News by the Numbers

By RICHARD CORLISS

When Henry Morton Stanley went to Africa to find Dr. Livingstone for the New York Herald, he may have carried no more than a note pad and a few supplies. In the electronic age, reporters backpack a heavier load. A network correspondent must lead a safari of a producer and camera and sound technicians. Each network spends up to $10 million a year to maintain Washington offices, but even the smallest bureau can run up a $500,000 annual tab. CBS spends nearly as much on Diane Sawyer's $1.2 million contract as on the three bureaus it will be closing down -- Warsaw, Bangkok and Seattle. But in a business where personalities win ratings and ratings bring profits, Sawyer wins in a walk.

Howard Stringer now must keep the network from losing in a limp. "This is a tough and tragic time for us," says the CBS News president. His tough job is to reverse the trend in soaring budgets, sparked a decade ago at all three networks by the lure of high-tech equipment and ABC News President Roone Arledge's U.S.F.L.-style raids on the competition. Sending the A team to sites of big stories is another hefty item; a weekend in Reykjavik cost each network around $1 million. And in the days of affluence, says a former CBS executive, "Dan Rather used to go overseas with an entourage that would have made Cleopatra comfortable." Those days ended when new managements arrived at the networks.

Each network allots about a third to half its news budget for wages. Rather reportedly makes about $2.5 million, Tom Brokaw $1.8 million and Peter Jennings a relatively paltry $900,000. The average annual salary for an experienced network correspondent is $150,000; at CBS the pay ranges from $90,000 to $600,000. A typical camera person pulls in about $43,000 before overtime. Junior producers, who accompany the reporter and help set up interviews and research the piece, earn between $45,000 and $75,000. Senior network producers, who also help write and edit stories, make from $100,000 to $150,000.

Stringer will eliminate the individual fiefdoms of the Evening News, Morning News, Nightwatch and the weekend news, and toss all staff members into a "net first" news pool. Producers, correspondents and technicians will be assigned to the next breaking story, no matter what its program destination; despite trepidations at Evening News, CBS executives insist the program will have first call on personnel. With this system, Stringer argues, "you can use all your resources at a single time. Everybody can charge when necessary."

There will be fewer "everybodys," though. As many as 35 of the division's 250 producers have been let go. The Morning News, a producer predicted, will become more like a newsreel, drawing many of its stories from overseas and affiliate bureaus, and will lose at least 20 of its 75 staffers. Stringer, hailed as the savior of CBS News when he took the job last September, wriggles in his role as the terminator. "Right now we're not thinking much about the outcome of the war," he says. "We're mostly thinking of the casualties."

With reporting by Naushad S. Mehta/New York