TELEVISION : In the Storm of the Eye : After winning accolades for snaring Letterman, CBS broadcast chief Howard Stringer will have to muster every ounce of his fabled wit and survivor’s skills to guide the No. 1 network through turbulent times

For a 9-year-old scholarship student from Wales, the upper-class English boarding school provided a rough education.

“I was a little fellow when I arrived at school, and I was bullied a lot,” recalls Howard Stringer, who is now the powerful 6-foot, 3-inch president of the CBS Broadcast Group. “English boarding schools are tough, self-contained societies, and it’s survival of the fittest. There’s not a lot of room for individualism, and you have to become something of a chameleon to adapt and fit in.

“I had it better than the other kids on scholarship because my father was an Air Force officer with some social status, but you couldn’t help being aware of the great disparities in wealth. Every time I went home from school, we had moved; I had 15 different home addresses by the time I was 18 years old because my father was transferred so often. I think that both experiences made me more gregarious--in those circumstances, you need relationships. If you didn’t reach out to people, you’d be very lonely.”

It’s an unusual moment of reflection for Stringer, 51, a man who is known in the TV business for his engaging wit, whether regaling CBS station owners with a story about an ill-fated fishing trip or emceeing the black-tie 25th-anniversary party for “60 Minutes” as the faithful butler in “Remains of the Day.” (“Yes, Mr. Hewitt,” Stringer consoled “60 Minutes” creator Don Hewitt, “it is too bad there’s no Nobel Prize for television.”)

Beyond his business acumen and talents as a TV producer, it is those childhood survival skills--a gregarious, chameleon-like capacity to “read” and understand creative people and to win over people as varied as small-town TV station owners and CBS Chairman Laurence A. Tisch--that have helped Howard Stringer, and CBS, rise to No. 1.

“Howard is the Lee Iacocca of television,” says writer-producer Linda Bloodworth-Thomason, creator of the CBS comedy series “Evening Shade,” “Hearts Afire” and the now-defunct “Designing Women.” “He’s a terrific spokesman for television, and he also gets results for the corporation.”

When Stringer, who had risen through the producing ranks to become president of CBS News, was elevated to the presidency of the CBS Broadcast Group in August, 1988 (overseeing the network’s news, sports, entertainment and radio divisions, plus the 28 radio and TV stations it owns), the network was in the ratings cellar, recoiling from its worst prime-time ratings ever.

William S. Paley’s so-called Tiffany network, in which financier Tisch had assumed a controlling interest in 1986, had earned a reputation for arrogance and skinflint ways in dealing with Hollywood, and the news division was still reeling from a string of budget cuts and layoffs.

Slightly more than five years later, the CBS television network is closing out 1993 in first place in the prime-time ratings, first place in the daytime ratings and--for the first time ever--first place in the late-night ratings, thanks to the Aug. 30 debut of David Letterman, whom Stringer personally wooed from NBC. The network, hard pressed to turn a profit just a few years ago, is expected to earn $150 million this year.

Landing Letterman was vintage Stringer. His financial lure of $14 million a year was rich but not the richest that the comedian was offered. He also cultivated Letterman’s producers, and he appealed to the star’s ego. “Howard said that he wanted to create a late-night franchise and that David would be part of the fiber of CBS,” recalled Robert Morton, one of the executive producers of Letterman’s “Late Show.”

In the final months of negotiations, Stringer backed up the network’s intent with several well-timed gifts: a video tour of CBS facilities by Charles Kuralt, a framed Civil War photograph of a dour Col. Letterman (inscribed “this has got to be a relative--he looks too miserable not to be”) and a humorous videotape in which Connie Chung (for whom Letterman has professed an unabashed “crush”) promised to say, “Oh, Dave, Oh, Dave,” when making love to her husband, talk-show host Maury Povich.

