CBS's Latest Soap Opera

By Richard Zoglin

Andy Rooney, the elfin curmudgeon of 60 Minutes, usually gripes about quaintly trivial matters like hand soap and junk mail. But in his syndicated newspaper column two weeks ago, he launched an angry attack on a more substantial target: his own bosses. Recent layoffs and the just announced demise of the CBS Morning News, he charged, were symptoms of a growing bottom- line approach to news that is unworthy of a once great network. "CBS, which used to stand for the Columbia Broadcasting System, no longer stands for anything," Rooney wrote. "They're just corporate initials now."

The initials these days might well stand for Can't Buy Serenity. Over the past few months the former No. 1 network has been rocked by enough traumas to fill a season of Dallas. Last year CBS was the target of takeover attempts by Atlanta Entrepreneur Ted Turner and a right-wing group allied with Republican Senator Jesse Helms of North Carolina. Financially drained by its anti- takeover maneuvers (the company repurchased 21% of its own common stock for nearly $1 billion), CBS has since embarked on a painful cost-cutting campaign. The Broadcast Group last month announced that it was eliminating 700 jobs, more than 8% of its work force. The cuts included 90 positions in the news division, where 125 jobs had already been lost in a cutback last fall.

The network's woes have been exacerbated by falling ratings. In prime time, CBS finished a weak No. 2 last season after six years in first place, and prospects for the coming season appear no brighter. The CBS Evening News, long the undisputed king of its realm, is now embroiled in a fierce three-way battle. And the travails of the CBS Morning News have become a corporate embarrassment. After trying everything but food stamps to help the third-rated broadcast, the network announced that it would remove the show from the news division and start from scratch in January with a new, as yet undetermined, program for the time period.

As if that were not enough, a high-level corporate struggle may be brewing. Laurence A. Tisch, who cofounded the Loews Corp. with his brother Preston and emerged last year as a white knight to protect CBS against further takeover attempts, has assumed a more threatening visage. Tisch began buying CBS stock last summer and in October got Government permission to increase Loews' holdings to as much as 25% of CBS's voting stock. But Tisch, who now has a seat on the CBS board of directors, reportedly refused the company's request to sign a standstill agreement that would bind him to the 25% limit. Last week his holdings reached 24.9% of common stock (though less than 24% of voting stock), causing concern at CBS that Tisch may be readying a move to take control of the company.

Speculation over what Tisch might do if he were at the helm of CBS is swirling around the broadcast community. First to go, some contend, would be Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Thomas Wyman, brought in from Pillsbury in 1980 as CBS Founder William S. Paley's hand-picked successor. (Indeed, Wyman and other top executives are guaranteed lucrative severance packages if any single interest acquires more than 25% of CBS's voting stock.) Close behind, say insiders, could be Van Gordon Sauter, the president of CBS News, whom many have blamed for the stumbling performance of the Morning News.

"We're in Kansas, and there seem to be a whole lot of tornadoes directly overhead," Wyman good-naturedly told TIME last week, "along with some that never took place." Wyman denied he is leaving CBS and pointed out that Tisch is still within his agreed-upon limit of 25% of CBS stock. Any effort by Tisch to acquire more shares, Wyman said, would be strongly resisted. Such a move "would represent a broken agreement, and everyone should expect that that condition would be the basis for considering alternatives to protect the independence of the company."

Although Tisch last year denied that he wanted to run CBS, he has kept his current plans quiet. Most broadcast observers do not expect him to make any sudden moves. But Tisch is not the sort of executive to sit idly by as CBS flounders. "Historically, when he makes a commitment, he wants to make his commitment work out," says John Reidy, media analyst for Drexel Burnham Lambert. "He wants to get a return on his investment."

CBS has been having its financial troubles of late. Profits for the Broadcast Group fell nearly 12% in 1985 from the previous year, and the outlook for 1986 is equally dim. With CBS-TV's weakening ratings and an industry-wide slump in ad revenues, company officials have projected a "substantial reduction in network profits" for the second half of this year.

One major trouble spot lies in the early morning hours, a significant profit center for two of the three networks but an estimated $12 million-a- year loser for CBS. From Charles Kuralt through Maria Shriver and Forrest Sawyer, the network has tried countless hosts and formats in an effort to boost the Morning News audience. In May CBS brought in Susan Winston, the former producer of ABC's Good Morning America, to come up with an entirely new format for the show. Her ideas for a city-hopping program with multiple hosts (among the names proposed: Frank Gifford, Connie Chung and Linda Ellerbee) were first received enthusiastically but later rejected. Winston quit after CBS executives told her that the show's budget would be drastically cut and that it would not be produced by the news division. "I felt that was a dramatically wrong move," she said. "Moving it out of the news division smelled of defeat."

Winston was hardly alone in her dismay. Though all three network morning ) shows are a mix of news and entertainment (Good Morning America is produced by ABC's entertainment division, while Today is a product of NBC News), the new CBS morning show will almost certainly have less news content than its predecessor. "Everyone is disheartened to see it go," says CBS Correspondent Bill Plante. "It doesn't contribute to a sense of stability in the network."

Sauter defends the network's move. "As we attempted to make the broadcast more competitive," he said, "it became apparent that we were moving further and further away from the roots of the news division and what the news division does well." The network is also trying to placate affiliate stations, which have grown impatient with CBS's inability to deliver a competitive morning show. One major outlet, Atlanta's WAGA-TV, has already announced that it will cancel the CBS Morning News this fall. Other stations are threatening to follow suit.

If the affiliates are restive, so are CBS staffers, some of whom are speaking out publicly against what they see as management incompetence. "We get a little annoyed when the company tries to make Ted Turner the villain," says 60 Minutes Producer Alan Weisman. "What the company doesn't talk about is the fact that we've had so few hits in the last few years, or the failed ventures that CBS got itself into. To a great extent, the chickens have come home to roost." Some staff members are actually rooting for a Tisch takeover, on the assumption, in the words of one news producer, that "anything is better than what we've got." Susan Winston compares the atmosphere to the days at ABC before the January takeover by Capital Cities Communications: "I think that the various CBS divisions are trying to position themselves for whatever is to come -- meaning the era of Tisch."

Others defend the performance of CBS's management team. "Wyman is doing what's necessary," says Edward Atorino, media analyst for Smith Barney. "He's taking the heat for doing exactly what (Capital Cities Chairman) Tom Murphy has been doing at ABC and getting a lot of applause for." Wyman, meanwhile, admits that the turmoil at CBS has been distracting. Other companies can deal with their problems in relative private, he says, but in network TV it "turns into a soap opera." And a darn good one.

With reporting by Bonnie Angelo and William Tynan/New York