Pinnacle (TV program)
Pinnacle was a weekend news program that aired weekly on CNN from 1982 until 2003.
History
Founded by CNN's creator, Ted Turner, and first hosted by Tom Cassidy in 1982, the show focused on interviews with business leaders. Pinnacle became one of CNN's most prominent business programs. Cassidy hosted the show but was diagnosed with AIDS in 1987. Eventually, he had to step down and subsequently died in 1991 at age 41. He was replaced by Beverly Schuch. The series won an Emmy Award in 1992 for Schuch's Pinnacle: Special Edition tribute to Cassidy.
For the next 12 years, with Schuch anchoring, the show received high ratings and won numerous awards for news reporting, going beyond business to film finely-crafted cinematic biographical profiles of the world's most fascinating and successful people. With Schuch as host, under executive producers Lisa Yapp and David Saltman, Pinnacle in the 1990s and early 2000s set the standard for cinematic documentaries on television. By the show's 400th episode, it had filmed in-depth profiles of virtually every powerful, successful CEO in America, as well as leaders in the arts, science and culture. The broadcast was ultimately cancelled in 2003, when CNN changed direction and eliminated filmed biography and other documentary programming, as a strategic move in its bruising competition with the then-new Fox News Channel.