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Now Letterman is generating advertising revenue of $85 million a year for CBS, according to one ad executive. Yet there is hardly time for Stringer to bask in glory. CBS faces several challenges for the future. It has had only one moderate new hit this fall, “Dave’s World,” and ABC is making a run in prime time. Jeff Sagansky is considering leaving his job as president of the entertainment division next year. There is talk of a merger with a movie studio. And CBS, which has been most adamant among the three major networks about not getting into cable and other new businesses, must decide what moves to make to assure itself a place in the brave new media world of up to 500 channels.

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Stringer’s promotion from the news division to a job overseeing the entertainment division brought surprised responses in some circles.

“I was puzzled by that,” Stringer says today. “I’ve had more producing experience than practically anybody who’s had one of these jobs, with the exception of (former NBC Chairman) Grant Tinker, and to me, it’s not a great leap between working with the stars of the news division to working with stars in entertainment.”

Indeed, one of the first moves he made was to fly to California to smooth the ruffled feathers of Angela Lansbury. The star of the long-running “Murder, She Wrote” was feeling taken for granted by management. Stringer took her to tea and gave her a gift of a small enameled box.

“I had a wonderful time with her--she’s a substantial, interesting person whose father was a leader of the opposition between the wars in England,” he said. “I said to her that I wanted her to know that ‘Murder, She Wrote’ was key to our Sunday night entertainment lineup. After we met, I called (CBS executives) and said, ‘Let’s get on with this negotiation,’ which they did.”

Said Bloodworth-Thomason, who has become a close friend of Stringer’s: “His heart really is with the creative types. He came to tapings of ‘Designing Women’ and he took me to dinner, where this man with an English accent and I spent the evening talking about all these my Southern characters.”

“Late Show” producer Morton said that Stringer brings an unusual perspective to his discussions with talent and producers: “Howard is a network executive with the sensibilities of a producer. You can talk to him about a joke or a concept for a show--he understands the needs and desires of producers because he has been one himself. He also operates on an intellectual level that you don’t find in most network executives.”

Still, the network’s ratings troubles continued, and late in 1989, Sagansky was hired to head the entertainment division. Together, Stringer and Sagansky began aggressively seeking out top writers and producers to improve the prime-time schedule. At the same time that CBS was wooing talent, Stringer was also smoothing relations with unhappy affiliates and making the case to TV reporters that CBS would emerge from being “mired in third place.”

“It really was a bit of smoke and mirrors at first,” Stringer said. “Those were dark days. Larry had given us four years to turn things around, but the network was leaking water pretty badly. Those first affiliate meetings, I’d say, ‘Here’s Jeff Sagansky, here’s (advertising-marketing chief) George Schweitzer, it’s going to be great.’ ”

To prove that there was some substance behind the rhetoric, in December, 1988, CBS bought--at a price that quickly turned out to be grossly high--a four-year package of Major League Baseball for nearly $1.1 billion.

“If I’d been longer in the job, I might have asked someone at another network how much money they’d lost on baseball,” Stringer said jokingly of the losses, which totaled between $500 million and $600 million. “We lost a bundle, but it did give us traction in the ratings and let people know that we were willing to spend money.”

And progress was made. In the 1991-92 season, CBS turned the corner--fast. With the emergence of “Murphy Brown” and “Northern Exposure” on Mondays, the continuing strength of “60 Minutes” and “Murder, She Wrote” on Sundays and the World Series, the Super Bowl and the Winter Olympics, the network jumped from third place to first. It successfully defended its prime-time crown last season.

Stringer reads scripts, watches all series pilots and visits Hollywood regularly. But he leaves the day-to-day running of the entertainment division to Sagansky and Executive Vice President Peter Tortorici.

“Howard is one of the best bosses I’ve ever had,” Sagansky said. “He doesn’t get involved in movies or scheduling, for example, except during sweeps, but there’s not a major decision that’s made without his counsel.”

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It was, Stringer says, the excitement of America during the Kennedy era that drew him to the United States. After graduating in 1964 (with bachelor’s and master’s degrees in modern history) from Oxford University, where he had been a debater and a producer of everything from the school play to rock concerts, he wrote to the U.S. TV networks seeking a job. Having seen both Edward R. Murrow and George Burns on British television, he had no particular preference as to whether he landed in news or entertainment. When CBS replied that applicants were required to appear in person, the 22-year-old Stringer emigrated--and showed up at CBS’ door in New York. “I think they were a little surprised to see me,” he recalled.

