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    Richard Leibner, Agent for Top Broadcast Journalists, Dies at 85

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    His negotiations led to Dan Rather’s elevation from “60 Minutes” to anchor of the “CBS Evening News” and sent Diane Sawyer from “60 Minutes” to ABC.Richard Leibner, a powerful agent whose firm brokered contracts for many of the biggest names in television news, including Dan Rather, Diane Sawyer, Anderson Cooper, Ed Bradley, Morley Safer and Steve Kroft, died on Tuesday at his home in Manhattan. He was 85.His son Jonathan said the cause was kidney cancer.Mr. Leibner’s firm, N.S. Bienstock — named for one of its founders, Nathan Bienstock — represented hundreds of anchors, reporters, producers and others in network and local television news.The negotiation that grabbed the biggest headlines was for Mr. Rather, then one of the star correspondents of the CBS News program “60 Minutes.”Between late 1979 and early 1980, Mr. Leibner (pronounced LEEB-ner) parlayed interest in Mr. Rather as the evening anchor from all three network news divisions: ABC News, whose president, Roone Arledge, was trying to raise his third-place division’s profile; NBC News, where the evening anchor John Chancellor was hoping to change to a commentary role; and CBS News, where Walter Cronkite had been the evening anchor since 1962.“The Rather situation was tough and sensitive because CBS News knew something had to happen after Cronkite,” Mr. Leibner told Manhattan, inc. magazine in 1986. “Cronkite had told them, contrary to what anybody had ever inferred, that he wanted off. He was tired of it.”Mr. Leibner surprised Mr. Rather by telling him that he thought it was possible to get him as much as $6 million over five years. In the end, CBS agreed to pay him what has been variously reported as $2.2 million a year and $8 million over five years. He succeeded Mr. Cronkite on the “CBS Evening News” in early 1981.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Betty Cole Dukert, Top ‘Meet the Press’ Producer, Dies at 96

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      She worked as a secretary before being hired as an associate producer at the NBC News public affairs show in 1956. She went on to spend 41 years there.Betty Cole Dukert, who began her career in Washington as a secretary in the 1950s and later became the top producer of the weekly NBC News public affairs program “Meet the Press,” died on March 16 at her home in Bethesda, Md. She was 96.Her late husband’s niece Barbara Dukert Smith said the cause was complications of Alzheimer’s disease.In her 41 years at “Meet the Press,” a Sunday-morning fixture on the NBC schedule, Mrs. Dukert booked politicians, diplomats, foreign dignitaries, cultural figures and heart surgeons to be interviewed by a moderator and a panel of journalists; sought out the most capable reporters for the panel; and researched the subjects to be discussed.“She was the main point of contact on Capitol Hill for the show,” said Betsy Fischer Martin, who started on “Meet the Press” as an intern and became the program’s executive producer in 2002. “She worked the phones constantly. It wasn’t an era when you could send off an email to book someone.”As she rose in the “Meet the Press” hierarchy, Mrs. Dukert collaborated with a long list of moderators: Ned Brooks, Lawrence Spivak, Bill Monroe, Roger Mudd, Marvin Kalb, Chris Wallace, Garrick Utley and Tim Russert.“I have never found anyone who is nicer to work with, more intelligent, and whose judgment and tact are so superb,” Mr. Spivak told the Missouri newspaper The Springfield Leader and Press in 1970.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      NBC’s Hiring of Ronna McDaniel, Former RNC Head: What’s the Deal?

