Evening News Fires Top Broadcasting Executive

Detroit-based Evening News Assn., target of a $453-million hostile tender offer this week by Hollywood television executives Norman Lear and A. Jerrold Perenchio, said it fired its top broadcasting executive Thursday for leaking confidential reports “to a person involved” in the takeover attempt.

The association, owner of several television stations as well as the Detroit News and smaller newspapers, said Peter A. Kizer, head of its broadcast division, “admitted his actions in a conversation with company officials (Wednesday).”

The announcement said Kizer, 55, “acknowledged that, without authorization, he delivered internal documents and information, including confidential and proprietary financial information and forecasts” to a person involved in the attempt by Lear-Perenchio’s L. P. Media Co., whom it declined to name.

Kizer, who joined Evening News in 1970, recently was elected vice chairman of the National Assn. of Broadcasters. No one answered the telephone at Kizer’s home late Thursday. Neither Lear nor Perenchio could be reached.

L. P. Media’s prospectus for the tender offer had disclosed that Perenchio became interested in the company last January when he received a copy of a confidential five-year earnings forecast from a top Evening News executive.

Peter B. Clark, Evening News Assn. president and chairman, who earlier vowed to fight the offer, said in the Thursday announcement: “This is an outrageous example of broken trust and calls into question the business ethics and practices of the company involved in the takeover attempt.”

Evening News said its lawyer has subpoenaed Kizer for questioning under oath in a federal court action brought by L. P. Media. The suit seeks to prevent Evening News from using Michigan’s law restricting tender offers.