Stringer was given a low-level job at WCBS-TV, the network’s flagship station in New York, logging the times of commercials into a computer. Drafted into the U.S. Army shortly after his arrival, even though he wasn’t yet a U.S. citizen, he served 10 months in Vietnam--an experience, he said, that “robbed me of my frivolity; I came out much more serious and interested in working in news.”

After his discharge, CBS rehired him in 1967. He jumped from all-news WCBS-AM to the TV network’s news division and then, in 1969, to the prestigious documentary unit, where he wrote and produced programs on subjects as varied as the Rockefeller family, the FBI and Ireland. He eventually ran the whole department as executive producer of “CBS Reports” from 1976 to 1981.

During that time, CBS won 31 Emmys and three DuPont Awards for documentaries such as the five-hour “Defense of the United States” and “The Fire Next Door.” Stringer himself has won nine Emmys for writing, producing and directing documentaries.

Late in 1981, with the backing of then-new anchor Dan Rather, Stringer was named executive producer of “The CBS Evening News,” which had been losing viewers. Under his direction, the newscast moved away from short headline segments to include some of the longer pieces that now typify all three network newscasts, and it climbed from third to first in the ratings.

Stringer became executive vice president of CBS News in 1984 and served as the division’s No. 2 executive during a time of cutbacks and controversy, as CBS paid former Miss America Phyllis George $1 million a year to co-anchor “The CBS Morning News” and promoted a new “video-fluent” style--personified in the flashy newsmagazine “West 57th”--at what seemed to many to be the expense of CBS News traditions. Some in the old guard thought Stringer had let his ambitions get the better of his news judgment, but soon after Tisch took over the company in 1986, the 44-year-old Stringer was named president of the division.

Despite the earlier downsizing, CBS News in 1987 received orders from Tisch to make another large cut in staff. Stringer directed the executive producers of all the broadcasts to draw up lists of employees in inverse order of their importance. His critics say that he was too eager to please Tisch and should have fought the order, and that the method by which he chose to implement it not only led to the firing of some employees who simply had flunked office politics but also helped spread responsibility beyond Stringer’s door. Supporters say the cuts were inevitable, and Stringer still defends the process.

“Rather than having accountants do it, I said I’d rather have the management and producers of CBS News work it out,” he explained. “I’d rather ask producers to tell us how much they’re using their correspondents on the air. It was a painful process. But I think we were simply ahead of the curve in many ways. The budgets and news salaries had gotten out of hand. CBS is now on a firm financial footing, and people understand their news budgets.”

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Ironically, one area in which CBS has not been first recently is news. The network has successful prime-time newsmagazines in “60 Minutes” and “48 Hours,” and a solid contender in “Eye to Eye With Connie Chung,” but its evening news is third in the ratings, having lost viewers since the pairing in June of anchors Rather and Chung. And nowhere are there the sort of tough, provocative documentaries that Stringer used to produce at “CBS Reports.”

“Howard is the former president of CBS News, and the current president of CBS News works for him,” said one former news producer at the network who requested anonymity. “Where are the hard-hitting ‘CBS Reports’ today? ABC does more serious reporting in its newsmagazines than CBS does on ’48 Hours’ and the new Connie Chung show. You certainly don’t see Connie Chung doing any tough subjects on her new magazine show.”

Such criticism angers Stringer: “I am not sitting here telling the news division to do ‘soft’ stories. A new newsmagazine such as Connie’s show does need to get a rating, but ’60 Minutes’ has shown that you can get a rating with a strong story on Finland. I’ve been telling the producers that. We’ve got ‘CBS Reports’ back (with historical documentaries), and I’ve told the producers the documentary subjects can be as tough as they like. My whole tradition is in documentaries and foreign news. I am not the president of CBS News anymore, but I have no interest in softening the news.”

