Chief of NBC News Quits in Wake of Rigged Crash : Media: Denying he is being forced out, Gartner says he is stepping down to defuse criticism of the network.

Under pressure from NBC President Robert Wright and other network executives, NBC News President Michael Gartner resigned Tuesday, three weeks after the network made an embarrassing apology for staging a fiery crash for a report about General Motors pickup trucks.

Gartner said that he acted to defuse some of the criticism of the network. “I thought, ‘Aw, the hell with it. I’ll get out and maybe the outcry will stop,’ ” he said in an interview.

Several NBC sources said that Gartner’s internal support had evaporated amid the continuing controversy over the rigged crash on the newsmagazine “Dateline NBC,” which was forced to issue its on-air apology in the face of a defamation lawsuit filed Feb. 8 by General Motors. Some executives at the network’s affiliated stations called for Gartner to step down.

The NBC News controversy is the latest in a series of problems to bedevil the once-dominant network, whose profits have plunged to only a third of what they were at their 1989 peak.

This season, after it fell into third place in prime-time ratings, NBC brought in longtime producer Don Ohlmeyer as the new program chief. The network also suffered a high-profile defeat in its efforts to keep talk show host David Letterman from defecting to CBS, and in May will say goodby to its top-rated entertainment series, “Cheers.”

On the news front, Wright agreed that Gartner had become a “a lightning-rod” for criticism.

“It just appeared to him and to me that he wasn’t going to be able to shake it,” Wright said. “I do not hold him personally responsible for this incident. But it became clear that he would not be able to get this thing behind him soon, and, with all the criticisms, there were concerns about morale here and his effectiveness in the job.”

Although Gartner will retain his title until Aug. 1, his fifth anniversary as president, the day-to-day running of NBC News was turned over to Don Browne, executive vice president. The search for a successor to Gartner will begin immediately, NBC executives said.

Gartner, 54, told his staff that he had been planning to leave the network this year anyway. In an interview, he denied that he was forced out and said he had decided to relinquish his duties now “to try and stop all the beating up on NBC News about ‘Dateline.’ ”

Gartner said he accepted ultimate responsibility for the “Dateline” incident, in which a GM truck was outfitted with an improper gas cap and model rockets strapped to the fuel tanks to ensure that there would be a fire when a car crashed into it. NBC hired an outside consultant to aid in the test. Gartner said he had no knowledge of how the test was conducted.

The prime-time newsmagazine did not disclose the tactics to viewers when it broadcast the story last Nov. 17.

Criticism of NBC News and Gartner mounted further last week when, in an unrelated incident, “NBC Nightly News” apologized on the air for having misidentified several pieces of videotape in a story last January about the environmental effects of logging.

“The criticism of NBC was just relentless. Every day there were more people banging on NBC,” Gartner said. Referring to the decision to bring in two attorneys to investigate the rigged crash on “Dateline NBC,” he said, “You hire lawyers, and the New York Times (in an editorial) says it’s a cover-up. . . . I (resigned) so the drumbeat from NBC affiliates would stop.”

Gartner, a former newspaper editor who still owns a group of nine papers in the Midwest, said that he had gone to Wright at the end of last week to say that he did not believe that he would be able to continue in his job.

“Michael’s support just collapsed,” said one NBC executive who asked not to be identified by name. “When Michael told Bob (Wright) at the end of last week that he didn’t think he would be able to rebuild the news division, Bob did not object.”

“NBC Nightly News” anchor Tom Brokaw said he felt bad for Gartner but believed the “Dateline” controversy had obscured “all the excellent work being done at NBC News.”

“This is not how he wanted to go out,” Brokaw said. “I think that he thought that by moving to correct (the errors made in the ‘Dateline’ incident), he could buy time for himself. He wanted the investigation into what happened to proceed and be completed. But because of earlier judgments and his personal style, he had almost no friends.”

From the outset of his tenure at NBC, staffers called him aloof and complained that as a former print journalist he had a sometimes arrogant attitude toward TV journalism. Some said he had further alienated many with the series of stringent cost-cutting measures he was asked to implement by NBC’s parent, General Electric.

He caused more friction over the years for defending NBC after it named the alleged rape victim in the William Kennedy Smith trial, for sending the “Today” show into a ratings tailspin by replacing Jane Pauley with Deborah Norville, and for the development of the lowbrow prime-time series “I Witness Video.”

“This isn’t just about the GM incident,” said one Gartner defender. “It’s pay-back time from Gartner’s enemies.”

In a memo to his staff Tuesday, Gartner listed a string of accomplishments, including quadrupling the number of hours produced by the news division each week, establishing a “strong record in hiring and promoting women and minorities” and bringing the division “onto very sound economic footing.”

“He came here at a time when NBC News was losing money and overstaffed, and he brought NBC into new areas of programming and profitability,” said Browne, his temporary successor. “It was painful for people to lose jobs and friends, but, at the end of the day, he moved NBC News into important new areas.”

NBC No. 3 in Evening News Ratings

Network news ratings for each season, September to September: 1992-93 ( through Feb. ) ABC: 11.3 CBS: 9.9 NBC: 9.5 Ratings points are the percent of 93.1 million TV households

Source: Nielsen Media Research