(FORTUNE Magazine) – "How many of you saw the football games over the weekend?" asked Roone Arledge, the president of ABC News. It wasn't a casual question. On the Monday morning after New Year's, Arledge wanted to deliver a wake-up call to his news division, the longtime broadcast news leader, which faces a stiff challenge from rival NBC News. The Dallas Cowboys and Denver Broncos, venerable old champions, had been toppled by upstart expansion teams. Don't be complacent, Arledge warned, or heads will roll.

But whose head? During this winter of discontent for Disney-owned ABC, two questions loom over ABC News. First, can Roone Arledge keep his star-studded news operation No. 1? Second, can he keep his own job in the face of mounting criticism that he's lost his touch?

The first question has taken on new urgency. Ratings have slid for ABC's World News Tonight, and Good Morning America has fallen further behind NBC's morning show, Today. In addition, ABC's prime-time news magazines have suffered a pair of embarrassing legal setbacks, a $10 million libel judgment that a Florida banker won against 20/20 and a $5.5 million verdict against PrimeTime Live over its use of hidden cameras to investigate Food Lion supermarkets. (Both verdicts are being appealed.) While ABC News still boasts the strongest collection of anchors and correspondents on television, and the best broadcast news program on the air, Nightline, momentum in the network news wars has shifted to NBC.

Millions of dollars a year in advertising revenues are at stake--and Arledge's career may be too. He'd like to stay on as News president, but he's under pressure from David Westin, president of the ABC network, and Bob Iger, president of ABC Inc., to produce results. Westin says: "Bob and I are both pressing hard. But that's not unique to news, by any means." Insiders say Iger and Westin are more involved than ever with ABC News--and less patient than ever with Arledge.

What's more, Iger has already planned a graceful exit for his news chief. FORTUNE has learned that Arledge's ABC contract contains a provision that permits his bosses to move him upstairs in June--on his 20th anniversary as news president--to become chairman of ABC News. He'd stay on as titular head of the division and keep a hand in programming but leave day-to-day operations to his successor. Westin, asked about the contract, said only, "I would like Roone to play a very significant role here for as long as he chooses to do so." Arledge confirms that he may take the chairman job "one of these days."

Easing aside a man of his stature won't be easy. Arledge, 65, a brilliant producer with an uncanny feel for television, has been a major force at ABC for three decades--first in sports, then in news. He virtually invented the world of bigtime sports television, giving fans Wide World of Sports, the instant replay, and Howard Cosell. At ABC News he developed 20/20, Nightline, This Week with David Brinkley, and PrimeTime Live, and collected a galaxy of stars--Peter Jennings, Ted Koppel, Barbara Walters, Diane Sawyer, and the rest--unrivaled by any other network. "Roone is a legend," says Westin.

The trouble is that Arledge's creative juices haven't flowed as freely in the 1990s. In recent years, as NBC News expanded Dateline and Today and launched MSNBC, a 24-hour cable and Internet news channel, ABC News has mostly stood still--although Arledge tried to convince Disney, ABC's parent company, to finance its own all-news channel. A few new ventures are in the works, ranging from a much expanded Internet presence (great idea) to a weekly science news program for cable's Discovery Channel (good idea) to a "watch and fly" contest giving frequent-flier miles to viewers of Nightline (goofy idea). But his detractors say Arledge, once a bold innovator, has turned cautious to avoid staining his gold-plated reputation. "The problem of ABC News is the problem of trying to sit on a lead," says a senior ABC executive.

For example: When Good Morning America came under Arledge's purview midway through 1995, the show was growing stale and losing ground to a revitalized Today. But Arledge, while tinkering around the edges by adding a contributor or two, has been reluctant to replace anchors Charles Gibson and Joan Lunden out of fear that the ratings would fall. Now Today has expanded its lead, Gibson wants out, and Lunden may be pushed too. "We've had to be slow," says Arledge. "We have two people there who are still well regarded." But he adds, "There's no question that's a problem we have to fix."

Similarly, Arledge--who dislikes confronting his stars--was hesitant to ease out David Brinkley as anchor of This Week, his Sunday morning news show, even after others warned him that the 76-year-old Brinkley was struggling with live television. Things got so bad that during one program, Brinkley read the show's introduction twice. Only after Westin pushed did Arledge persuade Brinkley to step down, and even then he was inexplicably permitted to work past midnight on election night. Weary and unaware he was on camera, Brinkley delivered a rude attack on President Clinton, for which he later apologized. Arledge defends his decision to keep him aboard: "Rightly or wrongly, it was a conscious decision that David Brinkley is David Brinkley, and as long as we can have him on, we want him on."

If Arledge can put World News Tonight back on top of the ratings, he can probably stay on as long as he likes. Since December, NBC's Nightly News has won six of seven weekly Nielsens, ending a seven-year stretch when the Peter Jennings program on ABC was a clear-cut No. 1. That's partly because all of NBC, including local stations that deliver viewers to the network, is doing well and partly because Tom Brokaw's Nightly News is well promoted, well packaged, and the most overtly commercial of the three network broadcasts.

To reverse the ratings slide, Arledge wants World News Tonight to remain the most serious program, while devoting more time to stories that attract viewers, like the O.J. Simpson trial. The program has already softened a bit, with a news-you-can-use segment, called Solutions, that helps viewers cope with such problems as snoring or caring for an aging parent. "The challenge is what it's always been," he says. "How do we stay the most serious, and also the most popular?"

There's no doubt that the old Arledge could accomplish that trick. But his critics and bosses worry that he's disengaged, a charge he denies. The truth is, Arledge has never been a conventional manager. Like a distant and demanding father, he pits stars and producers against one another, withholding his attention and approval, staying aloof. He's famous for not returning phone calls and disappearing for hours or days at a time. That was tolerable when ABC News was dominant, but one of his anchors now gripes that "the battalion's under attack and the battalion commander can't be found."

Arledge, though, should never be counted out in a battle. His best asset may be that he enjoys the support, if not the affection, of most of his ABC stars, who trust his instincts as a producer. "He has the loyalty and respect of many of the strongest people around here," says Nightline executive producer Tom Bettag. An enormously charming man, Arledge also remains a great recruiter. He persuaded former White House aide George Stephanopoulos to join ABC News, has been pursuing former Today anchor Bryant Gumbel, and confidently predicts that Diane Sawyer, who is being courted by CBS, will stay at ABC.

Arledge also has an important friend in a very high place: Michael Eisner, the Disney CEO, who has admired him since they worked together at ABC in the 1970s. If Iger and Westin decide they want to bump Arledge upstairs, they'll have to sell the idea to Eisner, "who only knows Roone as an icon," grumbles an ABC insider. Being a legend helps. But if Arledge doesn't get the ratings numbers up, that might not be enough.

REPORTER ASSOCIATE Joyce E. Davis