Lloyd Dobyns, Peabody winner and anchor of two highly regarded NBC News programs, has died at age 85. The wry, dry, low-key American news correspondent anchored arguably two of the finest news programs NBC ever produced: the offbeat and groundbreaking newsmagazine “Weekend“; and the network’s answer to ABC’s “Nightline”, “NBC News Overnight” with Linda Ellerbee.
Starting in 1974 and running monthly-or-so in the 11:30 PM Saturday slot, “Weekend” soon became the designated hitter in SNL’s timeslot on their weeks off. Its kinetic opening title and theme song lifted from a Stones hit signalled that this wasn’t your granddad’s news program. Dobyns anchored from an in-studio park bench and in a writing style somewhere between David Brinkley and Charles Osgood.
In 1978, envious of CBS’s “60 Minutes” and unwilling to leave a good thing alone, NBC moved “Weekend” into prime time and added Ellerbee as co-anchor. Ellerbee and Dobyns were well-matched, but the timeslot proved fatal by 1979.
In 1982, envious of ABC’s “Nightline”, NBC devised a late-night news program to run after Letterman at 1:30 AM. “NBC News Overnight” was to the evening news what “Weekend” had been to the newsmagazine. It was also a decade ahead of its spiritual clone, ABC’s “World News Now”. Dobyns and Ellerbee were re-teamed and sent forth to Letterman to promote the program.
Ellerbee famously quipped that the program’s electronic theme song sounded like someone was holding Donald Duck’s head underwater. After a year of flat ratings, Dobyns left the program.
Dobyns next anchored NBC’s new primetime newsmagazine “Monitor“, a dull and lifeless affair that made “Weekend” ratings look good by comparison.
“In 1980 he was a reporter on the successful TV documentary, If Japan can… Why can’t we? about the reasons Japan was a manufacturing powerhouse as US industry struggled to keep up” (Wikipedia). After leaving the network in 1986, he partnered with W. Edwards Deming and got involved in the Total Quality Management movement.
“Dobyns began hosting podcasts for Colonial Williamsburg in 2005, interviewing various staff members about their particular specialty at the restored colonial capital of Virginia.[6][7] He initially did not know what a podcast was, but warmed to the idea when he found out they were similar to the interviews he conducted in the past.” (Wikipedia).