CBS CHIEF: NO ANSWERS ON LAYOFFS

Laurence A. Tisch, the acting head of CBS Inc., says he hopes that the current round of layoffs at CBS will be finished “in the next couple of weeks and that we can get back to the normal business operation.”

But he offered no hope that the layoffs--part of a cost-cutting process begun more than a year before he joined CBS--are the last. He said he’d “rather not say . . . that this is the end of it when it really isn’t.”

Tisch, who generally has avoided reporters since taking over from ousted CBS Board Chairman Thomas H. Wyman on Sept. 10, spoke in an interview appearing in this week’s editions of Broadcasting magazine.

In the interview, Tisch, who is running CBS with William S. Paley, the company’s founder and now its acting chairman, also:

--Said that acting CBS News President Howard Stringer, appointed after the Sept. 11 resignation of Van Gordon Sauter, was “doing a good job.” Tisch “unequivocally” vowed that CBS will “expend every effort to make the news division or the news area better than it’s ever been.”

--Said he didn’t think that CBS, which has been selling off most of its non-broadcast operations in recent months, “should be a so-called conglomerate. I think this should be a media company with an emphasis on broadcasting. . . .”

--Said, when asked if he’d like to be CBS’ permanent president, that “I’m not sure I would do it (accept the job), but I’d be lying to you if I said I wouldn’t consider it.”

He also forecast “a couple of tough years ahead” for all three major networks because of flat revenue and rising costs.

Since July, 1985, CBS has eliminated about 1,500 jobs. So far this month, at least 200 more employees here have been dismissed. They ranged from 26 low-paid young pages to CBS Publishing Group President Peter A. Derow. Although Derow will now be a CBS consultant, his old job was eliminated, as were those of 14 members of his executive staff.

The current layoffs aim at trimming CBS’ administrative and executive staffs and eliminating layers of management that Tisch believes are unnecessary.

In the Broadcasting interview, conducted in question-and-answer form on Oct. 20, he said that the aim of the current cuts is to reduce the number of jobs that aren’t deemed essential to CBS’ basic business:

“I mean, it doesn’t make any difference to the viewer how many people CBS has in corporate public relations or in corporate investor relations . . . the main thing for the viewer is to make sure that we have the best correspondents available for news and that we have the best programming available for the network.”

In his interview, Tisch seemed certain to raise eyebrows among those who have been laid off this year, either by CBS, or by ABC, which also has been in a process of reducing its payroll in the face of lean economic times.

After saying that CBS was trying to be fair and generous to those dismissed from its administrative and executive ranks here, he asserted that “the (economic) climate in New York right now is such that people can get jobs.

“New York is a very healthy city, and the type of people that are being laid off here can get other jobs.”