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      The deal with a former R.N.C. chair who enabled election deniers risked the credibility of NBC News — and ended up pleasing no one.For the past week the best drama on NBC — apologies to Dick Wolf — has been in the news department.On Friday, NBC News announced that it was hiring Ronna McDaniel, the former chairwoman of the Republican National Committee, as a political analyst. By Sunday morning, Kristen Welker was grilling Ms. McDaniel on “Meet the Press,” after which the former host Chuck Todd told his successor on-air that their bosses “owe you an apology.” By Monday morning, the hosts of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” condemned the hire. By Monday night, MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow likened it to hiring “a mobster to work at a D.A.’s office.”And by Tuesday, Ms. McDaniel was officially out as an NBC News contributor, having lasted not even a half-Scaramucci.Not long ago, a TV news outlet hiring a former political bigwig might have occasioned grumbling from members of the other party, critiques from journalism watchdogs or anonymous griping among the staff. But it happened, and life went on. This kind of full-on, on-air revolt was something else — because Ms. McDaniel’s hiring was something else.The fiasco at NBC was in part a sign of how media outlets are struggling to cover politics in unusual times. But it was also a battle over how willing they should be to normalize ideas and actions that, in the post–Jan. 6 era, go well beyond politics as usual.The staff rebellion over Ms. McDaniel, after all, was not about her views on entitlement reform or health-care policy. It was about her statements and actions around the attempts to overturn the 2020 election. Throughout November and December of 2020, she supported former President Trump’s efforts to throw out the election results to stay in office, and at one point in the effort called Michigan election officials to ask them to delay certifying the state’s results.And although she didn’t back Mr. Trump’s most far-fetched election-theft scenarios, she continued to say, as in a 2023 interview with Chris Wallace, that she didn’t think President Biden “won it fair.” (Doing damage control in her interview with Ms. Welker, she called Mr. Biden “the legitimate president.”)We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      What’s on TV This Week: ‘After Yang’ and the State of the Union

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      Colin Farrell, Jodie Turner-Smith and Justin H. Min star in a new sci-fi movie on Showtime. And President Biden delivers a State of the Union address.Between network, cable and streaming, the modern television landscape is a vast one. Here are some of the shows, specials and movies coming to TV this week, Feb. 28-March 6. Details and times are subject to change.MondayTRAYVON MARTIN: 10 YEARS LATER 8 p.m. on BET. Trayvon Martin, a 17-year-old Black teenager in Florida, was shot and killed almost exactly 10 years ago by George Zimmerman, a neighborhood watch captain. Gayle King, the co-host of “CBS Mornings,” hosts this hourlong special, which commemorates Martin and looks at the activism that his death continues to help galvanize. The program includes interviews with Martin’s mother, Sybrina Fulton, and other mothers whose children have been killed by the police or by gun violence.MY BRILLIANT FRIEND 10 p.m. on HBO. The third season of the show, which centers on a friendship between two girls, Lenù and Lila, who come of age in mid-20th-century Naples, will debut on Monday night. It is adapted from the third of Elena Ferrante’s four Neopolitan books, “Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay,” and finds Lenù and Lila grappling with careers, marriage and, eventually, motherhood. This will be the final season for the actresses Margherita Mazzucco, 19, and Gaia Girace, 18: The fourth book in the series, “The Story of the Lost Child,” which would be the focus of a potential fourth season, revolves around the characters in middle age. “I have never read the final pages of the fourth book,” Mazzucco told The New York Times recently. “I don’t want to know how it ends.”TuesdayPresident Biden in February. He is scheduled to deliver his State of the Union address on Tuesday.Sarahbeth Maney/The New York TimesSTATE OF THE UNION 9 p.m. on various networks (check local listings); streaming on Facebook, Twitter, WH.gov and YouTube. President Biden is set to deliver his State of the Union speech to Congress on Tuesday night. Biden will presumably speak to the progress that his administration has made since his first address to Congress last year — including the passage of the $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill and the nearly $1.9 trillion stimulus package — though he’ll have a lot more to cover. He’s likely to address Russia’s war on Ukraine, the selection of Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson as