New York – Peter Jennings, a high school dropout from Canada who transformed himself into one of the most urbane, well- traveled and recognizable journalists on American television, died Sunday. He was 67.
The cause of death was lung cancer, said Charles Gibson, who announced his colleague’s death on television in a special report just after 9:30 p.m. MDT.
Jennings had disclosed on April 5 that he was suffering from lung cancer, first in a written statement released by ABC and later that night on “World News Tonight,” the evening news broadcast that he had led since September 1983.
In brief remarks at the end of that night’s program, Jennings, his voice scratchy, told viewers he hoped to return to the anchor desk as his health and strength permitted. But he never did.
It was a jarring departure for someone who for so long had been such a visible fixture in so many American homes each night. Along with the two other pillars of the so-called “Big 3” – Tom Brokaw of NBC and Dan Rather of CBS – Jennings had, in the early 1980s, ushered in the era of the television news anchor as a lavishly compensated, globe-trotting superstar. After the departure of Brokaw from his anchor chair in December, followed by Rather’s retirement from the evening news in March, Jennings’ death brings that era to a close.
Peter Charles Jennings was born July 29, 1938, in Toronto. His father, Charles, was a senior executive of the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. and a pioneer in Canadian radio news.
In “The Century” (Doubleday, 1998), one of two history books that he co-wrote with Todd Brewster, Jennings recalled an early exercise that his father put him through in an effort to sharpen his powers of observation.
“Describe the sky,” his father had said. After the young boy had done so, his father dispatched him outside again. “Now, go out and slice it into pieces and describe each piece as different from the next.”
By age 9, he had his own show on Canadian radio, “Peter’s Program.” He dropped out of high school at 17, and by his early 20s, he was the host of a dance show similar to “American Bandstand” called “Club Thirteen.”
His rise to the pinnacle of Canadian television news, and later its far larger counterpart to the south, was swift. In 1962, at age 24, he was named co-anchor of the national newscast on CTV, a competitor of his father’s network, a job that he held until 1964.
That year, he moved to the United States to begin work as a correspondent for ABC. Barely a year later, the network named him an anchor of “ABC Evening News,” then a 15-minute newscast, which put him – at age 26 – head-to-head with Walter Cronkite on CBS and the formidable tandem of Chet Huntley and David Brinkley on NBC.
Though he would serve ABC in that capacity for nearly three years, Jennings said last year that he was ill-suited for the job and unhappy in it.
“I had the good sense to quit,” he said.
What followed was more than a decade of postings abroad as a foreign correspondent for ABC, during which, Jennings said, he got an on-the-job introduction to the world with a tuition bill effectively footed by his employer.
In 1978, he began his second tour as an anchor for the network, serving as one of three hosts of “World News Tonight,” along with Frank Reynolds and Max Robinson, in a format devised by Roone Arledge, the legendary sports programmer who had added the news division to his portfolio. Jennings was the program’s foreign anchor and reported from London until 1983.
Three weeks after Reynolds died of bone cancer, Jennings was named the sole anchor (and managing editor) of the broadcast, titles that Jennings continued to hold at his death.
Jennings was conscious of having been imbued, during his Canadian boyhood, with a skepticism about American behavior; at least partly as a result, he often delighted in presenting the opinions of those in the minority, whatever the situation.
And yet, he simultaneously carried on an elaborate love affair with America, one that reached its apex in the summer of 2003, when he announced that he had become a U.S. citizen.
Jennings’ personal life was, at times, grist for the gossip pages, including his three divorces. He is survived by his wife, Kayce Freed, and two children from a previous marriage, daughter Elizabeth and son Christopher.