Who Wants to Be a Quizmaster? She Does

NEW YORK â€”  In a 1975 episode of “The Mary Tyler Moore Show,â€� character Ted Baxter contemplates the unthinkable: leaving his job as an anchor to become--gasp--a game show host in New York. He eventually turns down the extra money to stay with his pals in Minnesota, after boss Lou Grant tells him that he’s a newsman, not a “quizmaster.â€�

In real life, Meredith Vieira, 48, has opted for Door No. 2. Once a member of that elite corps of journalists who have made the cut as correspondents for CBS’ long-running newsmagazine “60 Minutes,� Vieira--gasp--will make her debut Monday as the host of the syndicated version of “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire.�

She’s had a few stops in between, and already made the jump out of straight news in 1997 when she became the first among equals (at least when Barbara Walters isn’t around) on the ABC daytime women’s gabfest “The View,� a job she continues to hold. Still, it’s not a decision that all of her former hard-charging news colleagues understand. Vieira is unapologetic. Asked to chart the “intellectual� journey she has made with her career choices, she says her decisions have instead been “emotional. I follow my heart.�

Vieira’s split from “60 Minutes� in 1991 was an early and very public skirmish in what’s become in recent years a more open struggle among women in the workplace to find the right balance between career and family. Reporting, with its unpredictable hours tied to the news, posed a particularly thorny problem.

After working her way up through local radio and television stations to CBS News correspondent and the CBS newsmagazine “West 57th,� Vieira was tapped as just the eighth person to join the exclusive “60 Minutes� crew in 1989, when Diane Sawyer left for ABC. Vieira moved into an office heavy with the symbolism of having once belonged to CBS anchor Walter Cronkite. “All of me connected to TV news,� she says of her early career. “I loved telling stories.�

But Vieira started at “60 Minutes� as a part-timer, because she and her husband, Richard Cohen, a former CBS News producer, had just had a son after several miscarriages, she says. She had agreed to go full time after two years, but became pregnant again and asked to remain half-time. Don Hewitt, the legendary “60 Minutes� founder and executive producer, said it was full time or nothing. She left.

In her early days at “60 Minutes,� Vieira already talked about feeling the pressure to perform and about a struggle to balance her life. But the move still came as a blow. She told the Washington Post that “I’ve gone through being mad and depressed.... I’m sorry to lose the job. I wish they could have shown some flexibility, but I understand.�

Hewitt and CBS, meanwhile, were criticized for pushing out a pregnant woman. Looking back, Hewitt says that if Vieira had volunteered to take a salary cut at the time, instead of her full salary, he would have been happy to have her stay. “I think the world of her....I think she’s very talented; she’s great-looking, she’s great-sounding, and when she’s on television, you know she’s there.�

But, he says, “I don’t think, in retrospect, she should have taken the job, because physically she wasn’t up to it.� Of her new gig, he says, “I wish ABC would have paid her enough money so she didn’t have to become host of a game show ....I certainly understand why she’s taking the job because it’s going to put some of her kids through college and pay off her mortgage and buy her a new car every year and that’s hard to argue with.�

In retrospect, Vieira calls her departure from CBS “an easy decision,� adding: “My priorities began to change.� She had wanted children for a long time and didn’t want to be on the road, as the job required. She says that “I have in my own heart made my peace with Don. I delivered for him and he certainly treated me with respect. I think he thought I was an odd duck.�

Vieira went briefly to CBS’ early morning news “and hated it. I’m not an early-morning person.� She became pregnant with a third child and left CBS for good.

Understanding executives at ABC News hired her for a documentary newsmagazine where she had flexibility; she calls it “an idyllic job.� But when the show ended, she declined a move to take on more traditional newsmagazine work. Her husband pushed her to try out for “The View,� which was being put together by her ABC News colleague Barbara Walters. He told her, “You keep saying you want to be a reporter, but you don’t do the job.� She thought it might spark some other ideas, but she didn’t expect to get the job and didn’t bother with hair and makeup when she auditioned.

When she got the job, she found she loved the freedom of being able to express an opinion, something she couldn’t do as a journalist. “It’s very possible to love news and also love something else,� she says. “A job has to fit into your life.�

To friends who asked, “How could she?,� she replies, “To me, it is apples and oranges. I’m proud of everything that I did.� (She quickly amends that to joke that at some point in her news career she probably asked a subject “How does it feel?� and “I regret that now.�)

On Sept. 11, 2001, Vieira found validation that she had made the right decisions in her life. The magnitude of the terror attacks energized many news reporters. NBC anchor Tom Brokaw, for one, put off a contemplated retirement from daily anchoring because he wanted to cover the story. Vieira had the opposite reaction. “All I wanted was to get my husband and go home� to the children, she said. “There wasn’t one bone in my body that wanted to pick up a camera and a notepad and head for the towers.�

Nonetheless, when CBS News came calling again in the spring, trying to tempt her to become anchor of “The Early Show,� or some form of morning program, she listened. But not very seriously, it seems. “I had done it enough. Morning news is the most grueling schedule and I’m a night owl.� Given her competitive nature, she would have felt the need to take the program to first place from its current third, she says, and the job would have become “a fourth child and I can barely juggle three.� ABC dangled the “Millionaire� gig to get her to stay with “The View.�

Female game show hosts are themselves a rarity. At a recent “Millionaire� taping in New York, Vieira, wearing high, spiky heels, showed herself to be the opposite of Britain’s snippy Anne Robinson, who needled contestants on NBC’s “The Weakest Link.�

Vieira goes even further than many game show hosts, however, with their mildly condescending “aren’t they so cute� attitude toward their guests. Showing the same emotional touch she often brought to her news stories, she hugs contenders, grabbing their hands and rooting for them to win, clapping when they get a tough answer right. She trades confidences with a Valley Glen guest about her favorite Beatle (Paul) and doesn’t always stick to the script. She has to retape an opening segment when she ad-libs something that the producers don’t want. The “Is that your final answer?� shtick that was host Regis Philbin’s trademark on the prime-time version of the show has been softened to “Final?� or “Final answer?�

“She’s the same person on camera as off camera,� says Michael Davies, the executive producer. “On television, that doesn’t happen very often.�

In an interview in her office later, Vieira says she finds it hard to watch contestants walk away losers when she knows that some are playing for the money to buy something as simple as a new kitchen floor. “I invest deeply in them emotionally,� she says. “They’re nervous. You just want to relax them and I can’t do anything.� She writes every contestant a note after their moment in the money chair.

Vieira got the job without a tryout. The skills aren’t that different from what she has done in her professional life, drawing out the guest’s personal story or ad-libbing to fill time when the guest hesitates on an answer. Unlike on live television, if she goofs, it can be fixed.

The new version moves faster than the prime-time one, which was an hour to the syndicated show’s half-hour. The “fastest finger� round, in which a group of contestants vie to play, has been eliminated. Some of the early questions are more difficult.

Vieira calls herself a fan of the show long before she was approached for the job, because it can be watched by parents and children together. Eventually, she says, it might even open the door to another career she envisions, behind the camera as a developer of family entertainment, whether writing books for children or producing kids’ television shows. “It’s great to reinvent yourself,� she says.

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Elizabeth Jensen is a Times staff writer.