TV NEWS EXECUTIVE AT NBC AND ABC

Richard C. Wald, a longtime newspaper and television executive who was president of NBC News in the 1970s, helped create ABC'S “Nightline” and was instrumental in making ABC'S “World News Tonight” — the country's most-watched evening newscast — died May 13 at a hospital in New Rochelle, N.Y. He was 92.

The cause was complications from a stroke.

Wald began his career as a reporter at the old New York Herald Tribune, a fabled newspaper known for its stylish writing and international coverage, and became its final managing editor before the paper closed in 1966. After brief stints at The Washington Post, where he was an assistant managing editor, and the shortlived New York World Journal Tribune, Mr. Wald joined NBC News in 1967.

Despite spending more than three decades in broadcasting, he considered himself a newspaperman at heart.

Wald was named president of NBC News in 1973 and supervised the network's coverage of the Watergate investigation, the resignation of President Richard M. Nixon and the final years of the Vietnam War. At NBC, he revamped the "Today" show, selecting Tom Brokaw and Jane Pauley as co-hosts in 1976.

After clashing with the network's corporate bosses, Wald resigned in 1977. The next year, he joined ABC News as its second-ranking executive after Roone Arledge, his college roommate. At the time, ABC'S evening newscasts ranked third among the three major networks, prompting Wald to quip, “They would have been fourth, but there were only three.”

When U.S. hostages were seized in Iran in 1979, ABC began special nightly coverage, led by Ted Koppel. The broadcasts were so well received that in 1980 the network launched a new latenight news program, which Mr. Wald called “Nightline” — a name derived from the “morning line” betting odds in horse racing.

Wald hired many journalists for ABC News, including former NBC anchor David Brinkley, who began a 15year run in 1981 with a new program, “This Week With David Brinkley.” It soon became the top-rated Sunday morning news show.

In 1983, Peter Jennings was named anchor of “World News Tonight” and, over the next few years, made it the country's No. 1 evening news program.

“This is an overnight success that took 10 years,” Wald said in 1988.

In 1993, Mr. Wald was put in charge of monitoring the standards and ethics of the network's newscasts. Dubbed the “ethics czar,” he reviewed scripts and videotape, sometimes minutes before airtime.

“In my position,” he said, “you get all of the blame when things go wrong and none of the praise when things go right.”

When Wald retired from ABC in 1999, Arledge summed up his contributions to the news division: "Back then we needed credibility, and we needed stature at ABC News, and that's what Dick brought."

Richard Charles Wald was born March 19, 1930, in Manhattan. His father owned a dressmaking business, and his mother was a homemaker.

Wald was a 1952 graduate of Columbia University. He worked for the campus newspaper, the Spectator, and began contributing to the Herald Tribune as a student. He shared an off-campus apartment with three classmates who also became major figures in journalism: Arledge, Max Frankel, the future executive editor of the New York Times, and Lawrence K. Grossman, who later was president of PBS and NBC News.