Aaron Brown Goes National, Hosting ABC Overnight News

Aaron Brown - soon to be a household name from Boston to Bakersfield?

And maybe even Barcelona.

The KIRO-TV anchorman's next job will be co-anchoring ABC's new national overnight news broadcast.

Brown has yet to sign a contract with ABC. But both he and sources at the network characterized it as a done deal.

"It's not so much that I feel `Wow, I'll be in every home in America, I can smirk my way across the land,' " Brown said today, confirming his next post. "It's more that I feel that it's going to be like being a cook in a great kitchen where all the ingredients are the best and you're encouraged to use them all to make whatever journalistic concoction we're going to throw out there each morning."

After months of rumor, Brown earlier this week confirmed that he would be parting ways with his employer of the past five years.

Tonight, he anchors KIRO's 11 p.m. newscast for the last time. Jan. 6, he is to make his first appearance on ABC's four-hour block of news, which will be available to ABC affiliates to air after "Nightline."

Brown's wife, Charlotte Raynor, a reporter at KING-TV, also posted notice last night that she'll be leaving her Seattle job.

"I have to get us moved to New York and get us settled there," Raynor said. "Then I have the luxury of some time to figure out what I want to do next."

Brown wouldn't detail his new contract, but did say "it was probably the least secure option" of those he had considered.

"There's enough security that it's worth it to pick up my family and move them. It wouldn't be if it were a 13-week contract," he said.

Raynor said the couple and their 3-year-old daughter would probably find a place to settle outside New York City, "someplace with grass and preschools."

"There's something about this I still don't believe yet," Raynor said. "For him, this is an opportunity of a lifetime, the realization of a dream."

A Minneapolis native, Brown came to KING-TV in 1976 as a night assignment editor, eventually ascending to the anchor seat of the market's most popular 11 p.m. newscast. KIRO wooed him away, but was never able to find the formula for Brown to duplicate his ratings success.

Brown said ABC reminds him of KING-TV in the days he worked there, from 1976-86.

"There's a sense of excitement" at ABC, "a sense that they are doing terrific stuff. We're winning. We have news management that believes and loves us; corporate management that understands what we do."

ABC has also shown a knack for fitting "niche players" in the right on-air roles, Brown said. "Whether it's finding the Sunday show for Brinkley or `Nightline' for Koppel or for that matter using in different ways Howard Cosell. I suppose one could make the case I'm a niche player in the business. I feel that whatever happens, I'm comfortable in their hands."

During an audition for ABC, Brown admitted to being so nervous "you could have lit a match on my tongue."

"I don't like doing public speaking, as crazy as that sounds. I don't think of it much that way. I think of it as individual speaking. It's just talking to one person in a lot of different places."

Brown also answered current-events questions and wrote an essay as part of the ABC application process.

"It think for whatever reasons they were looking for somebody who was demonstrably different from what you normally get. I think I'm a little different."

With the network job, Brown moves from the 13th-largest TV market in the country and a nightly viewership of around 100,000 people, to a broadcast that ABC hopes will soon be watched by 1 to 2 million, Brown said.

ABC also plans to sell the overnight news service to foreign markets to compete with Cable News Network's overseas service, Brown said.