CBS News Division Loses Morning Show

CBS News took a significant step Friday to end in January what viewers have known for 23 years as the “CBS Morning News.”

A new, separate unit--part of neither the entertainment nor news divisions--will be formed at the CBS Broadcast Group to produce yet another version of a morning show for CBS, said CBS News President Van Gordon Sauter. The move takes the troubled, low-rated program away from CBS News, which took over the show in 1963.

The current “Morning News” anchor team of Forrest Sawyer and Maria Shriver will leave the broadcast at the end of next week, Sauter said, adding that he hopes they will stay with CBS News. Their departure had been expected.

Eliminates Boundaries

Creation of the new production unit was announced Friday in a memo from Sauter to CBS News staffers in which he said that after weeks of discussion, “we have decided to eliminate the traditional boundaries” between news and entertainment “that experience after experience have convinced us are too restrictive.”

A spokesman said the new show won’t necessarily be anchored by news staffers, as has previously been the case. However, the new production unit will report to Sauter.

Friday’s announcement marked the latest CBS effort to come up with a competitive morning show against NBC News’ front-running “Today” and ABC’s “Good Morning America,” which began in 1976 and is produced by ABC’s entertainment division.

For years, the CBS program usually has been third in the morning-show ratings race. With its rivals taking a lighter tone and devoting more time to soft features and celebrity interviews as well as hard news in recent years, the format of the “CBS Morning News” has often been revamped and new anchor teams brought in, but to no avail.

sh Pressure From Affiliates

CBS affiliates have been pressing the network for a more competitive program.

Although no format for the new program has been discussed, CBS News “will be a significant contributor to this (new) broadcast,” a spokesman said, adding that the “Morning News” will continue in its current form with temporary news anchors until January.

No replacements were immediately named for Sawyer and Shriver, who became the program’s latest anchor team last August after the ill-fated teaming of Bill Kurtis and Phyllis George in January, 1985. The contracts of Sawyer and Shriver expire next month.

Plans More Discussions

Sauter also said that no decision has been made yet about how Susan Winston, who now in effect runs the “Morning News,” will fit in with the new setup. She is flying back from London, he said, and “we’ll talk” on Monday. CBS’ decision to create a separate production unit for its new morning broadcast was seen by some in the news division as a compromise to prevent the two-hour time period now held by the “Morning News” from being given back to the entertainment division.