RODGERS IN AS CBS A.M. ‘NEWS’ CHIEF

The troubled, perennially third-place “CBS Morning News” got its fifth executive producer in seven years Tuesday as CBS News said Johnathan Rodgers will succeed Jonathan Katz in that post on Monday. Katz, an ex-newspaperman, had held the job since March, 1984.

Katz’s ouster, rumored since May, came as no surprise. Rodgers, a news producer who also was station manager of CBS-owned KCBS-TV in Los Angeles before joining CBS News in New York in 1981, has been executive producer of the weekend editions of the “CBS Evening News.”

The leadership change was the latest chapter in a recent period of turmoil that has afflicted both CBS News and the “CBS Morning News,” the former hit by staff cutbacks and big-name unrest and the latter by frequent, but unsuccessful bids to boost its ratings.

The “Morning News” efforts this year included the much-criticized hiring in January of Phyllis George as co-anchor of the program despite her lack of news credentials; the June departure of her disgruntled co-anchor Bill Kurtis, and George’s resignation on Aug. 31. Kurtis returned to CBS-owned WBBM-TV in Chicago as an anchor; George, who is married to former Kentucky Gov. John Y. Brown Jr., said she resigned for personal reasons.

Two relative unknowns now co-anchoring the program, Maria Shriver and Forrest Sawyer, are the fifth full-time anchor team the “Morning News” show has had since its ill-fated, short-lived teaming of Hughes Rudd and Sally Quinn in 1973.

A former newspaper editor who worked at the Minneapolis Star, the Baltimore News-American and the Dallas-Times Herald, Katz joined the “CBS Morning News” in early 1983, when then-CBS News President Van Gordon Sauter hired him as its manager of news planning.

Like his predecessors, Katz, when he became executive producer of the “Morning News,” was charged with the difficult task of making the program competitive. He attempted that with the bubbly presence of George and by trying to make the program more news-oriented as well as adding regular features on the media, Washington politics, food and travel.

But that effort, like past ones, failed. The “Morning News” continues to remain deep in third place while ABC’s top-rated “Good Morning America” and NBC’s hard-charging “Today Show” battle it out for ratings dominance.

According to the latest available Nielsen figures, the “Morning News” in the week of Oct. 14-18 averaged a 2.9 rating, meaning it was seen in nearly 2.5 million homes. In contrast, “Good Morning America” was seen in more than 4.1 million homes and “Today” in just over 4 million households in the same period.

However, CBS Broadcast Group President Gene F. Jankowski, in a brief telephone interview last week, denied longstanding rumors that CBS is thinking of taking the two-hour time slot occupied by the “Morning News” from CBS News and giving it to the network’s entertainment division in hopes that the division could create a competitive program.

NBC’s “Today” is produced by NBC News, while “Good Morning America” is run by ABC’s entertainment division.

Katz was reported ill with bronchitis and unavailable for comment Tuesday. He will take a brief medical leave, and then return in mid-November as director of planning for CBS News, a spokesman said.

Interviewed by phone from New York, Robert (Shad) Northshield, a former “Morning News” executive producer who now runs the “CBS News Sunday Morning” program, was sympathetic about the tasks that faced Katz when the latter tried his hand at the weekday morning program.

“It’s the toughest job I’ve ever had,” said Northshield, who left the “Morning News” in 1982 after 3 1/2 years there. “It’s relentless. It’s a very, very difficult job.”

No replacement for Rodgers at the weekend “CBS Evening News” was immediately announced. Rodgers, a former executive producer of CBS’ pre-dawn “Nightwatch,” has produced CBS’ weekend news programs since November, 1983.

Like Katz, he is a former print newsman. He began his career as a reporter for Newsweek and Sports Illustrated before moving into television in 1974 as a producer-reporter at NBC-owned WNBC-TV in New York.