to a man known for his indulgences, including, among other pleasures, french fries.
Beyond reminding everybody of some of the presidential nicknames through the years — not to mention the first lady’s almost compulsive hairstyle changing — the programs also drive home what an eventful, extraordinary political decade we have just witnessed. And the very similar programs (five half-hours on “Nightline,” one two-hour documentary on “Frontline”) do it from the inside, interviewing most of the key Clinton staff to provide a kind of true-life counterpoint to “The West Wing.”
The two shows use enough of the same quotes that there is no need to watch both, but each is compelling on its own. The unusual arrangement between what are normally competitors is an example of a growing trend, designed to stretch tight resources and increase potential impact in a fragmented TV universe.
More than chronicles of backstage political life, the specials are, in a sense, reminiscent of the final “Seinfeld” episode. Just as that farewell program took pains to point out that the central characters were less than admirable human beings, these documentaries, just by retelling the old Clinton stories, have the effect of confronting viewers with exactly how evasive and, yes, slick, this president has been, especially considering his still-high public approval ratings.
The oh-that-Bill tolerance many people feel toward him is a less comfortable posture after watching either or both versions of “The Clinton Years.”
You see Clinton, all over again, lying to everyone about Gennifer Flowers, sneaking Dick Morris into the policymaking inner circle, taking no action, for a time, without pre-testing its popularity in a poll, lying to everyone about Monica Lewinsky.
And you see him, to an astonishing degree, getting away with it all. Indeed, his ability to go to the brink without falling over is the central theme of the slightly more analytical piece “Nightline” correspondent Chris Bury has done for “Frontline.”
Ted Koppel’s “Nightline” effort is more episodic, leaving the analysis to the interview subjects and being sure to include, of course, historical footage of Koppel interviewing Clinton.
What also stands out, although neither program makes the point explicitly, is that the image of Bill screwing up and Hillary either saving him or tolerating it misses much of the story. Yes, Hillary Rodham Clinton has stood by her man to a point that befuddles many in the public and certainly belies her 1992 pronouncement about Tammy Wynette. But in the interpretations of events presented by “Nightline” and “Frontline,” she owes him, too, for standing by her.
Many of Clinton’s most profound woes, the programs say, were directly traceable to Hillary: the health-care reform failure leading to the 1994 “Republican Revolution,” the billing records scandal, and, especially, some early stonewalling on documents relating to the Whitewater land deal.
Indeed, close adviser George Stephanopolous tells ABC that Hillary Rodham Clinton’s veto of her husband’s 1993 decision to turn over requested Whitewater documents to the Washington Post was the pivotal moment.
“Can’t be proved,” says Stephanopolous, “but I firmly believe that, we turn those over, we would have never had a Whitewater special counsel. If you never have the Whitewater special counsel, you never have Monica and you never have the impeachment of the president.”
The programs draw on interviews with most of Clinton’s inner circle, and the first-termers, especially, are candid in their sense of, as Bury sums it up, being “dazzled by his performance and disappointed by the man.”
The programs do not interview Clinton himself, which, contrary to popular perception, is often a good thing when you’re doing a profile. Although he has been talking up a storm recently, granting an exit interview even to Rolling Stone, he turned down the request of “Nightline,” which, like “Frontline,” has been pretty tough on the president.
“Nightline” took the lead in the project and, indeed, brought it to “Frontline.”
This partnering trend among competitors extends from local news stations and CNN sharing stories as a means of stretching resources to situations such as CNN pairing up with corporate siblings Time and Fortune to co-produce newsmagazines.
But, although it meant getting a new program for about half the usual $800,000 to $1 million cost, the “Frontline”-“Nightline” pairing is more about journalism than business, insisted “Frontline” Executive Producer Michael Sullivan.
“It’s basic journalists getting together. That’s the difference,” Sullivan said. “It’s not presidents of companies saying, `You all get together.’ It’s journalists finding one another.”
And one thing journalists want is to have their work make an impact, an ever taller order in an increasingly fragmented TV world. The theory is that not a lot of people have time to watch five “Nightlines” in a row, much less five “Nightlines” and then a “Frontline.” So you risk looking a little like cable, with its seemingly endless repetitions of programs, in order to provide people more chances to see the story you’ve crafted.
Further, “Frontline” needs to collaborate on several projects a year to meet its budgets, Sullivan said. In the past that has meant co-productions with British TV, but increasingly, he said, as the Brits have changed their focus away from in-depth news, they have turned to American sources.
On major projects, “Frontline” has teamed up with the New York Times to produce a piece on terrorist leader Osama Bin-Laden and, more recently, with NPR for a series on the nation’s drug wars.
“It’s all to the good,” Sullivan said. “We found partners we think are as special as we are.”
He said he doesn’t fear being tainted by putting his name on a partner’s work, as happened to Time magazine with the discredited Operation Tailwind reporting done by CNN but presented under both labels, because “Frontline” is also deeply involved in the journalism and is picking partners it knows and trusts.
“We’ve been talking to `Nightline’ for some time about whether we could do things together,” Sullivan said. Despite the competition, “we deeply respect each other and feel like we’re two bands of newspeople who have kept their dignity through the onslaught of commercial pressures.”
Sullivan said “Nightline” executive producer Tom Bettag came to them last summer, suggesting that summing up Clinton might be a good pairing.
“Frontline,” which didn’t have anything compelling of its own on the Clinton legacy in the works, agreed, and its financial contributions meant “Nightline” got to do more and longer interviews.
Bury is the link between the two programs, having conducted all 20 of the on-camera interviews.
He said he relished both the chance to do a different kind of work for “Frontline” and the opportunity to look back at what we have just witnessed.
“Bill Clinton is the most compelling political figure in modern American political history,” Bury said. “It was eight years of living dangerously and it’s exhilarating to watch.”
