Peter Jennings
Peter Charles Archibald Ewart Jennings CM (July 29, 1938 – August 7, 2005) was a Canadian-American television journalist, best known for serving as the sole anchor of ABC World News Tonight from 1983 until his death from lung cancer in 2005. Despite dropping out of high school, Jennings transformed himself into one of American television's most prominent journalists.
This article is about the Canadian-American journalist. For other uses, see Peter Jennings (disambiguation).
Peter Jennings
August 7, 2005 (aged 67)
- Canada
- United States
Television journalist
1947–2005
- ABC Evening Report/Peter Jennings with the News (1965–1967)
- ABC World News Tonight Foreign Desk Anchor (1978–1983)
- Anchor (1983–2005)
- ABC News reporter (1964–2005)
- Valerie Godsoe (div.)
- Anoushka Malauf (div.)
-
[1]Kayce Freed(m. 1997)
2
- Charles Jennings
- Elizabeth Jennings
Jennings started his career early, hosting a Canadian radio show at age 9. He began his professional career with CJOH-TV in Ottawa during its early years, anchoring the local newscasts and hosting the teen dance show Saturday Date on Saturdays. In 1965, ABC News tapped him to anchor its flagship evening news program. Critics and others in the television news business attacked his inexperience, making his job difficult. He became a foreign correspondent in 1968, reporting from the Middle East.
Jennings returned as one of World News Tonight's three anchormen in 1978, and he was promoted to sole anchorman in 1983. He was also known for his marathon coverage of breaking news stories, staying on the air for 15 hours or more to anchor the live broadcast of events such as the Gulf War in 1991, the millennium celebrations in 1999–2000, and the September 11 attacks in 2001. In addition to anchoring, he was the host of many ABC News special reports and moderator of several American presidential debates. He was always fascinated with the United States and became an American citizen in 2003.
Along with former television anchors Tom Brokaw of NBC Nightly News and Dan Rather of CBS Evening News, Jennings was one of the "Big Three" news anchormen who dominated American evening network news from the early 1980s to the mid-2000s. Jennings' death closely followed the retirements from anchoring evening news programs of Brokaw in 2004 and Rather in 2005.
Early life and education[edit]
Jennings was born on July 29, 1938, in Toronto, Ontario; he and his younger sister Sarah were children of Elizabeth (née Osborne) and Charles Jennings, a prominent radio broadcaster for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC). Jennings started his broadcasting career at the age of nine, hosting Peter's People, a half-hour, Saturday morning, CBC Radio show for kids. His father was on a business trip to the Middle East when the show debuted; upon returning, Charles Jennings, who harbored a deep dislike of nepotism, was outraged to learn that the network had put his son on the air.[2]
When Jennings was 11 years old, he began attending Trinity College School in Port Hope, Ontario, where he excelled in sports. After the CBC moved his father to its Ottawa headquarters in the early 1950s, Jennings transferred to Lisgar Collegiate Institute.[2] He struggled academically, and Jennings later surmised that it was out of "pure boredom" that he failed 10th grade and dropped out. "I loved girls," he said. "I loved comic books. And for reasons I don't understand, I was pretty lazy."[3] Jennings then briefly attended Carleton University, where he says he "lasted about 10 minutes" before dropping out.[4] He also attended the University of Ottawa.[5]
TV/video narration[edit]
In 1969–1970, Jennings narrated The Fabulous Sixties, a 10-part Canadian television documentary miniseries that first aired on CTV on October 12, 1969, with the following episodes broadcast as occasional specials into 1970. Each episode covered one year of the 1960s. The series was released on DVD on April 24, 2007, by MPI Home Video.
In 2003, Jennings narrated The Kennedy Assassination: Beyond Conspiracy, an ABC documentary covering the John F. Kennedy assassination.[113]