his nominee to the Supreme Court and the state of the coronavirus pandemic, as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention loosen safety guidelines.Inside the World of Elena FerranteThe mysterious Italian writer has won international attention with her intimate representations of Neapolitan life, womanhood and friendship. Beginner’s Guide: New to Elena Ferrante’s work? Here’s a breakdown of her most important writing. Latest Novel: Following the success of her Neapolitan novels, the author returned to fiction with a suspenseful story about parents and their sins.English-Language Translator: The work of Ann Goldstein has helped catapult Ferrante to global fame. Humility is a hallmark of her approach.Onscreen: The HBO series based on Ferrante’s “My Brilliant Friend” is a testament to the elusive writer’s ability to create inscrutable characters.Lenù and Lila: The actresses playing the two protagonists in the HBO adaptation grew up with their characters. Here is what they said about it.THE LARRY DAVID STORY 9 p.m. on HBO. What’s the difference between Larry David the “Curb Your Enthusiasm” character and Larry David the successful producer and performer? Based on a trailer for “The Larry David Story,” the answer is a dusting of facial hair and a touch of introspection. David reflects on his life and career in this two-part documentary, which covers his upbringing in Brooklyn, his beginnings in comedy, his success with “Seinfeld” (which he co-created) and his more recent work on “Curb Your Enthusiasm.” The documentary was directed by the comic and filmmaker Larry Charles, a staff writer on “Seinfeld” whose well-established rapport with David comes through in their conversations.WednesdayLA STRADA (1956) 6 p.m. on TCM. When the Oscar for best international feature is handed out at the Academy Awards ceremony next month, the winner will become part of a lineage that “La Strada” helped establish: This Federico Fellini classic was the first movie to win the best foreign-language film honor when that category became a competitive award at the Oscars in 1956. The movie raised the profiles of both Fellini and his wife and collaborator, Giulietta Masina, who plays a young woman who is sold to a traveling circus strongman (Anthony Quinn). “‘La Strada’ is often sentimental and not always convincing but the ending packs a wallop,” J. Hoberman wrote about the film last year in his “Rewind” column.ThursdayTilda Swinton in “The French Dispatch.”Searchlight PicturesTHE FRENCH DISPATCH (2021) 8 p.m. on HBO Signature. Wes Anderson drew inspiration from the old-school days of The New Yorker for this ornate anthology comedy, which follows a collection of eccentric magazine writers and their subjects — played by an ensemble that includes Bill Murray, Benicio Del Toro, Léa Seydoux, Jeffrey Wright, Frances McDormand and Tilda Swinton — in a mid-20th-century French city. Typewriters clack. Cocktails disappear.FridayAFTER YANG (2022) 9 p.m. on Showtime. In his 2017 feature debut, “Columbus,” the filmmaker Kogonada used the modernist architecture of Columbus, Ind., to give a surreal, otherworldly undercurrent to a modest story about a close friendship. His new movie, “After Yang,” takes place solidly in the future: It centers on a mother (played by Jodie Turner-Smith), father (Colin Farrell) and young daughter (Malea Emma Tjandrawidjaja) whose humanoid robot, Yang (Justin H. Min), breaks down. The loss of Yang is essentially the loss of a family member, but it may be possible to repair him.SaturdayVin Diesel, left and John Cena in “F9.” Giles Keyte/Universal PicturesF9 (2021) 8 p.m. on HBO. If the “Fast and Furious” movies went all-electric, and the grunt of gasoline engines was muted, the series could still rely on Vin Diesel’s voice to fill out the low end of the sonic spectrum. The latest installment of the series introduced a new villain, played by John Cena, and brought back the familiar faces of Michelle Rodriguez, Tyrese Gibson, Ludacris, Helen Mirren and Charlize Theron. The movie also saw the return of the director Justin Lin, a veteran of the franchise who had stepped away for several years. Lin makes the movie “feel scrappy and baroque at the same time,” A.O. Scott said in his review for The Times.SundayLester Holt, left, and the former Attorney General William P. Barr in an NBC News primetime special.NBC NewsNBC NEWS PRIMETIME SPECIAL 9 p.m. on NBC. Lester Holt interviews the former Attorney General William P. Barr in this hourlong special. The two discuss Barr’s final days as Attorney General during the Trump administration, when he rebuked former President Donald J. Trump’s false claims of a stolen election by acknowledging that the Justice Department had found no evidence of widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election. The conversation also touches on policing in America, among other topics. More

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      Can CNN’s Hiring Spree Get People to Pay for Streaming News?

