CBS’ Elevation of Connie Chung Reeks of Marketing : Her personality and popularity outshine her skills. Will her teaming with Dan Rather really make for a better ‘Evening News’?

The “CBS Evening News With Dan Rather and Connie Chung.” Hmmmmm.

In commenting on Monday’s announcement that she would become Dan Rather’s co-anchor on “CBS Evening News” on June 1, Connie Chung thanked the wives of CBS executives “for raising their husbands’ consciousnesses.”

It’s true that Chung breaks the Rather/Peter Jennings/Tom Brokaw white male monolith heading the evening newscasts at the Big Three networks. But a resounding victory for feminists?

That would be true had the job as Rather’s partner gone to Lesley Stahl, Susan Spencer or some other superior female correspondent, someone selected largely for her journalistic skills, not just for her personality and popularity.

Chung is bright, perky, beloved by her colleagues and, as proved by her appearances with David Letterman, a heck of a funny talk-show guest. Plus, she can read a TelePrompTer as well as anyone. But not only has Chung never been among the top journalists at CBS News, some of her giggly interviews on her newsmagazine shows, “Saturday Night With Connie Chung” and “Face to Face With Connie Chung,” have been flat-out embarrassing.

Although Rather has crafted his own cult of personality while epitomizing “CBS Evening News,” at his core he’s a serious journalist, and in addition to anchoring the nightly newscast he carries the title of managing editor.

In contrast, Chung is essentially a star, a classic example of a messenger who inevitably gets elevated above the message.

Thus, the suggestion by both the stiff-upper-lipped Rather and CBS News President Eric Ober that teaming Chung with Rather will somehow make the “CBS Evening News” a better broadcast journalistically--offering the option of having one report in the field while the other anchors in the studio--should be met with skepticism. This emperor is wearing no clothes.

The truth is that Rather isn’t perky. And the truth is that elevating Chung to co-anchor was strictly a marketing decision, one made in hopes of broadening the appeal of the newscast that Rather has anchored by himself since inheriting the job from Walter Cronkite in 1981.

“That’s true, but I like the decision a lot,” said one CBS News insider. “I have never liked the idea of having three white guys (as network news anchors). So we’ll take what we can get.”

To this CBS News observer, the Chung move makes sense on several levels: “I’d rate her about a ‘B’ as a journalist. She’s not Dan Rather. But she’s not some bimbo either. I’d certainly put her up there with Brokaw. And she’s terrific at anchoring. She’s very steady, even when everything hits the fan. Some viewers find Dan very abrasive, and he can get a little crazy sometimes. But everyone likes Connie. Personal chemistry is very important too, and she and Dan really do like each other.”

The move comes at a time when the Rather newscast is fighting Brokaw’s “NBC Nightly News” program for second place in the Nielsens behind ABC’s “World News Tonight” with Jennings. Moreover, NBC News is expected to make an aggressive push behind its new president, Andrew Lack, and Jeff Gralnick, the new executive producer for the Brokaw newscast.

Tight ratings races sometimes motivate TV news moguls to make goofy moves. Thus, one hopes that the Chung/Rather union is only a cosmetic change, not an indication of where the journalism of “CBS Evening News” is now headed under Ober and executive producer Erik Sorenson, who has spent most of his career in local news.

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COSMETICS II. So First Lady/presidential adviser Hillary Rodham Clinton got a haircut. Big deal. The obsession of some television newscasts with her new coif--even to the extent of cornering celebrity hairdressers for their in-depth analysis--is utter foolishness, to say nothing of obnoxious, a throwback to days when presidential spouses were designated appendages.

Viewers of Channel 7’s “Eyewitness News” heard one of these hairdressers proclaim Wednesday: “Millions of women will follow the lead of Mrs. Clinton.” In other words, they’ll mindlessly copy her hairstyle.

Millions more, one hopes, will follow her lead as a thinking, independent woman who is not content with serving musty tradition and publicly living in the shadow of her husband, even if he is President. The power of that example--not the alleged power of her coif--is what stations should be reporting.

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TIME WARP. Ah, the misleading little white fibs that TV sometimes tells. Like this one: At 5:10 p.m. Wednesday, KNBC-TV Channel 4 anchor Paul Moyer alerts viewers to a “breaking story.” So quickly now to the newsroom and John Beard, who reports that a policeman was arrested “last night” in connection with a drug case.

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UPDATE. I noted in my column Thursday that NBC-owned Channel 4 this week carved time from its 5 p.m. and 11 p.m. newscasts for stories on NBC’s outgoing comedy series “Cheers.” That was incomplete. Ever thorough, Channel 4 carried “Cheers”-related stories in its newscasts at 4 p.m., 5 p.m., 6 p.m. and 11 p.m. You can’t beat reporting in depth.

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PUBLIC HEARTBREAK. Good grief, what ever happened to private grief? The public’s right to know does not give media the right to abuse. So private citizens should be allowed to mourn without cameras in their faces.

That wasn’t the case Wednesday when some stations dogged the despairing mother of a 6-month-old boy who died in a fire at their rented two-room cottage that morning. Apparently unaware of the tragedy, the poor woman arrived home from shopping to be greeted by the firefighters and newspaper and TV cameras, which captured her shock, her anguish, her horror, even her shrieks.

Predators.

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POST-MORTEM. Since the departure of controversial news director John Lippman, KCBS-TV Channel 2’s “Action News” is said by some to be drifting without a rudder as the staff awaits the hiring of a successor. Yet some positive post-Lippman changes are evident: No more of those orchestrated anchor questions to reporters in the field. No more mandatory, manufactured tie-ins with “Geraldo” on the 5 p.m. newscast. No more soap opera babble on the noon news.

Still intact during the noon news, though, are those live cut-ins with Geraldo Rivera in New York, in which he fills in anchors Chris Conangla and Tritia Toyota on the topic of that day’s “Geraldo.”

As in: “He married her but is sleeping with her .” Well, it is “action” news.