A New Dawn for Sullivan, ‘CBS This Morning’? : Television: A happier Kathleen Sullivan is looking forward to the post-Pauley morning TV contest.

In September, the demise of Kathleen Sullivan on “CBS This Morning” was the rumor du jour inside CBS News.

Sullivan, the dark-haired hope from ABC News, had been unable to work ratings magic in nearly two years as anchor with Harry Smith on “CBS This Morning,” the latest in a long line of CBS a.m. shows that have ranked third against ABC’s “Good Morning America” and NBC’s “Today.”

“CBS This Morning” was regarded as a dignified successor to the disastrous “Morning Program” with Mariette Hartley, and Sullivan had enjoyed more longevity than a lot of other anchors on the CBS morning shows. But ratings are the ultimate test in television; and, besides, Sullivan’s stock was down with some CBS executives after she called CBS the “Cheap Broadcasting Service” in a joking remark that was broadcast over an open mike that allowed the comment to be overheard.

Although Sullivan had another year to go on her million-dollar contract and was one of the best-known female anchors at CBS, the betting was that she might be eased out by the end of the year. She acknowledged as much when she appeared with Jane Pauley and “GMA’s” Joan Lunden on the “Donahue” show shortly after Pauley announced her planned departure from “Today.” Sullivan, looking haggard, responded to a question about ratings pressure by telling a startled Donahue, “The ax is right there. (If) we don’t get viewers, and we don’t improve from where we are, my days are numbered.”

Today, Sullivan, 38, wearing a bright-red knit suit and striding through the winter snows of Manhattan in impossibly tall heels, appears to have shed about 20 pounds--and considerable unhappiness. She has come through two difficult events in her personal life. This week, she is officially divorced from Michael Kiner, a California architect and son of Hall of Famer and sportscaster Ralph Kiner, from whom she had been separated since 1988. Her mother and stepfather have recovered from a serious automobile accident.

And she says she’s feeling secure in her job--and hopeful that “CBS This Morning” is on an upswing, ready to win away some of the Jane Pauley loyalists who are expected to shop the dial when Pauley is replaced next week by Deborah Norville.

“I wouldn’t be the first to jump on that bandwagon, but several people have stopped me on the street to tell me, ‘I’m turning away from the ‘Today’ show, so maybe I’ll try you.’ At the same time, we’re showing more energy on our program, and our ratings have been up in the past few weeks. . . . You know, I don’t even like the word ‘third’--it’s too far to throw from third base to put someone out at first.”

Why is Sullivan--who came to prominence on ABC during the 1984 Olympics as the first woman to co-anchor network coverage of the Games--displaying renewed bravado?

She’s happy with the new executive producer on “CBS This Morning,” a 33-year-old hotshot from KCBS-TV Channel 2 in Los Angeles who wears Melrose Avenue neckties and surfside, slicked-back hair--and sticks out like a smile button in the oxford-cloth world of CBS network news.

“I’m a serious news person, but I guess I don’t exactly dress the part,” says Erik Sorenson, an award-winning former news director and station manager at KCBS.

Approached for the job by CBS Broadcast Group President Howard Stringer, Sorenson was hired last fall by CBS News President David Burke. Sorenson, according to staffers, has brought a new energy and openness to “CBS This Morning.”

“I’m boisterous,” he says, “and I’m kind of an in-your-face manager.”

That’s apparently a relief for the producers of “CBS This Morning,” which, as one former producer describes it, developed a “bunker mentality” while the network alternated between hard news and entertainment in its search for an identity that would suit the traditional CBS News image and compete against NBC’s “Today” and ABC’s “Good Morning America.”

“Erik has a vision of the show that it should be a great way to wake up,” says Sullivan, “with substantive information, but a nice mix of entertainment too. When we first started, there were people who felt we shouldn’t be doing any entertainment at all.”

And how long do Sullivan, Sorenson and Smith have to improve the ratings?

“I’ll be concerned for myself and others on the show if we’re sitting here in June, and the ratings haven’t improved,” Sorenson responds. “But that will be my own impatience. No one at CBS has given me any hard timetable, and I expect that Kathleen and Harry will be around for a long time. It takes a very long time to change morning-news viewing habits, and if there’s one thing that’s been learned over the past few years at CBS, it’s that you can’t just put something on the air in the morning and expect instant change.”