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      The network’s boss, Jeff Zucker, tries to make up for lost time by signing Chris Wallace, Audie Cornish and Eva Longoria.A couple of months ago, CNN’s forthcoming streaming channel was perceived as little more than a curiosity in the television news business: just another cable dinosaur trying to make the uneasy transition into the digital future.In fact, the plan to start CNN+, which is expected to go live by late March, amounted to a late arrival to the subscription-based streaming party, more than three years after Fox News launched Fox Nation.Then the hirings began.In December, Chris Wallace, Fox News’s most decorated news anchor, said he was leaving his network home of 18 years for CNN+. Next came Audie Cornish, the popular co-host of “All Things Considered” on NPR, who said in January that she was leaving public radio to host a weekly streaming show.Alison Roman, the Instagram star and author of a popular cooking newsletter, will get her own cooking show. Eva Longoria will head to Mexico for a culinary travelogue documentary series. Rex Chapman, the sports podcaster and former basketball player with more than a million Twitter followers, signed on, too.Audie Cornish, the popular co-host of “All Things Considered” on NPR, is leaving public radio to join CNN+.Brad Barket/Getty ImagesThe prominent names represent a tier of talent that had previously been hesitant to commit to a news channel’s streaming service, especially an untested one. Agents and producers have taken notice, as much for the big salaries on offer as for the prospect of a news-based streamer with a range of nonfiction programming, relying on more than the usual political talking heads.“We do want a service that has a wider aperture and is broader than just today’s bleak news,” CNN’s president, Jeff Zucker, said in an interview.Recent Developments at Fox NewsFauci Comments: The Fox News host Jesse Watters used notably violent language in urging a gathering of conservatives to publicly confront Dr. Anthony Fauci.Jan. 6 Texts: Three prominent Fox News hosts — Laura Ingraham, Sean Hannity and Brian Kilmeade — texted Mark Meadows during the Jan. 6 riot urging him to tell Donald Trump to try to stop it.Chris Wallace Departs: The anchor’s announcement that he was leaving Fox News for CNN came as right-wing hosts have increasingly set the channel’s agenda.Contributors Quit: Jonah Goldberg and Stephen Hayes quit the network in protest over Tucker Carlson’s “Patriot Purge” special.He is gambling that CNN+ can entice new viewers — and bring back some old ones. CNN’s traditional broadcast viewership has dropped significantly from a year ago, thanks to a post-Trump slump and waning audience interest, and the network recently fired its top-rated anchor, Chris Cuomo, amid an ethics scandal.Mr. Zucker is turning to a strategy honed during his days as the executive producer of NBC’s “Today” show in the 1990s, mixing hard news with a heavy dose of lifestyle coverage and tips on how to bake a pear cobbler. In marketing materials, CNN+ has urged viewers to “grab a coffee” while flipping on shows promoted as “never finicky” and “the silver lining beyond today’s toughest headlines.”It remains an open question if CNN+ can actually draw the interest — and monthly payments — of viewers already overwhelmed with streaming options. Heavyweight services like Netflix and Hulu have struggled to find success with shows that riff on current events. One Netflix executive conceded in 2019 that topical programming was “a challenge” when it came to on-demand, watch-at-your-own-pace streamers.The Instagram star Alison Roman will host a cooking show on CNN+.Michael Graydon & Nikole Herriott for The New York Times. Prop Stylist: Amy Elise Wilson.CNN and Fox News are the two major news networks betting that viewers will pay an extra monthly fee for their digital content.Fox News introduced Fox Nation, a subscription-only streaming service, in November 2018. Like CNN+, it features a mix of shows hosted by familiar hosts (“Tucker Carlson Presents” and Brian Kilmeade’s history program, “What Made America Great”) along with programming from outside the parent network, including a revival of the police show “Cops” and a new program hosted by Piers Morgan.Still, paid services like Fox Nation ($6 a month) and CNN+ (which has not revealed its pricing) carry a higher barrier of entry for TV news content, which is available free of charge elsewhere. Fox Nation has not disclosed its number of subscribers, making its success