TV NEWS Chris Wallace explains move to Fox

The veteran newsman gets more air time than he did at ABC News.
LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Chris Wallace recalls thinking colleague Brit Hume was nuts for jumping from ABC News to Fox News Channel in 1996.
Showing how times have changed in the world of television news, it was Hume who helped recruit Wallace to make the same move a few months ago. Wallace steeled himself for skeptical questions.
They never came.
"People in our business get it," he said. "We sit around all day with Fox or another cable network on. We spend between 9 in the morning and 6 at night not on the air. So I think a lot of people in television news look at the cable networks with great envy."
Now the host of "Fox News Sunday" and an analyst on Fox News Channel, the son of "60 Minutes" legend Mike Wallace spent more than 25 years at NBC and ABC.
He did about everything there was to do at network television news. Now he says there's a sense of decline at the broadcast news divisions, a feeling that "we can't do it as well as we used to."
During the war last year, Wallace said he kept noticing the words "Fox News is reporting ..." appearing on an internal news wire at ABC. He was surprised to see it so much considering Fox had an operation far smaller than other television news divisions.
He began watching, and was impressed with Fox's news-gathering.
Took the plunge
At 56, figuring he had one big career move left, Wallace started to think about working at Fox and approached network chief Roger Ailes. In contrast to the broadcast news divisions, it was an operation that was expanding, with an audience that has grown explosively.
"From the moment you walk into the building, the feeling is palpable," he said. "There is an energy, there's a positive spirit, there's a feeling of everyone pitching in. There's not a bunch of fiefdoms. ... There's none of the sense of jealousy and 'you're on my turf."'
Like at ABC News, for instance?
"Sure," he said. "Of course, there are fiefdoms and people with huge egos and I don't think Roger has allowed that at Fox."
ABC's system of stars and constellations, with Peter Jennings, Barbara Walters, Diane Sawyer, Ted Koppel and others, was fostered by the late news chief Roone Arledge. Arledge's successor, David Westin, has sought to keep the stars happy while improving the sense of teamwork.
For all the attention cable news networks receive, ABC News spokesman Jeffrey Schneider noted that the ABC, CBS and NBC evening news programs are still the most influential newscasts in the world.
"More people are watching ABC's overnight newscast in the middle of the night than all of the cable news networks combined on any given day," Schneider said.
Likes Fox atmosphere
Flush with the enthusiasm of a new employee, Wallace compares Ailes to Arledge. Although Ailes' background as a GOP political operative gets a lot of attention, many people overlook his talent and experience as a television producer, he said.
"I defy someone to watch us as opposed to CNN and not find the Fox programs more watchable," he said.
He's traded audience size for more time on the air. "Fox News Sunday," which is shown on the Fox broadcast network, doesn't have nearly the audience that he used to command on NBC's "Meet the Press" and what current host Tim Russert has today.
Wallace's reputation as a straight newsman may be helping, though. He's had Democratic presidential candidates Howard Dean and John Kerry on as guests in recent weeks. They never appeared on the show when Wallace's predecessor, Tony Snow, was host.
Wallace has also tweaked the show to add a weekly feature, "The Power Player," profiling a Washington insider about whom many viewers may be unaware.
He was admittedly curious about what it would be like to work at a network with a reputation of being particularly friendly to a conservative point of view.
So far, he's heard no internal second-guessing about his questioning of politicians.
"The only demand, the only marching orders I received, is 'do the very best job you can,"' he said.