Brian Williams: A Niche Guy in a Mass Medium

Brian Williams has been in the anchor chair longer than Charles Gibson. He was groomed for the job, while Gibson fell into it. Williams is younger and better looking than Gibson. He's more web-savvy. He inherited a newscast that was No. 1 in viewers.

So why does World News Tonight regularly beat NBC Nightly News in the ratings? In a weird way, I think it's of a piece with why he's hosting an upcoming Saturday Night Live: He's a new-media guy in the quintessential old-media format.

Thanks to his frequent appearances on The Daily Show and Late Night, Williams's great sense of humor, once noted with surprise in profiles, is no longer a secret. Whenever I've observed him up close, I've been struck by how he seems to be playing a role: the Ironic Newscaster. With his plummy voice, patrician features and arch manner, he's the apotheosis of the smug upper-crust swell -- the kind of East Coast elite that an ersatz working-class hero like Bill O'Reilly loves to rail against. In reality, of course, he's a college dropout and former fireman from New Jersey -- but that's the joke.

Unfortunately, network news is where subtle irony goes to die. Williams's self-awareness, so evident to Daily Show viewers, doesn't register with the sexagenarians who make up the Nightly News audience. It's not what they're looking for. Knowing that, he dials down the superciliousness -- and comes across as plastic instead of playful.

This isn't to say his charm is lost. Bloggers love "BriWi," in part because he's one of them -- writing for The Daily Nightly, answering his emails, arguing on Slate about The Sopranos, playing along with Stephen Colbert in a gag that was beneath Charlie Gibson's dignity. Anyone who grew up on a diet of The Simpsons and The Onion is bound to prefer Ironic Newscaster to the prevailing sensibility of the other newscasts -- the sensibility of no sensibility, with apologies to George W. S. Trow. Too bad for Williams those young, hip kids are exactly the people who wouldn't be caught dead watching network news.

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Brian Williams photo by Bill Greenblatt/Polaris