CHANNEL 2 WILL RETURN TO HARDER NEWS FORMAT

Continuing negative response to KCBS’ month-old news format prompted Channel 2’s new management to hastily announce Wednesday that the station will return to a harder news format today with three newscasts starting at 4 p.m.

“While the new format was an interesting experiment, the public has spoken,” said Tom Van Amburg, who was brought in as vice president and general manager of the CBS-owned station just last week in response to its continuing low ratings. “To viewers, CBS represents the best in solid news. It’s time to return KCBS-TV to that tradition.”

The station’s new, old-fashioned newscasts will keep present talent in place. Anchors Bill Stout and Valerie Coleman will head the 4 p.m. newscast, followed by John Schubeck and Paula Zahn at 5 p.m and Tritia Toyota and Dan Miller for the final half-hour segment starting at 6 p.m.

Van Amburg said in a prepared statement that the station will incorporate some elements of its existing “news wheel”--the fragmented series of 20-minute segments dedicated to breaking news, health and entertainment--as regular features of its hourlong newscasts.

KCBS spokeswoman Andi Sporkin said that the health segment and interviews by Michael Jackson will become part of the regular newscasts, but that “California Living”--the live, on-location segment headed by former weatherman Kevin O’Connell--will be dropped. O’Connell will return to doing the weather, she said.

CBS’ trendy, new emerald-windowed set, she added, will also stay.

Asked why KCBS had decided to switch formats so abruptly, without a promotional buildup, Sporkin said, “It was important to return to what the viewers expect as soon as possible because the news format didn’t catch on quickly and broadly enough.”

The “news wheel” format, introduced Sept. 15 and billed by the station as the “next generation” of local news, had been designed to pull KCBS out of third place in the news ratings, but it “didn’t have a tremendous impact,” Sporkin explained. “Basically, it stayed in third place, dropping one or two shares” in some cases.

Van Amburg, a former general manager of KABC-TV Channel 7, was hired last week after KCBS General Manager Frank Gardner, who instituted the “news wheel” format, was fired for reasons that were said to be tied to the poor reaction to the plan, both from viewers and critics.

Erik Sorenson, who had served as news director under Gardner, resigned last Friday.