JIM AND TAMMY: TOTALLY IN COMMAND : ‘Nightline’ Ratings Set Record as Koppel Interviews Dethroned but Still Charismatic PTL Couple

NEW YORK —  Though “Nightline” has often used split-screen technology to let opposing parties confront each other on the air, anchorman Ted Koppel said that he didn’t even try to get the Rev. Jerry Falwell to appear with Jim and Tammy Bakker on Wednesday night’s show.

“This was a night when I wanted to hear from them (the Bakkers),” Koppel said by phone from his Washington office early Thursday. About 20 minutes earlier, he had interviewed the couple from their home in Palm Springs.

So did viewers want to hear from them. ABC estimated Thursday that 20 million people saw at least part of the program, based on overnight ratings that showed “Nightline” attracting 42% of the available audience in 12 major cities--a record for the late-night news show. NBC’s “Tonight Show” drew 18%.

Koppel said the exclusive interview grew out of a brief taped interview with Bakker that aired on Tuesday’s “Nightline,” in which Bakker in effect accused Falwell of hoodwinking him out of his multimillion-dollar PTL television ministry (a charge Falwell denied Thursday on “Good Morning America”).

Koppel said he wanted only the Bakkers on the Wednesday night program because, other than a brief chat with reporters and photographers, “these folks have not really talked for 10 weeks, and all this has been swirling around them.”

Indeed, Bakker said on the air Wednesday that he and his wife had been invited by “just about every program” on TV to appear and tell their story.

But they chose “Nightline,” he said, because “I felt that you (Koppel) are not only tough, but I felt that you’d be fair and give us a chance to share with people all over the country.”

Still, Koppel said later, he’d been more than a bit worried that the Bakkers would get cold feet and bow out at the last minute.

“I’ve got to tell you, I was holding my breath all day long,” Koppel said. “I thought the phone would ring, and he’d say, ‘Look, my advisers have said it’s really a bad idea and maybe I shouldn’t do it.’

“But I must say, he said he was going to come on and that was it. They came on.”

The program marked Koppel’s 10th inquiry since March 23 into what has been dubbed “The Holy Wars” of big-time TV evangelism.

ABC’s Emmy Award-honored late-night news series previously has aired live split-screen interviews with such mutual foes as South African Foreign Minister Roelof F. (Pik) Botha and Bishop Desmond Tutu; the Iranian and Iraqi ambassadors to the United States; officials of the Israeli government and the Palestinian Liberation Organization and, in one triple-header this year, a Soviet official, an Afghan freedom fighter and a U.S. government representative.

Koppel thought a minute when asked what might have happened had he opted to pair the Bakkers with Falwell electronically.

“I think we would have drowned in treacle,” he said.