Shocker of shockers! Throughout Monday’s Inauguration Day, the news network on whose coverage I roosted the most often and most comfortably was ABC. ABC! Usually the news organization among the legacy networks that I avoid like the plague for its anticipated bias and heavy-handed expression of it. On Monday, it was a refuge. Especially from CBS and NBC which had me lunging for the remote, at point yelling into, “Any station but this one,” — CBS at the time — as if its could understand that command. So, a couple of admissions here. I decided to confine my viewing to the legacy networks, although I did take peeks at Fox News, via Channel 29, which fared well. I knew MSNBC would be a mistake in terms of blood pressure besides journalistic disdain, and like most viewers, I’m done with CNN. Historically, although I know its biases, I tended to choose CBS during the election season. Norah O’Donnell and company never seemed as shrill as their counterparts on NBC or as smug and convinced they alone know where the elephants lie down as David Muir and company on ABC. David Muir and the ABC New coverage of Donald Trump’s inauguration was the best to watch. ( EVAN AGOSTINI – INVISION/AP) I started with CBS. As usual, the instigating Gayle King, who always has to look for and mention a wrinkle whether it’s pertinent or not, started the trouble. You can tell she was against an inauguration that involved Donald Trump on sheer principle, and she was going to point out everything wrong with it. What sent me fleeing from CBS and towards the soothing voice of Lester Holt at NBC was CBS’s constant interruptions of scenes that demanded silence from the newscasters so the natural, ambient sounds of the inauguration proceedings could come through. Especially during ceremonial sequences in which the Inauguration’s announcer was telling who was walking into the Capitol rotunda for the swearing in. It’s wasn’t only Gayle King who turned my expression as lemony as her observations. It was O’Donnell spouting the inane, and doing it while I was trying to hear who among the attendees I didn’t recognize was entering. The straw broke when, following a brilliant performance by tenor Christopher Macchio, correspondent Ed O’Keefe droned on about the singer while drowning out the emcee. I fled in anger when O’Donnell interrupted by far the best of the introductory speeches, by Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn), a co-chair of the Inaugural Planning Committee, who was giving the best expression of bipartisan American ideals I’ve heard from a politician in ages. Our columnist wanted to hear the Inauguration Day speech by Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., but he watching CBS News at the time and the on-air people kept talking over her remarks. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite) Sen. Deb Fischer (R- Neb.) didn’t have the same taste as Klobuchar in her remarks. Of course, if anyone wanted to blather during Franklyn Graham’s benediction, I’d have kissed them. By the time Fischer spoke, I was at NBC, mainly so I could hear the rest of Klobuchar’s speech. Doubtless, CBS would justify its pre-emption by saying it was delivering breaking news about pardons by departing president, Joe Biden. I’ll be the judge. That news could have waited. NBC was thick with moralism. I’m not sure what Savannah Guthrie said, but I went right to Channel 29 and Fox News. I was happy there, although I was getting too much commentary for my taste. “Ready to bite the bullet?” I asked myself. “Dare to risk Muir and ABC?” A deep breath later, I was watching Channel 6. Lo and behold, it was a revelation. Muir and cohorts were not interrupting. They were leaving natural sound to do its job. When they did speak, it was relatively neutral. Muir was acting like a journalist and staying fairly objective. Even Linsey Davis was controlling herself. The only one who spoiled the unexpected kumbaya was Martha Raddatz, whose resentment about Trump being inaugurated camethrough. The only downside for ABC was that Martha Raddatz couldn’t keep her biases from showing, according to Neal. (CHIRS PIZZELLO – INVISION/AP) I found ABC palatable. Its coverage was comfortable enough to stay with it. Will wonders never cease? Change at ‘CBS Evening News’ Monday night begins a new era for “CBS Evening News”, seen locally at 6:30 p.m. on Channel 3. Thursday was Norah O’Donnell’s last night as anchor for television’s oldest dinnertime newscast. The announcement she was leaving was made in August, but time seemed to erase that note from my mind. Sitting at the anchor desk, as revealed in August, will be a duo, John Dickerson and Maurice DuBois. The new co-anchors of “CBS Evening News” will be Maurice DuBois, left, and John Dickerson. (AP Photo) Dickerson is known for sitting in for O’Donnell and others on the “Evening News” but more for his long stint with O’Donnell on “CBS Morning News,” his tenure as the host of Sunday’s political discussion show, “Face the Nation,” and his last four years as the CBS White House correspondent. DuBois, although he has substituted for anchors of CBS’s weekend newscasts, has only a small national footprint. He is known well in New York, where he has been a primetime anchor on local news for decades, first at WNBC, and since 2011, on WCBS-TV. Passing of a Philly TV great Dinners with Dorie Lenz would always begin the same way. Before heading to Friday, Saturday and Sunday or another of her favorite restaurants, we would meet in her Rittenhouse Square apartment for one of her sublime, potentially lethal martinis. Dry as a bone every time, to risk a cliche. And a convivial ritual. Dorie loved life and sharing her drink of choice with friends was, to her, the only way to start an evening of brisk conversation and predictable fun. In fact, she once told me that barring some health or addiction issue, she looks askance as people who did not want to partake of the offered martini. Let me tell you. Those who wouldn’t didn’t know they were missing. Chatting over the cocktail in Dorie’s living room was the preamble to free-ranging discussion about everything from what was going on the city, politically and culturally, and specific plays, books, exhibitions, and concerts that took or were to take place. Dorie knew a lot about a lot. Just last year, at