‘Connie Chung’ May Scrap Re-Enactments : Television: The technique has been criticized for confusing viewers and undermining network news credibility.

CBS News’ “Saturday Night With Connie Chung” may be moving away from its “dramatic re-enactments” of recent events--a technique that has been strongly criticized for confusing viewers about fact and fiction and undermining the credibility of network news.

According to CBS sources, staff producers on the show recently were told not to go into production on three planned re-enactments--one on Ernest Hemingway, one on a child prodigy who died in the 1940s, and a third on Caryl Chessman, a convicted sex criminal who died in a California gas chamber in 1960.

“The producers were simply told not to go out and shoot the stories,” said one CBS source. “They are also interrupting the editing of some pieces that have already been shot. If re-enactments are the heart of the show, then it sounds as if there’s going to be a major revamping of the program. They may not make any major announcement--they’ll just change the show. It’s been a terrible embarrassment to CBS News--and it’s not even getting a rating.”

Since its premiere in September, the program has been No. 83 in the Nielsen prime-time rankings.

Andrew Lack, the executive producer of “Saturday Night,” could not be reached for comment on Friday, and CBS News had no official comment on any possible changes in the show.

But a harbinger of change could come as early as tonight’s show. After this week’s news-making events at the Berlin Wall, according to CBS sources, David Burke, the president of CBS News, ordered “Saturday Night” to go live tonight with news coverage from Berlin. Chung will anchor from New York while Dan Rather and other correspondents report from the scene. (As of Friday afternoon, with the news events still developing in Germany, a decision had not been made whether to devote the entire hourlong program to the Berlin story.)

Planned for tonight’s show was a lengthy profile of a teen-ager seeking an abortion, along with a panel discussion of the issues. In keeping with the style of the program, which has been criticized both by former CBS News executives and TV critics, the case of the teen-ager is an actual one. But the teen is played by an actress, while a judge, medical officials and others involved in the case are the real participants in the case.)

Burke, who has been president of CBS News for the past year, has asked other CBS News programs--”48 Hours,” for example--to scrap planned programs and go live to breaking news stories such as the recent earthquake in San Francisco. But for the Connie Chung program--which is based on film-style pieces--it would be a departure for the whole show to go live.

Burke and some other top CBS News officials are said to be opposed to the Chung program, which was originally created by Lack under the previous news division administration of Howard Stinger--who is now president of the CBS Broadcast Group. Lack, an award-winning documentary producer who was the executive producer of the CBS magazine program “West 57th,” is reportedly is paid by both the CBS News and CBS Entertainment divisions.

“West 57th”--which was criticized as a “video-fluent” version of “60 Minutes” but this year won several news Emmys--was canceled to make room for “Saturday Night.”

The new program was intended as a showcase for Chung, an NBC anchor who was wooed to CBS after it lost Diane Sawyer to ABC.

Lack--who said his inspirations for the show were the movie “Reds” and the old CBS News series “You Are There”--had said that the series might include newsmaker interviews or even straight magazine pieces along with the re-enactments.

But it was the re-enactments--often of events taken out of recent headlines--that were controversial.

In recent weeks, several people close to Abbie Hoffman have protested a planned re-enactment on Hoffman’s last days, with an actor playing the activist. Anita Hoffman, the activist’s former wife, protested that the show, which reportedly focuses on Hoffman’s struggle with depression, portrays him as nothing more than a “broken, pathetic figure” in a script based on interviews with only a few of the many people who knew him. The Hoffman program has not been scheduled yet, according to CBS.

Another program which is likely to be controversial--and was still on the boards as of Friday--is a dramatic re-enactment of the nuclear accident at Three Mile Island. In response to an inquiry from The Times, CBS confirmed that the program was produced with the cooperation of the power company involved in the accident 10 years ago in Pennsylvania. The episode includes a sequence in a simulated control room at Three Mile Island, using actors and real employees of the company.