Mr. Chayefsky “was very charming, and he was very humorous about a number of the individuals he’d seen,” Mr. Wald informed Dave Itzkoff for his e book “Mad as Hell: The Making of ‘Community’ and the Fateful Imaginative and prescient of the Angriest Man in Films” (2014). “Which led me to imagine that he was not going to deal with them kindly.”
Mr. Wald resigned from NBC Information in 1977 after disputes with the community’s higher administration over points just like the signing of unique and costly contracts with former President Gerald R. Ford; his spouse, Betty; and Henry A. Kissinger, the previous secretary of state, to look on particular NBC Information broadcasts.
Though he endorsed the signings on the time, he later got here to really feel that the charges paid had led to cuts in his price range for particular information experiences and documentaries, The New York Instances reported on the time.
After leaving NBC, Mr. Wald consulted with PBS on the way forward for news-gathering on public tv and for 3 months was a particular assistant to Otis Chandler, writer of The Los Angeles Instances.
When Mr. Arledge recruited him to affix ABC Information in 1978, Mr. Wald needed to modify to the tradition there, particularly within the Washington bureau, which didn’t greet him fortunately.
“For those who assume we’d like some man from NBC to assist us, you’re mistaken,” Frank Reynolds, one in every of three anchors on ABC’s “World Information Tonight,” mentioned, in accordance with Mr. Arledge’s memoir.
Mr. Wald tailored and stayed for 21 years.
Along with his sons Matthew, a former reporter for The New York Instances, and Jonathan, a former government producer of “Right this moment” and “NBC Nightly Information,” Mr. Wald, who lived in Larchmont, N.Y., is survived by a daughter, Elizabeth Wald; seven grandchildren; and one great-grandson. His spouse, Edith (Leslie) Wald, died in 2021.