her recommendation, made when she was age 100, mind you, I began reading multiple works of Aldous Huxley, works beyond the famous, “Brave New World.” Perfect advice again, Dorie! It was wonderful to experience the sophistication of a unique thinker from a more adult, mature time. It was interesting how Huxley wove philosophy into his novels and stories without feeling as if he was impinging or shilling the way current authors such as Ian McEwen, Margaret Atwood and Gabrielle Zevin do. Dorie’s knowledge was eclectic. Her mind was focused as she reached the century mark. Her one regret was she wasn’t as mobile as she once was. She was determined, against likelihood, she would be. Making things happen was part of Dorie’s charm. And her effectiveness. Dorie Lenz in the 1980s In Philadelphia, she is a seminal figure from a time when television was growing from the simple entertainment crafted by people who had to invent an entity and an industry around it to it being more rounded, more significant, more influential. The years between 1965 and 1972 were among the most important and transitional the Philadelphia television market would experience. It could use a revolution like that again. Group W took back the market’s NBC affiliate, Channel 3, and changed the way news was produced and news stories were presented. The laggard among the three network-affiliated stations at the time, Channel 6, experimented until it came up with the “Action News” format that continues to dominate local television as it has for more than 50 years. The most important breakthrough as regards Dorie Lenz was the growing of those three affiliates or owned station, into a field of seven, including a broader-based Channel 12. In 1965, technology and deregulation combined to bring new television stations to every market. UHF, once confined to a few big cities, e.g. Chicago, or to being used solely for educational or nonprofit stations, was open to broadcast the way NBC, CBS and ABC did in the 1940’s. Philadelphia had three new stations that would make their mark on local viewers. People, including 14-year-old me, flocked to buy an antenna that could be hooked to a television and bring UHF Channels 17, 29 and 48 into your homes. Better yet, new portable televisions came with UHF antennas, tuners and were capability built. I saved up allowance, lawn mowing, and bottle returning money to buy one for my and my brother’s bedroom, one more way to tease our sister. These UHF outlets invented themselves the way the older network-tied stations did. They were independents, even though they might be owned by larger chains, in those days limited to five stations max, like Taft and Kaiser. Lenz found her place on those UHF stations. She had performed on radio as a child, but television gave her an avenue to talk about things that mattered to her. Dorie surfaced first doing a program about the stock market on Channel 29, circa 1967 or ’68. She served the nascent station well, but her true imprint on the market would be made in 1970 when she arrived at WPHL-TV, Channel 17, to be the director of public affairs. In those days, that job meant being a liaison at large to the community the television served, figuring out ways to involve the station in public matters and bring people to the station, to keep mandated records about community involvement, and to produce public affairs television programs brought local and more broadly discussed issue to light. It was like introducing segments of the community, and their initiatives, to the viewing audience. To acquaint viewers with what was going on around them that might not make a newscast or need a longer form to make a group or individual’s efforts clear. Dorie was a master at doing this. Not only a master but an innovator, one who made issues interesting and brought her own curiosity, passion, intellect, and wit to providing information that might seem dry in other hands. Dorie’s way became a guide to how public affairs could work. She, with others such as Linda Munich, at Channel 6 and before that, at Channel 48, gave public affairs a pulse and made it entertaining. On Channel 17 programs like “Delaware Valley Forum,” and its more localized offshoots, Dorie brought myriad subject to light and breathed life into them. Eventually, as her long career at Channel 17 progressed, Dorie would espouse causes and become a leading champion for them, especially those that pertained to or affected women. It led to many honors. In addition to being cited by the National Commission for Working Women, Women in Communications, Women in Transition, and American Women in Radio and Television, Dorie received two local Emmys for her programming in 1987 and 1988. She was named the Person of the Year by the Broadcast Pioneers in 1993 and entered the Broadcast Pioneers Hall of Fame in 1999. She also served on the organization’s board of directors and in other leadership roles. To many entering broadcasting in the 1970s — guilty! — Dorie was also a mentor and teacher. She showed many the ropes when it came to programming and in dealing with the larger community. She led the way, and we soaked in what she had to teach us. I was lucky. Dorie and I became friends. Hence, those martini-laden dinners and such. In general, she was a friend to everyone in broadcasting. And to the community as well. Doris May Lenz was born on May 27, 1923, in Philadelphia. She made her mark her in many ways, including her love of the cultural life and the hundreds of conversations, if not thousands, she had about books, etc. No doubt still thinking about life and what one should do with it, she passed away quietly at the home she shared with her daughter, Lisa, in New York City on Sunday, Jan. 19 at age 101. Dorie was unique, a person of will who was effective in giving ideas voice and placing some of the best in motion. She was also, as you can tell, great company, as someone who can speak about almost anything is bound to be, martini or not. So with a recently chilled shaker beside me, and some excellent gin with a mere wave of vermouth — and an olive of course — I raise one more toast to you, Dorie Lenz. May the people you inspired inspire others for generations and make sure the work of the world gets done with the intelligence, understanding, zeal and dignity you exemplified.