hard to gauge, though Lachlan Murdoch, the executive chairman of the Fox Corporation, has touted the service to investors.NBC, ABC and CBS are pursuing a different strategy: free streaming news platforms supported by paid advertising. Their digital options predominantly focus on news, not lifestyle programming, and the networks have only recently taken more aggressive steps to expand the programming on offer.On Monday, CBS rebranded its platform as the CBS News Streaming Network and announced new shows inspired by the network’s history, including a program hosted by the anchor Norah O’Donnell with “a 2022 take on the classic Edward R. Murrow interview series.”The Choice From MSNBC, a channel on NBC’s Peacock streaming app, debuted in 2020. Its hosts include Mehdi Hasan, Zerlina Maxwell and, starting later this year, Symone D. Sanders, a former adviser to President Biden. (NBC News also has separate digital offerings for hard news and lifestyle coverage.)Eva Longoria is developing a culinary travelogue documentary series for CNN’s streaming service.Rozette Rago for The New York TimesFor news executives, finding a winning formula in the streaming game is now an urgent priority.Streaming has supplanted cable as the main home delivery system for entertainment, often on the strength of addictive series like “Squid Game.” For a while, though, old-fashioned cable news clung on, with CNN, MSNBC and Fox News attracting record audiences in recent years. In case of emergency — a pandemic, civil unrest, a presidential election, a Capitol riot — viewers still tuned in en masse.After former President Donald J. Trump left office, news ratings nose-dived and cable subscriptions continued to plummet — an estimated four million households dropped their paid TV subscriptions last year, according to the research firm MoffettNathanson.Fox Nation and CNN+ both rely on a business model dependent on paid subscriptions, hence the efforts by both to generate a wide variety of programming.“A subscriber every month only has to find one thing that they want,” Mr. Zucker said in the interview. “We don’t need the subscriber to be interested in everything we’re offering, but they need to be interested in something.”Mr. Zucker said CNN+ was aiming at three buckets of potential subscribers. He is seeking to entice loyal CNN viewers into paying for streaming programs featuring hosts familiar from the cable channel: Anderson Cooper will have two, including one on parenting; Fareed Zakaria is helming a show examining historical events; and Jake Tapper will host “Jake Tapper’s Book Club,” in which he interviews authors.The other would-be subscribers, Mr. Zucker said, are news and documentary fans who want more nonfiction television, as well as younger people who don’t pay for cable.CNN, though, is not ignoring the needs of its flagship cable network, which ranked third last year behind Fox News and MSNBC in total audience.Mr. Zucker recently reached out to representatives for Gayle King, the star CBS News anchor, about the prospect of her taking over the weekday 9 p.m. hour on CNN, said two people with knowledge of the approach. CNN has not named a permanent anchor for the prime-time slot since Mr. Cuomo was fired in December after revelations that he assisted with the efforts of his brother, former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York, to fend off sexual harassment allegations.CNN’s president, Jeff Zucker, is gambling that the network can entice new viewers and bring back some old ones with its streaming platform.Krista Schlueter for The New York TimesCNN+ is also expected to include the breaking news and political coverage that CNN viewers are accustomed to — a feature that could pose difficulties for the network down the road. CNN commands a high price from cable distributors, who may cry foul if CNN+ includes too much news programming that potentially competes with the cable offering. For instance, Wolf Blitzer, the host of “The Situation Room” on CNN at 6 p.m., will also appear on CNN+ to anchor a “traditional evening news show with a sleek, modern twist.”CNN’s parent company, WarnerMedia, which is on the verge of a megamerger with Discovery Inc., appears willing to take the risk. The company is placing a significant financial bet on CNN+, budgeting for 500 additional employees, including producers, reporters, engineers and programmers, said Andrew Morse, CNN’s chief digital officer. The company is also renting an additional floor of its headquarters in Midtown Manhattan to accommodate the hires.“What we’re building at CNN+ is not a side hustle,” Mr. Morse said. More

