HOUSE INVESTIGATES TAKEOVERS, CHANGES : NETWORK NEWS EXECS FACE HEARING

The chief executives of CBS, NBC and ABC and the heads of each of their news divisions will be asked to testify next month at a House subcommittee hearing on what effect network takeovers, mergers and management changes have had on their news operations, a subcommittee official said Friday.

The hearings will be held April 28-30 in Washington by the telecommunications, consumer protection and finance subcommittee of the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

Chief executives Laurence A. Tisch of CBS, Robert Wright of NBC and Thomas Murphy of ABC will be asked to appear, as will CBS News President Howard Stringer, ABC News President Roone Arledge and NBC News President Lawrence Grossman.

Others in the industry--such as veteran correspondent Ike Pappas, among more than 200 staffers recently laid off in a major cutback at CBS News--also may be invited to appear before the subcommittee. However, a decision on additional witnesses still is pending, said Larry Irving, chief counsel for the subcommittee.

NBC was purchased last year by General Electric, and ABC was acquired the previous year by Capital Cities Communications. Last September, CBS underwent a top-level shake-up in which board chairman Thomas H. Wyman was ousted and succeeded by Tisch, a major CBS stockholder.

Irving said the coming three-day session will be an “oversight” proceeding, and that the subcommittee chairman, Rep. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass), is not considering any new legislation that would affect broadcasting.

The hearings were announced a week after a member of Markey’s subcommittee, Rep. Dennis E. Eckart (D-Ohio), urged that they be held, saying that “we are deeply concerned that with the rush to (network) profits, the public interest has been trampled.”

Eckart, speaking at a news conference outside the Washington offices of CBS News, where striking news writers were picketing, also said he felt that a public-interest standard ought to be applied to ownership and control of a network “much in the way that Congress, through the FCC, imposes a public-licensing standard to own a television station.”

Although they serve more than 600 TV stations, the networks only are licensed to own and operate a total of 17. ABC owns eight, NBC five and CBS four. GE, NBC’s parent company, separately owns another station, KCNC-TV in Denver.