Former NBC News president Richard Wald dies at 92

Richard Wald, president of NBC News during the 1970s and a top executive at ABC News during the high-flying Roone Arledge era, died Friday after a short illness. He was 92. 

Wald was among the last of a small group of top executives who shaped network TV news during a time of rapid growth and rising profits, from the '70s through the '90s. He effectively launched Tom Brokaw's long run at NBC when he named him co-host of "Today" in 1976. Three years later, he and Ted Koppel launched "Nightline" following the Iranian militant takeover of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran. In 1981, Wald brought David Brinkley to ABC, where he became the founding anchor of "This Week."

According to some accounts, Wald was also the model for William Holden's character, the principled news division chief Max Schumacher, in Sidney Lumet's Oscar-winning 1976 movie "Network." (Wald confirmed as much in a 2019 "Sunday Morning" story when the play "Network" ran on Broadway.)

Born in Manhattan (and a longtime resident of Larchmont in Westchester County), Wald went to Columbia, where he met Arledge, and worked as a stringer for the New York Herald Tribune. He later became managing editor and boss of Jimmy Breslin, Tom Wolfe and Gail Sheehy — emerging stars of the New Journalism movement.

In 1973, Wald was tapped to run NBC News, where he faced a few major challenges, notably ratings at flagship "Nightly News'' and, in 1976, the void left by the departure of "Today" co-host Barbara Walters, whom Arledge had hired to co-anchor ABC's evening news program. One solution at "Today" would be Brokaw, then NBC's star White House correspondent who would be paired with network TV newcomer Jane Pauley.

After Wald left NBC in 1977, Arledge hired him at ABC to run day-to-day operations and, in time, establish the news division's editorial and ethics policies.

Paul Friedman, a Wald friend and longtime colleague at both NBC News and ABC News, said in a phone interview Friday that "Dick was the only man who consistently intimidated me because he was so bright, so well-educated and had so much experience that I always felt, 'this guy knows more than you will ever know,' and he didn't hesitate to tell you. He did that because he had such high standards and cared so much about the journalism and cared about the writing. He was offended by bad writing and who at the networks these days is offended by bad writing?"

Friedman added that Wald was "the conscience of both NBC News and ABC News."

After leaving ABC in 1999, Wald became a professor of journalism at Columbia University, where he remained professor emeritus at the time of his death.

Wald is survived by three children — Matthew, Elizabeth and Jonathan — seven grandchildren and one great grandchild. His wife, Edith Wald, died in 2021.