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      Lloyd Dobyns, Co-Anchor of an Innovative TV Newscast, Dies at 85

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      He teamed with Linda Ellerbee on “NBC News Overnight” in 1982 to set an unusual tone for network news in an equally unusual time slot.Lloyd Dobyns, an award-winning NBC News correspondent who in the early 1980s was the co-anchor of the innovative television newscast “NBC News Overnight,” died on Sunday in Mebane, N.C., northwest of Raleigh. He was 85.His son Kenneth said the cause was complications of a series of strokes.Mr. Dobyns worked for NBC News in Europe, the Middle East and Asia, and won more than two dozen awards for reporting, writing and anchoring. He was probably best known for working with Linda Ellerbee on “NBC News Overnight,” the first of several late-night news programs begun by the broadcast networks in an attempt to compete with the 24-hour news coverage introduced in 1980 by CNN.Lloyd Allen Dobyns Jr. was born on March 12, 1936, in Newport News, Va. After serving in the Army, he began his broadcasting career in 1957 as a reporter for WDBJ-TV in Roanoke, Va. Three years later, he became a news anchor at WAVY-TV, the NBC affiliate in Virginia’s Tidewater area. He later became the station’s news director.In 1969 he moved to New York, where he worked first as managing editor for news at WNEW-TV, then as part of the NBC News team. He was a foreign correspondent before returning to New York to anchor the TV newsmagazine “Weekend,” for which he won a Peabody Award in 1975.Mr. Dobyns set the style for “Weekend” with a wry and witty style as both a writer and a reporter that was later complemented by the equally droll and irreverent Ms. Ellerbee. The two were teamed again in July 1982 for “NBC News Overnight,” which was seen from 1:30 to 2:30 a.m. weekdays and 2 to 3 a.m. Saturdays.Reviewing “NBC News Overnight” for The New York Times in 1982, John J. O’Connor called it “one of the classier new acts in television news” and noted, “Both Mr. Dobyns and Miss Ellerbee take some pride in their writing abilities and, more than anything else, their collaborations in this area lend the program its appealing personality.”But the program’s ratings were poor, and NBC canceled it in November 1983. “It was our finest hour of news and remains the model for an hour news product,” Reuven Frank, the president of NBC News, said at the time. “But merely being best is not enough when the cost is so much greater than the income.” (Mr. Dobyns had left by then to anchor the NBC newsmagazine “Monitor,” which also had a short life because of low ratings.)In a statement, Ms. Ellerbee called Mr. Dobyns “a friend, teacher, troublemaker, and a world-class journalist.”Mr. Dobyns retired from NBC in 1986 and later taught journalism at Jacksonville State University in Jacksonville, Ala.In addition to his son Kenneth, he is survived by his wife, Patti; two daughters, Denise and Alison; and eight grandchildren. Another son, Brian, and a brother, Norman, died before him.The New York Times contributed reporting. More

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      Bob Abernethy, Longtime Host of PBS Show on Religion, Dies at 93

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      He conceived and produced “Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly” and was its face for 20 years, after four decades as an NBC News correspondent.Bob Abernethy, who capped a four-decade career as an NBC News correspondent by injecting religion, one of the most under-covered subjects on television, into national programming with a weekly series that ran for 20 years on PBS, died on May 2 in Brunswick, Maine. He was 93.His death, at a heath care facility, was confirmed by his daughter Jane Montgomery Abernethy. The cause was Alzheimer’s dementia.The grandson of a Baptist minister in Washington whose congregation included President Warren G. Harding and Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes, Mr. Abernethy had retired from NBC in 1994 after covering the collapse of the Soviet Union, the nascent space program and Congress.He was not ready to stop working, though. Armed with his deep faith, intellectual curiosity and a theology degree he had earned from Yale Divinity School during a one-year leave of absence in 1984, he persuaded WNET, the PBS station in New York, to produce “Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly,” a half-hour nonsectarian series that Mr. Abernethy hosted and presided over as executive editor beginning in 1997.Within 10 years of its launch, the show — which Mr. Abernethy had described as “a news program, no preaching” — was airing on 250 public stations nationwide, winning some 200 industry awards. He and his collaborators went on to broadcast regularly until 2017, when he was 89.With the journalist William Bole, Mr. Abernethy edited “The Life of Meaning: Reflections on Faith, Doubt, and Repairing the World,” (2007), an anthology of interview transcripts from the PBS program.