Av Westin, ABC newsman behind award-winning ‘20/20,’ dies at 92
Av Westin, executive producer of ABC’s World News Tonight in 1979 when he was tapped to lead 20/20, the ABC newsmagazine that launched the previous year, has died at 92.
Westin was an influential television producer who rose from copy boy at CBS News for Edward R. Murrow in the 1940s to help make ABC’s “20/20” newsmagazine a perennial winner of Emmy Awards.
A documentarian at heart, states ABTC, “Westin also ordered a series of features called “Moment of Crisis,” which looked back at news events like the disastrous explosion of the Challenger space shuttle and the efforts to save President Ronald Reagan’s life after he was wounded in an assassination attempt.”
Westin’s time at ’20/20′ came to an end in February 1987, “when he circulated an 18-page memo within ABC News and to its top executives at its parent company, Capital Cities/ABC, criticizing news-gathering procedures and calling the division inefficient and in need of a new focus.”
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