EX-CBS NEWS CHIEF MUM ABOUT CBS

Former CBS News President Van Gordon Sauter, who resigned on Sept. 11 amid a top-level shake-up at CBS, says he’s been fishing and making speeches of late but has nothing to say about the company for which he worked 18 years in 10 different jobs.

Interviewed Tuesday night, shortly before he appeared on a panel on the future of network news, the bearded 51-year-old former executive said he “hasn’t the faintest idea” yet of what work he wants to do, or whether he’ll stay in news.

“The only plan I have now is to move to Los Angeles,” said Sauter, who worked there in the mid-1970s as vice president and general manager of KNXT-TV (now KCBS-TV).

“I’m going to get into my truck --a four-wheel van--and take 13 days to get out there. Then I’ll do a few odds and ends, then go to Jamaica for Christmas.”

Sauter, who is married to Kathleen Brown, sister of former California governor Edmund G. Brown Jr., said he probably will know what he will do next by the end of January.

“And I’m supposed to write a book,” he said. It won’t be about CBS or CBS News, he added.