CBS PRESENTS OPTIMISTIC FACE TO VISITING PRESS

The low-rated “CBS Morning News” has “stabilized” and may start a comeback in the next few months. All is well at CBS News after the turmoil of 1985. CBS Inc. is doing all right, too, despite the $1-billion debt it incurred to fight off Ted Turner.

Such were the sounds of optimism heard from CBS News President Van Gordon Sauter and his boss, CBS Broadcast Group President Gene F. Jankowski, as they met Thursday at the Century Plaza Hotel with out-of-town TV writers and critics.

About the only note of uncertainty was whether CBS News’ jazzy new “West 57th” series will rejoin the network’s prime-time schedule before the current season ends in April, or afterward, lest the program hamper second-place CBS’ bid to wrest victory this season from the current ratings leader, NBC.

“West 57th,” which had a brief trial run that began in August, had been expected to return in March. Sauter, who lavishly praised the program, would venture only vaguely that it would return “sometime in spring,” with Jankowski echoing that.

Sauter’s press session was his first since December, when he became CBS News’ chief for the second time in his career after incumbent Ed Joyce--whom Sauter had picked as his successor--was replaced after two years and given a new post at CBS Inc.

Some CBS insiders have said that Joyce’s ouster was due both to his aloof style of management and to unhappiness with him by key CBS News figures, including anchorman Dan Rather, who likes Sauter and reportedly wanted him back.

Despite the woes of the third-in-ratings “CBS Morning News” and many press reports about internal uproar at CBS News last year, “the fact of the matter is that CBS News was running very, very, well,” Sauter told the visitors.

Why, then, was Joyce ousted?

“That’s a question for me, not Van,” Jankowski said. He praised Joyce, now a vice president at CBS Enterprises, but said that “it’s no secret that everybody within the news division . . . weren’t all marching to the tune of the same drummer.”

In a news organization, Sauter later added, “bonding is essential if we are going to do our tasks well.”

(In the December job shuffle, Sauter retained his two-year-old post as an executive vice president of the CBS Broadcast Group. In that capacity, he now oversees CBS News and, as CBS News president, theoretically reports to himself.)

Resplendent in a safari jacket, the pipe-smoking executive put on a deft performance Thursday as he got through an hour of questions without once mentioning--or being asked about--either Phyllis George or NBC News’ Connie Chung.

Before George quit in August, she had co-anchored the “Morning News” for nine months amid much criticism. Chung, who formerly worked for Sauter when he ran KCBS-TV in Los Angeles, has been rumored to be the object of wooing by CBS News to co-anchor the program after her NBC contract expires this summer.

Sauter indirectly repeated CBS’ previous denials of those rumors, saying that “I see no change in the personnel of that broadcast in terms of the major roles.” Forrest Sawyer and Maria Shriver have co-anchored the program since September.

Last week’s Nielsen ratings averages show the “Morning News” still deep in third, getting a 14% share of the estimated audience compared to 21% for ABC’s “Good Morning America” and the 25% for NBC’s resurgent “Today Show.”

Nonetheless, Sauter declared himself “very pleased” by the program’s progress under its new executive producer, Johnathan Rodgers, who joined it in November. Sawyer and Shriver “are really quite good and have tremendous potential,” he added.

Without citing George by name, Sauter said there is an “inevitable decline” in ratings when anchors are changed, “and indeed this particular change in personnel (her exit) last summer was one of the most widely publicized in the broadcasting business.”

However, he continued, the expected ratings decline of the “Morning News” was stopped “far earlier than we had anticipated” and “now we’re stable.”

(“Today” producer Steve Friedman, citing still-low ratings for CBS’ program in recent weeks, firmly insisted Friday that “that’s not stabilized. That’s comatose.”)

Over the next few months, Sauter predicted, the “Morning News” is “going to show growth” and then become as competitive in the morning-show ratings race as it was in late 1982 and early ‘83, when it and “Today” briefly were true competitors.

He said that CBS’ primary goal now is to make its morning program “as good as we can,” then start heavy on-air promotion for it in the summer.

Questions about CBS’ fiscal health after its successful but costly fight against Turner’s takeover bid were fielded by Jankowski, who shared the podium not only with Sauter but also the Broadcast Group’s two other top executives, Thomas Leahy and Neal Pilson.

CBS Inc. is in good shape, Jankowski said, even though the company--$350 million in debt before Turner’s hostile takeover attempt--had to shoulder an additional $1 billion in debt in stock repurchases to ward off the flamboyant cable-TV entrepreneur.

“We are not debt-ridden to such a degree that we can’t run our operations,” he said, citing--but without giving specific figures--the 1986 budgets for CBS Entertainment and CBS News. He said they were the largest in CBS’ history.

CBS, he added, is making good headway in reducing its debt, having sold $300 million in assets so far, including KMOX-TV in St. Louis, one of five television stations CBS owned before Turner tried to take over the company.

While CBS wants to buy another station in a growing market, he said, “we’re not about to buy a television station tomorrow. What we’re doing now is our homework to isolate . . . the cities where we think it (a station purchase) would make a good investment in the years to come.”