HARTLEY TO CO-HOST CBS’ A.M. SHOW

As expected, actress Mariette Hartley has been signed as co-host of the 90-minute lighter side of the new three-hour CBS morning effort that will replace the low-rated “CBS Morning News” in January.

The Hartley-hosted portion, which CBS said will also feature young comic Bob Saget as a cast member, will air weekdays from 7:30-9 a.m.

A male co-host still remains to be chosen for this segment, which has a working title of “The Breakfast Show.” The segment will be produced by a non-news unit headed by Bob Shanks, a former ABC executive who helped develop that network’s successful “Good Morning America.”

CBS News, which for 23 years ran the “CBS Morning News,” will produce the day-starting 6-7:30 a.m. portion of the network’s new dawn venture.

CBS officials said each segment will originate from New York. The three-hour effort represents the network’s latest attempt to be competitive with “Good Morning America” and NBC’s “Today Show,” which is first in the ratings.

In an interview last week, CBS News president Howard Stringer said no format has been decided on and no anchors have been picked yet for his division’s 90-minute opening news segment.

However, he said, the segment will have two co-anchors, offer “hard” news, and be “crisper and timelier” than the network’s current morning program, currently co-anchored by Charlie Rose and Faith Daniels.

(The broadcast’s previous anchors, Forrest Sawyer and Maria Shriver, left in August after only a year on the program. Sawyer is still with CBS News, while Shriver recently joined NBC News as a correspondent on its “1986” news magazine program.)

Stringer said there also will be “news inserts”--brief newscasts--in the Shanks-produced segment, which is expected to offer lighter fare such as celebrity interviews, features and health tips.

Hartley gained a measure of fame several years ago through a series of humorous Polaroid commercials with James Garner. She also has some experience on the network dawn patrol, once substituting for Jane Pauley on NBC’s “Today Show.”

Her signing was announced Friday by Thomas Leahy, CBS Broadcast Group executive vice president to whom CBS Entertainment and the Shanks morning-show unit reports.

Leahy said a format and a male co-host for the second half of the new CBS effort should be ready soon, “hopefully within the next 30 days.”