TELEVISION : SUPER AGENTS OF TV NEWS : Star anchors and reporters are represented by a stable of agents known as the fastest talkers for the biggest bucks. But detractors say they sully the true calling of journalism.

Michael Gartner vividly recalls when, in 1989, as president of NBC News, he sat down for a meeting with Alfred Geller, the agent renegotiating Connie Chung’s contract.

“Geller plopped down and put his feet on the table,” Gartner says. “He had a few buttons of his shirt open with his rather large stomach sticking out. He proceeded to tell me he wanted $3 million a year for Connie, her own prime-time show, she got to pick the producer and . . . he wanted a quick answer. I said, ‘OK, here’s your answer. Goodby.’ ”

Well, Gartner may have felt virtuous, but the fact is that Chung walked across the street and got almost all of the above at CBS (and eventually a co-anchor slot on the “Evening News”). Geller is still her agent. As for Gartner, he’s back in the newspaper business from where he came.

Geller is one of a handful of very powerful representatives for those working in the television news business. Some call themselves agents, some managers, some lawyers, but the idea is pretty much the same. Like their counterparts who represent actors and professional athletes, they give career advice, scout job opportunities and negotiate contracts, generally taking 6% to 10% of the client’s salary as compensation.

The news agents are occasionally vilified as being nothing but money-grabbers in a world that should be purer than that, for upping salaries to such a degree that actual news gathering has suffered and for handling too many clients interested in the same jobs. “They should all be put in front of a firing squad on the conflict-of-interest issue,” says a high-ranking network executive.

But other news professionals credit them with truly caring about the electronic news business, for bringing newspeople into the 20th Century of salaries and for serving as necessary buffers.

“Overall, they reduce conflict between management and talent,” says Tom Capra, who once ran the “Today” show here and has worked in Los Angeles as an executive at KNBC-TV Channel 4 and KTTV-TV Channel 11. “It’s easier to tell an agent than his client that the client needs to get rid of the mustache.”

Nonetheless, news managers are finding that negotiating with agents right now is taking an inordinate amount of their time and money. And the leverage is all on the other side.

“It’s taking more time than I like,” says Andrew Lack, president of NBC News, who nevertheless has a grudging respect for most of the top agents. “We’re in a competitive business in which talent negotiations have become a sort of mano a mano . They’re not ashamed to ask for the moon and they wait you out until you give them the stars and the sun. I’m only saddened when I remember that journalism is supposed to be a calling.”

Before you go saying Edward R. Murrow would be ashamed, however, remember that he was the highest-paid broadcaster of his time and even moved across lines to the entertainment division to produce the programs that brought him sweet dollars. Still, most point to Barbara Walters’ $1-million move from NBC to ABC in 1976 as the first indication that the talent might put something ahead of loyalty. And when Dan Rather took over the “CBS Evening News” in 1981 with a five-year, $8-million contract that was Page 1 news, the field was wide open.

Now there are a multitude of multimillion-dollar newsies at the networks, including Peter Jennings, Tom Brokaw, Katie Couric, Bryant Gumbel, Ted Koppel and Diane Sawyer, who entertained extraordinary offers from competing networks before re-signing with ABC in February for $7 million a year. And there are more in local markets, including L.A.’s own Paul Moyer and Ann Martin.

It’s understandable why the heavyweights might want representation, but what vexes some executives is that virtually every general assignment reporter and producer of any note or hope also now has an agent.

“I had no problem with giving that kind of money to the Brokaws or Gumbels, because they can prove some direct responsibility for viewership,” says Gartner, who notes that he was the 30th-highest-paid person in his division when he was president. “But it was the Chris Wallaces of the world that got me. I mean, does anyone watch the ‘Nightly News’ because George Lewis might be doing a story that night?”

It’s too late to ask. Things are certainly not going to turn around now, not as we head off into multimedia mania.

“Right now there’s a climate of rape and sodomy,” Lack says, “simply because the marketplace is so expanding with local markets and syndication. What you have is a real demand for talent, and it just doesn’t mean a whole lot if you don’t get that job at NBC News.”

Sure enough, with his contract as “Today” show host up this month, Gumbel has made it clear that though he hopes to stay at NBC, he would be remiss not to explore the ever-widening highway of opportunity. It’s at such times that the agents home in and put a client in play or, less charitably, play one interested party off another.

And why not? “You don’t blame a real-estate agent for the price of homes,” says David Burke, who formerly ran CBS News and says he has no problems with agents.

So who are these blameless piranhas?

The gang of eight described here (in no particular order) are, by most accounts, the major players. They differ wildly in style, if not in what they do. Each has fans and detractors. Each at times has been accused of conflict of interest, mismanagement, bullheadedness and meddling in production matters. Yet each has managed to stay atop the increasingly lucrative game.

Richard Leibner

The most famous of the lot, Leibner’s NS Bienstock company represents more than 300 news clients around the country. Aside from Leibner, there are eight other agents, including his soft-spoken and well-liked wife, Carole Cooper.