Notes one network executive, “I think CBS has decided that, with the changes on ‘Today,’ it’s to their benefit to be stable. Sorenson has made an ally of Kathleen, the show’s lead anchor, and I would imagine they’ve said to him, for the time being, ‘It’s yours to produce.’ ”

When CBS News took back the early-morning slot two years ago after the failure of “The Morning Program,” CBS research showed that a significant portion of the audience had been alienated by the show, which featured a studio audience and early-morning comedy elements.

“We’ve re-established the show as a hard-news alternative,” says Harry Smith, “and there’s a feeling now that we have a window of opportunity when maybe people are going to shop around a little bit in the morning.”

After keeping a low profile since taking over the show, Sorenson recently announced several new additions that he says are designed to make the CBS show more competitive with “GMA” and “Today”:

--He hired sportscaster Greg Gumbel (who happens to be the brother of “Today” anchor Bryant Gumbel) to be a sports reporter and substitute anchor. Besides hiring a strong reporter, Sorenson admits, he likes the “marquee value” of the Gumbel name--and having the brothers Gumbel go mano a mano in the morning.

--Along the same line of reasoning, Sorenson has not renewed the contract of film director Peter Bogdanovich and is talking to film critic Gene Siskel about doing segments on movies. Despite Bogdanovich’s fame as a director, Sorenson says that more TV viewers are familiar with Siskel from his TV series with fellow critic Roger Ebert.

--Two California-based reporters have been hired to do entertainment and on-the-road features, respectively. Wayne Freedman from KRON-TV in San Francisco is on the off-beat feature beat. Steve Kmetko from KCBS gives CBS its own L.A.-based entertainment reporter, a position already filled by Jim Brown for “Today” and Chantal for “GMA.”

--Sorenson also plans to take the show out of the studio and on location, and CBS sources say that he has the backing of management to get new financial resources for the show. Sullivan will anchor the program for several days from Los Angeles, beginning Jan. 15, while Smith anchors from New York.

Although some Washington staffers worry that the show might lose some of its hard-news emphasis, Sorenson says, “We’re not moving away from news--in fact, CBS News correspondents are being asked to make us more of a priority for stories. What you probably won’t see as much of are what I call ‘institutional’ interviews, where you simply bring in a panel of experts to discuss a topic.”

During earlier days on “CBS This Morning,” Sullivan had developed a reputation for occasionally being temperamental backstage.

“She can be a real prima donna and demanding towards staffers,” says one CBS source. But others on the show say that she was demanding on behalf of the show.

“When the program was returned to the news division, we literally had only a few weeks before the show went on the air live,” says Sullivan, who had been anchor on ABC’s early-morning newscast and substitute anchor on “Good Morning America” before being hired to anchor “CBS This Morning.” “We didn’t even have a studio of our own--we were next door to Dan Rather. We used to have to tell people to hush up in the newsroom because we were on the air.”

“I had heard that Kathleen could be temperamental, which is not intimidating to me because a lot of on-air people can be temperamental,” Sorenson says. “But if it’s true, there’s another person there today. I think she took on a lot in the early days when the show was getting started with a small staff. She came out of ‘GMA,’ which is produced by the entertainment division and had a tradition of limos and green rooms for guests. If you want to get (Secretary of State) James Baker to come back again as a guest on your show, you don’t stick him in a corner with cold coffee and a phone that doesn’t work. You want James Baker to come back? Give him a bagel.”

Ironically, although Sullivan may be around the office less today, she’s probably performing more effectively. While some CBS sources say that there was disatisfaction with her efforts to promote the show last year, she recalls working all the time, including weekends.

“I stayed around the office from the early-morning hours until late in the afternoon because I thought I had to help make the show work,” she says. “My husband and I never lived in the same city because of my job, and then I went through a divorce on national television. When my parents’ car went off a cliff this summer in Idaho, I realized that I was having no life.”

Today, with Sorenson aboard, Sullivan leaves at a reasonable hour, giving her time to fill her anchor responsibilities, plus decorate her Manhattan townhouse, work out with a new trainer--and even date. “This business can make you hard,” she says. “I wouldn’t mind being able to be a little softer.”