It’s hard to imagine Barbara Walters as anything other than a marquee-name, intrepid and pioneering journalist. But she didn’t get there overnight. A look back at the early career of the broadcast journalist, who died Dec. 30 at age 93, as documented in the pages of Variety shows the clear trajectory of a well-connected, industrious young woman who was destined to reach the summit of New York media and literati circles.
Variety’s coverage of Walters’ climb starting in the early 1950s also neatly tracks the rise of network TV news as a cultural force, and the subsequent evolution of TV news personalities into celebrities.
Walters’ status as the daughter of Broadway producer, booking agent and nightclub owner Lou Walters surely afforded her an early entrée into attention from Variety. Her first few references always included a reference to her father’s showbiz pedigree. But it wasn’t long before...
Variety’s coverage of Walters’ climb starting in the early 1950s also neatly tracks the rise of network TV news as a cultural force, and the subsequent evolution of TV news personalities into celebrities.
Walters’ status as the daughter of Broadway producer, booking agent and nightclub owner Lou Walters surely afforded her an early entrée into attention from Variety. Her first few references always included a reference to her father’s showbiz pedigree. But it wasn’t long before...
- 12/31/2022
- by Cynthia Littleton
- Variety Film + TV
Emmy-winning newswoman and celebrity interviewer Barbara Walters, the doyenne of television news, has died, her publicist confirmed to Variety. She was 93.
Having blazed a trail for women in TV news, Walters was the highest-paid television journalist at one time, earning as much as 12 million per year at ABC, where she worked from 1976 until her retirement from ABC News and from her show “The View” in May 2014. She put in 12 years at NBC’s “Today” show prior to that.
Walters received multiple Daytime Emmy nominations for best talk show host for her work on “The View,” winning in 2003 and 2009, and she also received multiple Primetime Emmy nominations for her specials, winning in 1983. She also won a Daytime Emmy in 1975 for “Today” and shared a News and Documentary Emmy for her work at ABC on coverage of the turn of the millennium.
As Variety wrote in an article on her retirement, “Walters...
Having blazed a trail for women in TV news, Walters was the highest-paid television journalist at one time, earning as much as 12 million per year at ABC, where she worked from 1976 until her retirement from ABC News and from her show “The View” in May 2014. She put in 12 years at NBC’s “Today” show prior to that.
Walters received multiple Daytime Emmy nominations for best talk show host for her work on “The View,” winning in 2003 and 2009, and she also received multiple Primetime Emmy nominations for her specials, winning in 1983. She also won a Daytime Emmy in 1975 for “Today” and shared a News and Documentary Emmy for her work at ABC on coverage of the turn of the millennium.
As Variety wrote in an article on her retirement, “Walters...
- 12/31/2022
- by Carmel Dagan
- Variety Film + TV
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