“Nothing I have done has been as personally satisfying as founding and working on” the program, he wrote in the introduction to the book, adding, “The main reason for that is the many opportunities the show provides for sitting down with the likes of Archbishop Desmond Tutu — extraordinary men and women who speak as naturally about their faith and doubt and spiritual practices as they do about the weather.”Mr. Abernethy in an undated photo. He persuaded PBS to produce “Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly,” becoming its host and executive producer.David HollowayOther guests included the Dalai Lama, President Jimmy Carter, the Rev. Billy Graham and Jonathan Sacks, at the time the chief rabbi of the United Kingdom.The series covered a wide range of topics, including atheism, abortion, assisted suicide, sexual abuse by clergy and organ transplants.“Finding this line between sensitivity to the spiritual dimensions of a story on the one hand and objective, traditional skepticism is a constant struggle and a very appropriate one, but I think we’ve got it right,” Mr. Abernethy told The Washington Post in 2000. “This is a matter of good reporting. Unless you get the spiritual element of the story, you’re missing something very important. It’s like interviewing Babe Ruth and not asking about hitting.”When “Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly” was approaching the end of its run, Jerome Socolovsky, the editor in chief of Religion News Service, was rueful, telling the news service Current in 2016, “The media landscape will miss this crucial provider of video stories about religion that didn’t favor one or the other but gave viewers a full perspective on religious news developments.”Robert Gordon Abernethy was born on Nov. 5, 1927, in Geneva to Robert and Lois May (Jones) Abernethy. His father worked for the Y.M.C.A.’s international newspaper. After Bob was born, the couple returned to the United States. His father began to teach religion at the Hill School in Pottstown, Pa., but died of complications of appendicitis in 1930.Bob and his mother moved in with his paternal grandparents in Washington, where his grandfather was senior minister of Calvary Baptist Church. She taught piano at the National Cathedral School.After graduating from the Hill School, he enrolled in Princeton University but interrupted his studies to serve with the American occupying Army in postwar Japan, where he hosted a program for Armed Forces Radio. Returning to college, he earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees from what is now the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs.Coming from a family of pastors, he felt “a certain amount of pressure on me to become a minister, too,” he told the website Resources for Christianity in 2013, “but I never heard a call.”Mr. Abernethy married Jean Montgomery in 1951; she died in 1980. In addition to their daughter, Jane, he is survived by his second wife, Marie (Grove) Abernethy, whom he married in 1984; their daughter, Elizabeth C. Abernethy; and four children from Ms. Abernethy’s first marriage. He had homes in Brunswick as well as in Washington and Jaffrey, N.H.Mr. Abernethy was a member of the United Church of Christ. His wife is a member of the Russian Orthodox Church.He joined NBC News after receiving his master’s from Princeton in 1952. Early on he wrote and hosted “Update,” a program for young people, and was later a Washington interviewer for the “Today” show. He anchored the evening news for KNBC in Los Angeles among other assignments.One posting was to Moscow, after he had completed his leave from NBC News to study theology in 1984. Before he left, he recalled: “I ran into a guy I had known who asked me, ‘What’s new?’ I said, ‘I took a year’s leave from NBC and went to divinity school. I got married and we had a baby. What’s new with you?’”He never stopped working. At his death, he was hoping to document the lives of homeless people through video interviews, for a future broadcast. More