Hunt for Chief of Network’s ‘Soul’ : Many in TV Industry Keep Close Eye on CBS Changes

After the ouster last week of CBS Chairman Thomas H. Wyman and news division President Van Gordon Sauter, “60 Minutes” correspondent Morley Safer stood in front of the network’s Manhattan headquarters and announced happily to a local television news crew that it felt like the “old CBS again.”

According to many in and outside CBS, however, not all Safer’s colleagues want, nor will modern television technology and economics allow, the old CBS to return.

Even those most critical of management say much depends on who replaces Wyman and Sauter permanently.

Safer was specifically referring to CBS News, the so-called “soul” of the network. The shake-up at CBS was hastened, executives now admit, by complaints from within CBS News that management was trying to bolster sagging profits by mixing news with entertainment.

Safer’s remark also referred to the return of CBS founder William S. Paley as chairman, replacing Wyman. CBS’ largest shareholder, Laurence A. Tisch, is temporary president. A blue-ribbon committee, including former CBS anchorman Walter Cronkite, will now hunt for a new president of the news division.

To some in television, the choices they make will bear heavily on the future of network television news, for which CBS traditionally has set the journalistic and ethical standards.

Tisch and Paley told reporters over the weekend they believe that it is more important that the news division maintain journalistic standards than turn a profit. “We want to raise standards at CBS News above what they’ve been the last couple years, and I do not think that is a matter of money,” one key member of the CBS board agreed.

Yet within the CBS ranks many are waiting to see if such statements are just designed to boost morale or whether, in difficult financial times, Tisch and Paley will really afford losses.

It is also far from clear whether everyone at CBS News agrees that something was wrong with its approach to news. One of the strongest critics of CBS management was CBS commentator Bill Moyers, whose comments in Newsweek magazine last week, claiming a decline in standards at CBS News, were widely discussed within the network.

Yet CBS anchorman Dan Rather said Monday: “I think if Mr. Moyers was closer to these people, or worked with hard news on a day-to-day basis, he wouldn’t say what he has said.”

Heard From Opponents

At least some within CBS, particularly some younger journalists, concurred with the fallen Sauter over news philosophy. “You just heard more from his opponents,” one producer in his early 30s said.

“I think Sauter was just dealing with a new reality, the changing economics of television,” the producer said. “The days of the protected news division, the gentleman’s club, are over.”

Realistically, CBS News also has become so large a bureaucracy that some view skeptically the notion that Sauter alone bore responsibility for its personality, or that replacing him will effect much change. At a meeting of bureau chiefs in Park City, Utah, last month, for instance, a bet was made as to who could name all 14 CBS News vice presidents in attendance. Only one bureau chief could.

Many of those promoted during Sauter’s five years in charge of CBS News, moreover, remain in place. For instance, Howard Stringer, the man tapped to run news temporarily after Sauter’s ouster, was executive producer of Rather’s nightly news broadcast during the years when critics charged that it became softer.

And to many within the ranks of CBS News, the debate over philosophy is more academic than practical.

Show Stayed the Same

“I don’t think the corporate shake-ups have much effect on the news,” said Robert Northshield, executive producer of “Sunday Morning.” “I produce one show that has lasted through five CBS News presidencies, and it looks about the same as it did eight years ago.”

And, in the lower ranks, “a lot of us can’t afford to be righteous,” one middle-level editor said. “We want to work in network television. Whatever kind of tape you want, yes, sir. That’s what we’ll give you.”

Even at the top of CBS News, some seem to want to adapt to changing conditions. Rather, a friend and at times defender of Sauter, avoided the question of whether CBS News was letting entertainment encroach in news during an interview this weekend. “There is no pat, neat, simple answer,” he said.

If CBS’ new management does envision a return to old ways, however, many say it may find that impossible, given the changes both in technology and economics.

CBS News once stood as an island within the network, not expected to turn a profit. Yet that was a period when the three networks attracted more than 95% of the prime-time TV audience, when advertising rates were rising and profits seemed as inevitable as a happy ending on a situation comedy.

