MUDD MULLS BUYOUT OF NBC PACT

Roger Mudd, who last month sharply criticized NBC for axing the low-rated “1986” news-magazine series that he co-anchored, may soon be leaving the network himself.

Mudd’s agent and NBC executives have been holding talks that include discussion of a “potential buyout” of his long-term NBC News contract, according to a source close to the program on which Mudd had worked.

“It’s mutual,” the source said Wednesday, when asked whether Mudd or NBC had proposed a possible contract settlement that would free the strong-willed veteran newsman to seek work elsewhere.

Mudd, 58, who joined NBC in 1980 after nearly two decades at CBS News, was reported on vacation and unavailable for comment. NBC News President Lawrence Grossman declined to comment, saying Wednesday that he never discusses contract matters in public.

After he told Mudd that “1986” was being dropped, “we had a discussion about what he’ll do next,” Grossman said. But he declined to elaborate on that conversation. The program’s last broadcast was Dec. 30.

In contrast to Mudd, his “1986” co-anchor Connie Chung and correspondent Maria Shriver already are at work on an AIDS special to be aired Tuesday night.

When NBC announced that the ax would fall on what had been its only prime-time news program, Grossman emphasized that he alone had made the decision and thought that NBC News’ resources would be put to better use in documentaries.

At that time, the NBC News chief, who has 15 one-hour documentaries planned for this year, warned against blaming NBC’s cost-conscious new owner, General Electric, for the cancellation of the program.

Nonetheless, Mudd--who anchored the program’s predecessor, “American Almanac,” and reluctantly shared the “1986” anchorship with Chung--put out an angry statement shortly after the cancellation was made public.

Calling NBC’s action “another sad and painful day in American journalism,” he asserted that “once again the pressure for profits has proved irresistible.”

In an interview Monday with a group of television writers in Los Angeles, Grossman described Mudd’s assertion as “emotional” and “totally inaccurate,” and added, “It was unfair and I was disappointed in it.”

The Washington-based Mudd, who reportedly is earning $1.2 million annually under his NBC contract, has had previous disappointments of his own. He co-anchored the “NBC Nightly News” with Tom Brokaw for 17 months until NBC decided to make Brokaw the solo anchor in September, 1983.

But perhaps his most bitter disappointment came in 1980 when CBS, facing a decision on the successor to Walter Cronkite as anchor of the “CBS Evening News,” chose Dan Rather over Mudd.

When that was announced, Mudd put out a terse statement that said: “The management of CBS and CBS News has made its decision on Walter Cronkite’s successor according to its current values and standards. From the beginning, I’ve regarded myself as a news reporter and not as a newsmaker or celebrity.”