Vieira and Kroft Join in CBS Musical Chairs

CBS News correspondents Meredith Vieira and Steve Kroft will leave the low-rated “West 57th” magazine series for its high-rated older brother, “60 Minutes,” the network said Thursday.

The shift comes three months after Diane Sawyer made her well-publicized jump from “60 Minutes” to ABC News to co-anchor a new prime-time series, and less than two months after Connie Chung left NBC to anchor what will be a revamped version of “West 57th” next fall.

Vieira, 35, has been with “West 57th” since it premiered in 1985. Kroft, 43, joined it a year later. Their reports for “60 Minutes” will start appearing in the fall, when the show launches its 22nd season, a spokesman said.

In announcing the move, CBS said the shift was intended to ensure that its durable Sunday news magazine series “has as bright a future as it has had a past and that it continues to be successful in the 1990s.”

Vieira and Kroft will join the program’s other regulars--Morley Safer, Harry Reasoner, Ed Bradley and Mike Wallace, who turned 71 on Tuesday.

The exit of Vieira and Kroft from “West 57th” leaves only Karen Burns and John Ferrugia remaining on that Saturday-night series. Whether they’ll return with it next fall isn’t yet known, a spokesman said. “West 57th” executive producer Andrew Lack is revamping the series, with Chung to serve as its anchor.

Meanwhile, CBS News correspondent Susan Spencer signed a new four-year contract, even though Chung has taken over the Sunday “CBS Evening News” that Spencer had been anchoring. Spencer will continue to cover the medical beat that she’s been on since 1986, but now also will be involved in political and international coverage.

And a proxy statement given to CBS shareholders at their annual meeting here this week showed that former “CBS Evening News” anchor Walter Cronkite will earn a total of $3,750,000 over a 10-year period under an agreement reached last September. It also said that CBS Broadcast Group President Howard Stringer, who until last July was head of CBS News, is negotiating a new contract that both sides agree will pay Stringer a total of $2.6 million for three years.