Mar 6, 2014 5 min read

There’s a revolution going on in television news, but probably not one you’d expect to be reading about now: Contrary to popular belief that broadcast news is a dinosaur stuck in the tar pit as technology evolves around it, total viewership for the three networks’ evening news show is on the rise.

Big time.

“CBS Evening News” anchor Scott Pelley isn’t surprised, “The network evening news … is a big growth area now,” he said in an interview last week during a three-day working trip to California.

Three years ago, when Pelley took over the anchor post from Katie Couric, the three broadcast news shows averaged a total of about 23 million viewers per night. For the week of Feb. 3, they pulled in a combined viewership just shy of 29 million. “CBS Evening News,” in third place in a close ratings race with NBC and ABC, has consistently added viewers since Pelley claimed the anchor’s chair, growing by 7 percent in 2012-13 over the previous year.

“Now why is that,” Pelley asked rhetorically of the growth in network news, sitting down at the City Center Marriott in Oakland between interviews with Tesla’s Elon Musk and Gov. Jerry Brown.

“I think people are being driven to brand names in journalism that they feel like they can trust,” he said. “Because never in human history has so much information been available to so many people, but unfortunately that also means that never in human history has so much bad information been available to so many people.”

Pelley, 57, prides himself on being an old-fashioned journalist, and that comes across in his style and demeanor, both on camera and off. I couldn’t help noticing how he carries himself as he walked into the hotel meeting room, his back ramrod straight, arms immobile as they bracketed his square-shouldered frame.

In person, he has a very dry sense of humor, but usually plays it straight on camera, delivering the news in a mellifluous, authoritative baritone, enunciating every word. It’s a notable contrast to both NBC’s Brian Williams, whose humor is often evident in his “Nightly News” broadcast, and Diane Sawyer, who tends toward dramatic delivery and pregnant pauses on “ABC World News” as a way of demonstrating how much she cares.

For the most part, you won’t find the CBS anchor standing in front of “magic walls,” lolling on couches or wandering around the set like a Bedouin in search of an information oasis.

That isn’t to say that Pelley is blind to innovations in the 21st century information age.

“We’re constantly told that media is completely different now,” he said. But “you’re talking about distribution. Distribution’s completely revolutionized, but what you and I do? The content piece? That hasn’t changed in 2,000 years. I tell young people these days it doesn’t matter if you’re carving on a stone tablet or a glass tablet: The rules of storytelling have not changed.”

Pelley said following those rules is what distinguishes TV news from Internet chatter.

“I read an article in the New York Times with interviews with editors from various news websites, and one of those editors said the metabolism of the news cycle now is such that they don’t always have time to check everything before they put it out.

“Well, that is the end of journalism (and) is antithetical to everything we stand for,” he said. “The other model is called gossip. And journalism was invented to be an antidote to gossip.”

Pelley, a San Antonio native, first learned the rules of storytelling when he was hired at 15 as a copy boy at the Lubbock Avalanche Journal. In those days, he dreamed of becoming a news photographer, until he was offered a reporter’s job. After graduating from Texas Tech University with a journalism major, he worked for several TV stations in Texas before joining CBS in 1989.

At CBS, he has covered the Gulf and Iraq Wars, served as the network’s White House correspondent, covered the 1993 bombing of and the 2001 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center , and has been a correspondent on “60 Minutes,” to which he contributes about 23 stories a year. He often shoots his “60 Minutes” segments on weekends, which may be a bit easier these days since his two children are grown. He and his wife, Jane Bonne, have been married for 30 years and live in Darien, Conn.

Every news organization has made mistakes, no matter how much it is committed to accuracy. “60 Minutes” took a big hit last fall, for example, for a discredited report on the attack on Benghazi that led to the temporary suspension of correspondent Lara Logan and her producer.

But Pelley said he and his team resist the pressure to be first on a story, emphasizing accuracy over speed.

“We may not get it right all the time, but at least (viewers) know serious journalists and serious editors are trying to get the news right,” Pelley said.

The tectonic plates of the media landscape are shifting more than ever before, but the more they change, the more Pelley said he plans to “stick with what works.”