Al Vecchione, 86; producer of ‘MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour’

Al Vecchione, a television producer who helped broadcast the Senate Watergate hearings to a national audience and who later made crucial contributions that allowed the "PBS NewsHour" to rival commercial news programs in prestige if not in profit, died May 24 at his home in Bethesda, Maryland. He was 86.

The cause was lung cancer, said his daughter Julie Vecchione DeSimone.

Vecchione, an immigrant's son who credited his career path to a fortuitous ride on the New York City subway, was an unlikely helmsman of the "NewsHour" program. Created in 1975 by Robert MacNeil, based at public television's WNET studios in New York, and Jim Lehrer, a Texan transplant at WETAin Washington, D.C., the show aimed to upend broadcast news by focusing on a single story each night.

Originally titled "The Robert MacNeil Report," it changed its name to "The MacNeil/Lehrer Report" in 1976, when Vecchione came on as executive producer and the program began reaching a national audience on PBS affiliates around the country.

The show became the nation's first hour-long nightly news broadcast in 1983, when it doubled its length, struck out on its own and re-christened itself "The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour." At the time, it was the only major nightly news show to be independently produced and owned by its anchors.

Although the program's exhaustive coverage of public affairs was sometimes criticized as dull — its anchors once quipped that the show's motto was "We dare to be boring" — it became a giant of public television, reaching an audience of more than 3 million people by 1990 and drawing sponsorships from PepsiCo and AT&T.

"Our approach has always been to take on the serious and important issues that we think people need to know about, not the ones that will titillate them," said Vecchione, who was named president of MacNeil/Lehrer Productions in 1983 and worked on the "NewsHour" and related documentaries until he retired in 1996.

"PBS NewsHour" is now produced entirely by WETA and anchored by Judy Woodruff. Co-anchor Gwen Ifill died in November.

Vecchione was "critical to the success of the show," said MacNeil, who described Vecchione as "an equal partner" whose skill in managing budgets and people was integral to "NewsHour's" longterm survival.

"He was the guy who gave us the confidence that we could do this," Lehrer said.