Profits Shriveled

Today, with the growth of cable, videocassette recorders, improving competition from independent stations and changes in the advertising industry, network television attracts closer to 75% of the audience. And CBS profits, in part from battling takeover attempts, shriveled from $212 million in 1984 to $27 million in 1985.

Networks also once felt pressure to produce public service programming such as documentaries--even if they attracted small audiences--as a way to mollify the Federal Communications Commission.

The much-lauded series “CBS Reports,” for instance, “was born out of the fear of losing the broadcasting license after the quiz show scandals” of the 1950s, said Fred Friendly, the show’s producer and later president of CBS News.

That pressure is now gone, Friendly said. “Today, with the FCC deregulating television, there is no counterweight to the demand for profits.”

Networks also must change because they they no longer have “exclusivity” over their pictures, television journalists say. This footage is now provided to affiliate stations around the country for use on local news shows, often hours before the networks come on the air. Many local stations now also have their own Washington bureaus and send reporters worldwide who can report back live by satellite hookup.

Searching for Alternatives

Networks no longer can fulfill their role as national “headline services,” as they did in the day of Cronkite, and today are searching for ways to distinguish themselves from local news.

“It is a little as if Custer had been cut down early in the battle at Little Big Horn,” said one of CBS’ most admired and vocal critics, speaking anonymously. “It would have removed him from the field, but it would not have changed conditions much.”

Yet some Sauter rivals remain convinced that a strong president of CBS News, who is committed to traditional standards, can change CBS and somehow restore past glory.

“Phyllis George is not attributable to technology or economics,” said former CBS News executive Bob Chandler, referring to Sauter’s choice of the former Miss America and sports personality as co-anchor of “The CBS Morning News.”

Chandler, a 22-year veteran of CBS News, took early retirement last November over differences with Sauter and is now managing editor of NBC’s “1986” newsmagazine series. “I think the news president can indeed make a tremendous difference. It all depends on who gets the job.”

Management Style Hit

While Sauter apparently had become unpopular at CBS News, some of the morale problem had to do with his management style as much as his approach to news.

People began to see Sauter as more concerned with his executive career than CBS News. In staff meetings, Sauter would let subordinates issue his instructions, one editor said, while he sat silently smoking his pipe.

“There was little rapport between Van and the troops, but a great deal between Van and the people above him,” one senior correspondent said.

Sauter was heavily criticized, too, for the way he handled layoffs, perhaps more than that he gave in to them. When CBS News fired 70 people in July, for instance, bureau chiefs were not consulted on which of their staff should go.

Many also felt that some of those dismissed deserved CBS’ loyalty. Middle East Bureau Chief Don Webster, 53, had spent 25 years with CBS in some of the most dangerous war zones in the world, including spending several weeks as a prisoner in Angola. “You just don’t fire a guy who has become a POW for you,” one editor complained.

Sauter, who is fishing in Montana, was unavailable for comment.

Won Praise for Stand

Sauter was not always unpopular. In 1983, he won praise for forcing CBS management to rescind a $12-million cut in the news budget. Sauter reportedly threatened to quit over the issue.

Sauter also earned credit for keeping the CBS nightly news on top in the 1980s after Cronkite’s retirement. At Sauter’s urging, CBS News made more effort to tell stories that became news in Washington from the view of the people affected. A story about the farm crisis, for instance, was reported from farm country.

Much of the criticism toward the end focused on “The CBS Morning News,” a perennial loser in the morning ratings. When pressured to find a winning program for the time period, Sauter embraced some of the entertainment techniques used by other networks for the morning shows to a degree that some in CBS found distasteful.

After Sauter hired George, the former Miss America, as a morning anchor, a group of female correspondents met with one news executive to complain. Is this how we are to get ahead now at CBS News, they asked: skip getting trained as a reporter and enter the Miss America pageant?

What happens now, most say, depends heavily on Tisch. He reportedly faulted Wyman for not cutting enough from the CBS budget overall.

Said Friendly, a friend who introduced Tisch this spring to CBS critic Moyers: “Tisch says all the right things (about news values), but everybody says the right things. Now he is going to be tested.”

Times staff writer Jay Sharbutt in Los Angeles contributed to this story.

Additional stories on CBS in Business and Calendar sections.