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There are other pressing concerns for CBS these days. Although it leads in the prime-time ratings, CBS has had a disappointing season so far, with only “Dave’s World” a clear-cut success among the fall crop of new shows.

“ABC had more momentum this fall, with ‘Grace Under Fire’ and ‘NYPD Blue,’ ” said Bill Croasdale, president of broadcast advertising for Western International Media. “CBS has several midseason series they’re high on, and I expect CBS to finish the season No. 1 again in the ratings. But ABC has done better so far this season at creating new shows and appealing to younger viewers.”

Stringer doesn’t disagree with that assessment.

“It would be hard for me to argue that our comedy development is a smash this season,” he acknowledged, but with the Winter Olympics coming in February and several midseason series showing promise, he believes that CBS will remain on top.

Will Sagansky remain, however? There have been rumors for months that he may want to leave when his contract expires in June, in favor of a movie job or some other company in which he could have an equity position (he formerly was president of TriStar Pictures). He hasn’t denied the possibility, but he said he may continue with CBS. “This is a job that is still very challenging to me,” Sagansky said in an interview.

Stringer is trying to keep him. “I’d like to expand Jeff’s role on the West Coast so that he can link up with the East Coast in defining our future strategy and also enhancing the development of in-house production,” he said.

Sagansky indicated that he is interested in what new course the network might take: “I think each of the broadcast networks is going to be increasingly valuable in the future in terms of creating and marketing programming.”

Among the Big Three networks, only CBS has been single-minded about the broadcasting business, refusing to get into cable or other new TV ventures as NBC and Capital Cities/ABC have done. In their interviews, both Stringer and Sagansky emphasized the value of a broadcast network in the burgeoning media world but also signaled for the first time that CBS might be interested in possible new alliances with movie studios once there is a lifting of the regulations limiting the networks’ participation in the lucrative syndication business.

“We’ve been the broadcast purist among the three in terms of new businesses,” Sagansky said. “But I can’t imagine that any of the (big three broadcasting networks) are going to be stand-alone operations in the future.”

Stringer said that CBS is not in discussions with any studios about a merger but noted that any such talk would be speculative until the network is free of the financial interest and syndication rules.

“There are some people who insist that (a merger between a movie studio and a TV network) is a good idea,” he said. “If it is a natural marriage, a wedding will take place. We don’t have short-term plans for CBS. The world is going to change if these regulations are lifted, and then we’ll have to evaluate our position.”

Although CBS would like to deal with the cable industry--an effort to start a cable channel fell through earlier this year--Stringer makes a witty and impassioned spokesman for the democratic benefits of “free” (advertiser-supported) broadcast television.

“The great thing about cable is that they’ve figured out a way to get the American people to pay for network reruns,” he said. “I admire their ingenuity, but we still have a government regulating broadcasting at a time when cable is operating as a vertically integrated monopoly. The digital TV, interactive TV and other technology that’s being discussed is expensive to consumers. We stand in danger of creating an information underclass in this society. I believe there is a real value to television that is available to everyone.”

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Stringer, a U.S. citizen since 1985, underwent a big change in his personal life this year when he and his wife, dermatologist Jennifer Patterson, adopted a baby--”I’ve found you can’t read while tending a baby,” he jokes. His work life is more stable: He has three more years on his CBS contract. While friends think he eventually may want to be a movie mogul, he said he is happy where he is.

“I’d only want to do that if I could produce movies that I really cared about,” Stringer said. “At CBS I can talk to Charles Kuralt or be involved in a miniseries. Right now the diversity of television appeals to me most.”

The irony of any plans that CBS may make for the future is not lost on him, however. He could find himself running a multimedia CBS or, as he jokes, “I could also end up being out of a job. People who buy things sometimes want to run them themselves. Maybe I’ll be in an Irish bar somewhere someday telling people I used to be a network president.”

The charm of Howard Stringer is that he expresses the fear but doesn’t seem worried.