An Embarrassing Failure

By Laurence Zuckerman

In the endless war for the hearts and channel selectors of America's bleary- eyed morning viewers, CBS has never even won a battle. From the day in 1954 when Walter Cronkite and a puppet lion named Charlemane went up against Dave Garroway and J. Fred Muggs on NBC's Today, through the late '70s and early '80s, when such CBS heavyweights as Hughes Rudd and Charles Kuralt were battered by ABC's Good Morning, America, the network rarely finished higher than last place.

What could be worse than an honorable failure? An embarrassing failure. Nine months ago CBS invented one: The Morning Program, a relentlessly cheery farrago of entertainment and information that featured stand-up comedy, personal ads and an intrusive studio audience. Scorned by critics, the show plummeted in the ratings to a record low (10% of the morning audience). Prior to the show's debut, says one longtime CBS producer, "everyone thought we had the lowest ratings you could have in the morning. The Morning Program proved us wrong." Indeed, its abysmal numbers were hurting the following shows of affiliate stations, and mass defections appeared imminent. So no one was surprised when, last week, CBS axed The Morning Program and dismissed Executive Producer Bob Shanks and Hosts Mariette Hartley and RollandSmith.

The show's demise provides CBS News with one more chance to produce an early-a.m. winner. The network brass had raised hackles last year by handing this potentially lucrative time slot to a new production division. Since then, CBS News has been bedeviled by budget cuts, layoffs, a writers' strike and erratic ratings for the Evening News. Now the network's news executives hope that the recapture of this breakfast beachhead will boost morale. Says News President Howard Stringer: "I see this as the starting gun for a more productive, happy period."

Stringer must still devise a solution to one of the network's most vexing problems. While the news division's past efforts were considered too staid to become widely popular, The Morning Program had the opposite trouble. Hartley's awkward one-liners and forced banter were particularly grating. "It was like screeching nails against a blackboard," says Steve Friedman, former executive producer of Today and one of The Morning Program's most enthusiastic detractors.

Stringer says the new show will try to win back news-oriented viewers with an eclectic mix of informational programming. "I want to get away from the couches and the endless parade of celebrities," he says, adding, "I want to do something that is strong and intelligent and witty and wise." He has already found one of his two hosts: Kathleen Sullivan, whom he wooed away from ABC last week for an annual salary reported to be in the high six figures.

The engagement has just been announced, but skeptics wonder how long the honeymoon can last. Sally Quinn was out as co-host after four months in 1973; Phyllis George resigned after less than eight months in 1985. Instead of fretting over their boss's impatience, though, CBS staffers are pleased by the new, eternal challenge. Says one producer: "We went from being the class act of the morning to being the absolute laughingstock. Now we've got to regain what we had." And build on it.

With reporting by William Tynan/New York