Ted Koppel is the late night American TV fixture that's not a joke. He beats David Letterman in the ratings game with old fashioned serious news. "Nightline" grew out of "America Held Hostage," the TV news miniseries about the embassy hostages in Tehran in 1979. For 20 years now, "Nightline" has been the real "60 Minutes," which is to say the very best in television journalism now. It pioneered satellite technology which brought antagonists together from all over the world and left Ted Koppel with the edge in all of those interviews.
Many of the encounters are famous now: with Jim and Tammy Faye Baker, with Nelson Mandela, Gary Hart, and Kermit the Frog. And so are the town meetings with Ted Koppel as mediator among South Africans and between Israelis and Arabs and Americans too divided on race, and AIDS, and abortion. America's last working Ed Murrow is this hour on the Connection. (Hosted by Christopher Lydon)
