End of an era: Brokaw to cover his final election

NBC is expected to be the most-watched network that night.
NEW YORK (AP) -- As a 16-year-old high school student, Tom Brokaw spent his first working Election Night in a radio station newsroom in Yankton, S.D. He reported results from rural polling places, and ate chicken catered from Kip's Blue Moon restaurant.
His last Election Night will be considerably grander.
NBC News is building a huge temple of democracy at New York's Rockefeller Center. A giant jigsaw-puzzle map of the United States will cover the famed ice skating surface and the General Electric building will be the backdrop for an electronic bar graph tracking the Bush-Kerry fight.
NBC is expecting a big night for TV viewers, and Brokaw will be at the center of it all.
Election Night will also mark the end of an era in broadcast journalism. For more than two decades, the three biggest networks have turned to the same men to anchor coverage of important news stories -- Brokaw, Peter Jennings and Dan Rather.
This should be Brokaw's last hurrah, since he steps down as NBC's chief anchorman Dec. 1. By Election Day 2008, certainly one and maybe all three network faces will be different. Rather turns 73 on Halloween and is fighting for his future after CBS's botched story on President Bush's National Guard service. Jennings is 66.
"It's a natural transition and it's a new generation taking over," said Brokaw, 64. "I had my opportunity when I replaced John [Chancellor]. Dan replaced Walter [Cronkite]."
Fans in airports
What Brokaw has found most touching are the moments in airports -- most recently Phoenix after the final presidential debate and Los Angeles -- where folks approached him to say they'll miss seeing him on television.
"That probably means more to me than anything we could do around here because I've always felt that the essence of television news [is] it's a mass medium," he said. "We are connected from these large, glittering, bells-and-whistles sets in New York to ordinary households in the Southwest, the Midwest, to barrooms and schools and other places.
"They rely on us," he said. "You feel at the end of having done it all these years that if people still have faith in what you've done and feel a personal connection, and feel it so strongly that they're willing to come up to you and express that, that's very gratifying."
His biggest disappointment after two decades anchoring "Nightly News" is that the broadcast is still 30 minutes long and not an hour.
On Election Night, his sidekick in an anchor booth overlooking the rink will be Tim Russert. Brokaw's eventual replacement, Brian Williams, will report that night from a nearby booth adjacent to the rink.
NBC will almost certainly be the most-watched network that night, and not for nostalgic reasons. Brokaw has been lengthening NBC's lead in the evening news ratings race in recent months, and it has been the network of choice for most big political events this year.
Future plans
Brokaw waves off the idea of a "Churchillian farewell" at the end of next month, but you can certainly expect the occasion to be marked on several NBC News broadcasts. He's not retiring; Brokaw plans to continue to write books and work on documentaries for NBC News.
To see him immediately after Dec. 1, you'll have to travel.
Brokaw is already planning a fishing trip to New Zealand, and mountain-climbing expeditions to Argentina and Chile. A recent trip to Los Angeles to visit his daughter and her family reminded him of other obligations.
He arrived in time for dinner and took his grandchildren to school the next day. Then he took the next flight out.
"I'm kind of a fly-by grandparent, and I don't like that very much," he said.