1) Eliminate the newscast completely. Crush ABC and NBC with repeats of Everyone Loves Raymond.
2) Transform the newscast into something like Nightline. Delve deep into one or two stories that no one else is reporting on. Feature a 5-min. roundtable discussion of the subject at the end using experts, not journalists.
3) Keep the newscast, but broadcast from Chicago (middle America), or more expensively, a different location every week or month. Get someone untraditional to host: Shep Smith, Bob Costas, or preferably some good local anchor we've never heard of.
They have to blow up the whole "Eyewitness News" model and create something new or no one will watch.
The panelists were going to be the same every night; People who had made a name in another field and were smart enough to be able to discuss most every topic, and of course add some spice.
Two on option contracts were Nixon and Howard Cosell. Both were lawyers, both brilliant men (Howard, make that "Hawart," went far beyond sports in his knowledge, insight) and would have been great in that format. Nixon was again the "New Nixon" (Nixon 4.0) and had incredible insight, experience and could be great in one to one interviews. He could lower his head a bit, drop the voice a bit and become "the man who had been there."
Would have been fun!
My suggestion: Follow the model of Bloomberg TV, a small inset screen where the news is read with a headline scroll, a sports scroll, and a money scroll at the bottom. On the righthand side of the screen, you could include a series of running maps/graphs (poll numbers, nations weather, stock market results, etc.). That would allow the small inset box to focus on deeper dives on stories (as you suggested) and change the network news into a more interactive format that would let the viewer focus on what was most important to him/her.