Chung’s Making News Tonight : Television: She becomes the second woman and first Asian-American to anchor a network newscast. Skepticism continues about ‘CBS Evening News’ move.

In the two weeks since she was named to co-anchor the “CBS Evening News” with Dan Rather, Connie Chung says she’s been stopped in public by women and men delivering a common message: “Congratulations--it’s about time!”

She doesn’t have to ask what they mean.

“After what Barbara Walters went through,” she said in an interview here, “I thought it would be a long time before it was tried again. This has always been a very male-dominated profession, and the evening news has been the last bastion of that.”

At least, the network evening news. Women anchors are commonplace at stations across the country, on CNN and even on weekend, early-morning and late-night network newscasts, but when Chung, 46, takes her seat alongside Rather, 61, tonight, she will be only the second woman to be the full-time anchor of a flagship, weeknight newscast at ABC, CBS or NBC--15 years after Walters’ ill-fated matchup with Harry Reasoner at ABC ended.

“She is a very bright, talented TV journalist--and she is absolutely magic on the air,” said Gerry Solomon, an ABC News producer who was the executive producer of “Today at Sunrise,” an early-morning show that Chung anchored in the mid-1980s.

The move has provoked controversy, however. Some people inside and outside the news business have called Chung’s appointment window dressing--a cosmetic change to bolster the ratings and demographics of CBS’ No. 2-rated newscast and help promote Chung’s prime-time newsmagazine, “Eye to Eye,” which premieres June 17. Others have taken aim at Chung herself, saying she was chosen less for her journalistic accomplishments than for her ability as a “news reader” and her high “Q” rating, a TV-industry measure of performers’ likability and recognizability among the public.

“This move confirms recent changes at the ‘CBS Evening News,’ ” said Andrew Tyndall, author of the Tyndall Report, an analysis of the content of the three nightly network newscasts. “CBS at one point was the most inside-the-Beltway, traditional news-of-the-day newscast among the three. But they have been moving toward more ‘news you can use,’ like personal finance and health stories. I think Chung’s presence as a news reader adds another element of local news.”

“If you’re going to have co-anchors, you want to have two different kinds of on-air personalities,” said Steve Friedman, executive producer of NBC’s “Today” show. “Dan’s cool and Connie’s cuddly, a warm presence.”

Asked to comment on Friedman’s remark and the perception that she is more of a “news reader” than a live-for-the-story journalist, Chung hesitated, then said quietly, “You know, I really don’t think I should have to list what I’ve done professionally. My stories are there for anyone who wants to look them up.”

Rather was more blunt. “Connie has paid her dues journalistically for the past 25 years, covering political conventions and other major stories,” he said. “I think that kind of talk about her is sexist. We are going to do a terrific, serious broadcast, and our competitors know how well Connie is going to do.”

At 46, Chung says she is achieving a lifelong dream.

“I grew up watching the ‘CBS Evening News’ and wanting to be Walter Cronkite.”

Chung’s parents moved from their native China (her father was once an intelligence officer for Chiang Kai-shek) to Washington in 1946, where they had five daughters. Connie was the youngest.

“In Chinese culture, boys are more prized than girls, and boys carry on the family name,” she said. “I thought of myself as my father’s son. In becoming a journalist and well known, I have felt I was carrying on the family name in that way.”

After graduating from the University of Maryland with a journalism degree, Chung began her career in 1969 at WTTG-TV in Washington, starting as a copy-person and then moving up to become a writer and reporter. She was hired as a reporter for CBS News in 1971.

“I think being Asian-American helped when I was one of the women hired in the class of ’71 at CBS News,” Chung said. “But I don’t think it was a big factor in my being hired after that.”

At CBS, Chung covered the presidential campaign of Sen. George McGovern and helped report on the Watergate scandal. After five years, she was hired as an anchor at the CBS-owned station in Los Angeles (now KCBS-TV Channel 2) in Los Angeles.

She returned to network duties in 1983, but this time at NBC, where she took on a high-profile status in the increasingly stratified world of news “stars,” anchoring the Saturday edition of “NBC Nightly News” and co-anchoring (with Roger Mudd) a prime-time newsmagazine called “1986.”

In 1989, in a roundelay involving female anchor talent, Diane Sawyer was wooed to ABC from CBS and CBS, in turn, wooed Chung from NBC with the promise of her own prime-time newsmagazine. The first program, created by Andrew Lack, now president of NBC News, was roundly criticized for its use of re-enactments. The second, called “Face to Face With Connie Chung,” got better reviews for Chung’s interviews with Joseph Hazelwood, the Exxon Valdez captain, and coverage of the AIDS crisis.

“People thought we were only doing celebrity interviews (like Marlon Brando) because those were the ones we promoted on the air,” Chung said. “But we were doing a lot of other stories as well.”

One celebrity aspect of Chung’s own life is her marriage to talk-show host Maury Povich, whom she married in 1984, after dating and having a long-distance relationship for six years. Povich, 51, the son of a Washington Post sports columnist, formerly hosted the tabloid show “A Current Affair” and now has his own syndicated show on daytime TV.

Povich jokes that there is only one aspect of his wife’s fame that bothers him. “David Letterman has a crush on her,” he said. “He’s had her on his talk show many times, and he always calls me Morley, Morton or ‘that guy that does the icky show.’ He just can’t believe she married me .”

Chung, who married Povich when she was 38, said flatly, “If I hadn’t met Maury, I think I would’ve had the personal life of Holly Hunter in ‘Broadcast News’: wonderful work but a lot of lonely Saturday nights.”

Chung curtailed her work at CBS in 1990, explaining in a press release at the time that she wanted to “aggressively pursue having a baby”--a phrase that came back to haunt her as her efforts to conceive became the butt of jokes.

“If we just said (the work reduction) was for ‘personal reasons,’ ” she recalled, “that’s mysterious, it would get out in an inaccurate way, and soon there would be speculation that I was having a nervous breakdown or going to the Betty Ford clinic. . . . It was done out of a desire to be honest. But it’s painful to have something so private become a public subject.”

Her efforts to conceive were unsuccessful and now she’s back at work full time, but Chung says she still hopes to have a baby.

In the meantime, she’s got plenty riding on the new “CBS Evening News.” “I think we will succeed,” Chung said. “If it worked for Huntley-Brinkley, why can’t it work for us?”

Even if it does, however, many women in broadcast news remain skeptical that it will be a major breakthrough for them. They believe they still face a double-standard when it comes to aging on the air.

“I’ll know women have succeeded in TV news,” said Marlene Sanders, a former ABC News correspondent, “when there’s a woman on the air who looks like David Brinkley.”