Content area
Full Text
Chung interview with Condit is most-watched program of the summer
ABC News' Connie Chung last week proved why The Get is the Holy Grail of network news. Scandal, or the whiff of one in this case, is the television equivalent of a trashy summer beach novel. It was bestseller stuff last week.
Chung's half-hour live-to-tape interview with embattled Rep. Gary Condit (D-- Calif.) garnered the network a 17.0 rating, 29 share and 23.6 million viewers, according to Nielsen Media Research's fast nationals. That made Prime Time Thursday easily the most-watched program of the summer, followed by the July 30 episode of NBC's Fear Factor, for which 15.4 million households tuned in.
(Those ratings also made the show the most-watched newsmagazine show since Barbara Walters interviewed Monica Lewinsky in March 1999. Walters, the acknowledged "Queen of The Get," scored a 33.8 rating/48 share with that piece.)
Chung's interview began with about 30 seconds of rapid-fire questions, ending with this one: "Did you kill Chandra Levy?" "I did not," responded the Congressman. After that, it was clear this session would be no chummy chat around the coffee table.
Ultimately, Chung told BROADCASTING & CABLE, she was "quite shocked that he didn't answer the question about his relationship with Chandra Levy"
Chung failed to get Condit to admit anything other than he and intern Levy were "very close," but she overwhelmingly succeeded with her real mission: proving herself as hard-nosed as any journalist and scoring astronomical ratings for the network.
"I think it will go right up there as one of the more difficult interviews I've ever...