Prior to that Kaplan was the creator and executive producer of the ABC News magazine, "Primetime Live" from 1989 to 1994. The program became one of the leading news magazines on television, regularly finishing in the top ten of all programs in his final three years there. The trademark of "Primetime Live" became investigative journalism with award-winning broadcasts focusing on child care, racism in the United States, slavery in the Caribbean, unsanitary and dishonest food handling by the major grocery chain Food Lion and the abuse of patients seeking pap smears and mammograms. "Primetime Live" also distinguished itself in its on-the-scene live coverage of such landmark news events as the Gulf War, the historic opening of the Berlin Wall, the 1989 San Francisco earthquake and the 1992 Los Angeles riots. In 1990, he produced exclusive tour of the White House and the Kremlin for "Primetime Live", and later produced ABC's exclusive coverage of the final days of Mikhail Gorbachev’s presidency. At the same time he produced "Primetime Live", Kaplan was one of the producers and on-scene coordinators of the ABC News coverage of the Gulf War from Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. In September 1991, he was the executive producer of the historic ABC News Town Meeting in which Soviet leaders Mikhail Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin appeared together live from the Kremlin, to answer questions from Americans viewing in studios in cities across America. Prior to joining "Primetime Live", Kaplan created and was executive producer of "Capital to Capital", a series of programs which marked the first live exchanges between members of Congress and high-ranking officials at the Kremlin. He was also the executive producer of "Viewpoint", the ABC News forum for criticism and analysis of broadcast journalism and of "The Koppel Report".