ROSE GETS NEWS SLOT

Charlie Rose, now on leave from CBS News’ late-night “Nightwatch” to co-anchor the low-rated “CBS Morning News,” will continue on the latter program until it is replaced in January by a new morning show, a spokeswoman said Thursday.

His slot on the Washington-based “Nightwatch” will be filled on a rotating basis by correspondents Fred Graham and Terence Smith, CBS said.

Rose, whose “Nightwatch” started in January, 1984, and has suffered staff cutbacks recently, began his new morning job last week with co-anchor Faith Daniels. Daniels began anchoring the “Morning News” earlier this month after the regular team, Forrest Sawyer and Maria Shriver, were taken off the program after only 11 months there.

Daniels is scheduled to go on maternity leave in October, and CBS said Wednesday that she would be succeeded by Sandy Hill, a former news anchor for KCBS-TV in Los Angeles and former co-host of ABC’s “Good Morning America.”

Hill co-hosted “Good Morning America” from 1977 to 1980 and has had two tours as a news anchor at KCBS. She joined the station in 1974, then was let go two years later during a change in anchors made in hope of boosting KCBS’ ratings.

She rejoined the station as an anchor in 1982, but was dismissed again last January when replaced on the station’s 4:30 p.m. weekday newscast by veteran journalist and commentator Bill Stout.

KCBS recently announced plans for a radical new 4-7 p.m. weekday news and feature format to start on Sept. 15. As part of that change, the “CBS Evening News,” now broadcast in Los Angeles at 7 p.m., will start airing a half-hour earlier.

The shift will put the “CBS Evening News” in direct competition with the “NBC Nightly News” in Los Angeles, the nation’s second largest television market.

NBC’s news program in recent months has been challenging the long ratings leadership of the “CBS Evening News,” and defeated it in the national Nielsens for the week ending Aug. 15. NBC’s program had a average rating of 9.7, CBS’ program a 9.4, and ABC’s “World News Tonight” an 8.7. Each rating point represents 859,000 homes.