KCBS DROPS SANDY HILL . . . AGAIN

For the second time in her career, Sandy Hill was dropped Friday as an anchor at KCBS Channel 2. Beginning Monday, she’ll be replaced on the station’s 4:30 p.m. weekday newscast by veteran journalist and commentator Bill Stout.

Frank Gardner, general manager of KCBS, said replacing Hill with Stout constituted the “finishing touch” on an effort over the past six months to turn the early newscast into “a hard-hitting, substantial broadcast.”

Hill had been on her second tour at Channel 2. She was fired from the CBS-owned station in 1976, then had rejoined it in 1982 following stints as an anchor at KABC-TV Channel 7 and as co-host of ABC’s “Good Morning America.”

She had been co-anchoring the station’s 5 p.m. and 11 p.m. newscasts until last June, when she was given the 4:30 p.m. news show to make room for Tritia Toyota, who had just moved to KCBS from KNBC Channel 4.

In a statement released by KCBS Friday, Hill said she was disappointed and frustrated by the decision to replace her and would be leaving “to pursue other opportunities in the news broadcast field.”

Stout has been working in broadcast journalism in Los Angeles since 1950--most of that time at Channel 2, counting a seven-year period in the late 1950s and the period since 1972. Gardner said that Stout will continue to deliver his commentaries on the 6 p.m. “Channel 2 News.”