SEVERINO IS BACK; ‘AMERICA’ IS OUT

In a bizarre turn of corporate events, John Severino was reinstalled Friday as general manager at KABC-TV Channel 7, the job he held from April, 1974, until July, 1981.

He was appointed by Dennis Swanson, who once worked for Severino at the ABC-owned station in Los Angeles. Severino replaces Tom Van Amburg, who had inherited the position in 1981 when Severino was named president of ABC-TV.

In that position, Severino headed the network’s entertainment, sales, affiliate relations and engineering divisions. Last March, however, saying he wanted to return to Los Angeles from his New York base, he accepted a demotion to senior vice president of ABC’s TV stations division.

At the same time, Swanson, who had worked for Severino as news director and then station manager at KABC, was named president of the division, making him Severino’s boss.

“There is no one more knowledgeable about the Los Angeles market than Sev,” Swanson said in making the appointment, which takes effect Jan. 17.

ABC did not say anything about Van Amburg’s future, and he could not immediately be reached for comment on Friday.

“America,” the syndicated talk series co-hosted by McLean Stevenson and Sarah Purcell, is being canceled after less than four months on the air and will have its last broadcast on Jan. 3, spokesmen for the one-hour daytime program say.

The decision to end the show was made Thursday, six days after four CBS-owned television stations, including KCBS-TV in Los Angeles and WCBS-TV in New York, said they were dropping the series because of its low ratings.

Although the producers of the series hoped to keep “America” going, the cancellations by the CBS-owned stations were seen as a death blow. WCBS and KCBS serve the nation’s largest and second-largest television markets, respectively.

An “America” spokeswoman said the series was airing in 114 markets when it was canceled. The program, co-produced by Paramount Television and Post-Newsweek Stations Inc., premiered in September as a companion program for local news shows.