‘CBS MORNING NEWS’ REVAMP IS PROMISED

Susan Winston, who has been working on ways to increase the audience of the third-in-ratings “CBS Morning News,” put it bluntly: “I was brought to the ‘Morning News’ to get ratings. It’s that simple. I’ll do whatever it takes to make it happen.”

And, in a later statement also likely to raise eyebrows of traditionalists at the House of Edward R. Murrow, she said that “while the institution of CBS News is a strong cornerstone, it is not enough” to make the “Morning News” a contender.

Doubtless aware that wags say the program has had more face lifts than a Beverly Hills matron, she nonetheless said that yet another new version of it will air in September. But she didn’t say if current co-anchors Forrest Sawyer and Maria Shriver will stay.

Thus did Winston--she was executive producer of ABC Entertainment’s “Good Morning America” when it was first in ratings over NBC News’ “Today Show”--make her inaugural public apearance Wednesday before executives of CBS’ 204 affiliated stations.

Her forum was the closing session of the annual CBS affiliates convention at the Plitt Theater in Century City. She was interrupted several times by applause, indicating the deep yearning by station officials for a competitive morning program, a yearning they made clear to CBS executives in a closed-door meeting on Monday.

She was introduced by the man who hired her, CBS News President Van Gordon Sauter, who said that her five “Good Morning America” years “were marked by success, innovation and rapid adjustments to a changing marketplace.”

The conventioneers also heard brief remarks by “CBS Evening News” anchor Dan Rather; Ed Bradley and Diane Sawyer of “60 Minutes”; Charles Osgood and Charles Kuralt, and Meredith Viera and Jane Wallace of CBS News’ jazzy new “West 57th” series.

But the most dramatic moments came in the blunt address by Winston, who last year briefly worked at ABC News, helping create a pilot program for a proposed series called “Seven Days.” ABC brass shelved the project after seeing the pilot.

(Her last TV venture was the syndicated talk-show series, “America,” which she left in November and which co-starred McLean Stevenson and Sarah Purcell. Pummelled by critics, the show premiered in September but died four months later.

(An ironic factor in its demise was its cancellation by four CBS-owned stations, including KCBS-TV in Los Angeles.)

On the job at CBS News since May 5 as executive director of morning news planning but now in effect running the “CBS Morning News,” Winston didn’t discuss that program’s news content.

But having said that the institution of CBS News is not enough to make the program competitive, she also said that success won’t come, either, by copying NBC’s resurgent, currently first-rated “Today” or the ABC show she ran from 1981 to 1984.

“Morning programs have become clones of one another, television by formula, old and trite formats that viewers are getting tired of,” she said. “It’s about time somebody came up with a new idea. My job is to make sure that the somebody who does is CBS.”

That drew an eight-second round of applause.

“I don’t have all the answers yet,” she continued. “But I do know this. The morning sun does not rise in New York, set in Los Angeles, and skip everything in between. You’d never know it, though, from what you see on morning television.”

CBS’ morning program “should not sit pat in New York,” she said. She declared that “it’s time to take television to people where they live, to originate live from all over the country,” and on a regular basis, not just during key ratings periods.

Last November, Johnathan Rodgers, an experienced newsman then serving as executive producer of the “Morning News” (he now runs CBS-owned WBBM-TV in Chicago), said he regarded it “as more of a hard news broadcast than a soft news program.”

However, Winston, who has no journalistic background, gave no indication Wednesday of whether she shares Rodgers’ view or if she thinks the emphasis should be on soft news segments, which usually dwell more on light features, consumer news and celebrity interviews than the state of the Republic or the world.

Other than saying that the “Morning News” should get out and visit the nation more often, she gave no hint of what will be the look of the program’s newest incarnation.

However, she did note early in her speech that while she’s new to CBS News, “I’m not exactly a newcomer to morning television. I have some knowledge of what appeals to the morning audience and what it takes to compete in the (morning) time period.”

Later in her remarks, she told the convention that “right now, we don’t need just a good idea. We need the right idea, and the right combination of people, format and promotion to give that idea life. I believe that idea is on our drawing board right now.

“By July 15, I will report back to you on the details. By September, a new morning broadcast will be on the air,” she said, adding:

“We’re going to make changes, and while nobody gets a blank check, we have the resources we need, the support of top management and a clear mandate to shape a morning broadcast that will break new ground.”

Such was attempted a year ago when, amid considerable publicity and controversy, CBS News hired Phyllis George, who had no hard-news background, to co-anchor the “Morning News” with newsman Bill Kurtis. She, like “Today” co-anchor Byrant Gumbel, came from sportscasting.

Despite George’s bubbly presence, the “Morning News” ratings failed to rise. Kurtis left last summer to return to his previous post as an anchorman at WBBM-TV. He was succeeded by Sawyer. Then George, after CBS denied persistent rumors that she was leaving the program, left it in August, citing personal and professional reasons.

She was succeeded by Maria Shriver, who had been the program’s West Coast reporter. She is a niece of Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) and last month married body-builder-turned-actor Arnold Schwarzenegger in a much-publicized ceremony in Hyannis, Mass.

But in what seems an eerie replay of the rumors that preceded George’s exit, Shriver this month was reported on the way out. CBS spokespersons have denied this.

On the male front, there also were rumors that ABC sportscaster Frank Gifford was on a list of potential “Morning News” anchors. But those murmurs died when the handsome ex-football star recently renewed his contract with ABC Sports.

Still, speculation continues about whether the Sawyer-Shriver team will continue to anchor the program. CBS News chief Sauter was noncommittal Wednesday when reporters asked him if a change of anchors is indeed afoot.

Asked if he is leaving the door open for such a change, he cryptically replied that there is “no door opened, no door closed.”

Should either Sawyer or Shriver, or both, start life anew elsewhere on the program or at CBS News, it would be the seventh time its mixed-doubles anchor team has changed since the ill-fated pairing of Hughes Rudd and Sally Quinn in 1973.

Winston probably will be officially named as executive producer of the program in July or August, a top CBS News source has said.

In concluding her speech to CBS affiliate executives, Winston, although promising to break new ground with the “Morning News,” made no vows that it soon will escape the third-place cellar that it has occupied in the 4 1/2 years it has been a two-hour program.

However, she said, “I will give you a broadcast that can compete with the ‘Today Show’ and ‘Good Morning America.’ I ask that you give me the chance to compete.”