Leibner himself has rarely been accused of being soft-spoken, though he can charm the pants off you. He is balding, in his mid-50s and described even by friends as aggressive and competitive, by some not-so-friends as duplicitous. Sitting in his cluttered mid-town office here, the agent exudes schmooze and enthusiasm and his longtime passion for the news business.

“Ask any other agent to rank 10 news stories and they’ll probably tell you the best and worst,” he says. “I can rank two through nine.” This man watches not only his clients but also virtually every quasi-news program from daybreak to sundown.

Among Bienstock’s clients are Diane Sawyer, Dan Rather, Maria Shriver, Paula Zahn, Mike Wallace and a host of Los Angeles personalities, including Tritia Toyota, Harvey Levin, Tawny Little, Jane Velez Mitchell and John Beard.

Like the other agencies, Bienstock receives tapes from hopefuls, accepts clients where potential is seen and then puts together more extensive tapes as it pushes to move the talent upward.

Also like other agents, Leibner has lost some through the years, including Morley Safer and Ed Bradley. “One problem with Richard is he can’t let go,” another agent says. His relationship with Mary Alice Williams, whom he moved from CNN to NBC in 1989, is a case in point.

Their bruised--and litigious--ending in 1992 still rankles both of them. Williams says she left Leibner because he was representing her while also pushing Maria Shriver and Faith Daniels for the same jobs at NBC. He says that she knew coming in who his clients were and that she was misled by NBC News President Gartner about her future there. He says they buried the hatchet over a lunch; she says she’s still seething.

“You better have a thick skin to represent people,” Leibner says. He’s still the top gun around, which is why no less than Creative Artists Agency, Hollywood’s premier talent firm, early this year signed a deal with Bienstock to gain access to the information-reality world.

Jim Griffin

Griffin could hardly be further in appearance or style from Leibner, but he also has the respect of most of those with whom he deals.

Dapper and discreet, he has become the top representative for news personalities within the William Morris Agency. Sitting in his 33rd-floor Manhattan office, Griffin remains polite but cautious about saying too much about what he does.

He has no shortage of ego, however, especially when told that agents have been accused of constantly flirting with conflict of interest. “I guarantee they don’t say that about me,” he says.

Not that he hasn’t had his share of bumps. He has been Deborah Norville’s agent since bringing her from local news to the “Today” show as a news reader in 1989 and ultimately as the spurned permanent replacement for Jane Pauley.

His peers say he pushed his client too far too fast, and now they’re questioning the wisdom of her most recent move--from CBS, where she anchored a prime-time newsmagazine last summer, to the syndicated “Inside Edition.” (Griffin says it was an “eleventh-hour decision,” based largely on Norville’s decision not to travel so much.)

Still, Griffin, 45, is considered a class act by most, particularly current clients, who include Geraldo Rivera, Robert MacNeil and Jim Lehrer, Regis Philbin, Joan Lunden and Lesley Stahl. In the cases of MacNeil and Lehrer and Rivera, he’s been able to work out highly lucrative profit-participation packages in which the talent also owns the companies.

“What I like about Jim is he’s always there,” says CBS’ Stahl, who says she needs that kind of a sounding board and guru. “Jim doesn’t do the contract and disappear. I’ll call him before I sound off on issues at work to get his advice on whether I should be tough or pliable.”

Ron Konecky

“A true gentleman” is often the description of Konecky, a full-time lawyer who handles the contracts for several high-priced talents: Barbara Walters, Ed Bradley, Morley Safer, Charlie Rose, Kathie Lee and Frank Gifford, “60 Minutes” executive producer Don Hewitt and ABC News President Roone Arledge.

The gray-haired Konecky, now in his early 60s, began as a lawyer for MCA and still handles a lot of theatrical and other entertainment business. But it is news that he seems particularly passionate about. And he defends the role of the news representative.

“They’ve been very helpful for the industry, certainly in bringing news talent up to par,” he says, talking quietly in his mid-town office. “There was a time when it was tawdry for anyone in news to ask for more money. I also strongly believe it’s better for an employee not to represent himself. Let someone else be the bad guy.”

Mary Alice Williams, for one, believes that Konecky has been the good guy for her. She signed on with him after leaving Leibner. “Each time I get offered something,” she says, “he tells me what he’s going to ask for and I say, ‘We’ll never get it.’ And he always does. I’ve made more by doing free-lance with him than when I was working at NBC.”

Like the others, Konecky pleads innocent to any charges of possible conflict of interest, even though he represents half the “60 Minutes” staff and the two men who recently squared off against each other as executive producers of the “CBS Evening News” and ABC’s “World News Tonight,” Andrew Heyward and Rick Kaplan.

“I never play one off the other,” he says. “I deal with each individual separately, and in this business we assume people are acting in good faith.”

Ed Hookstratten

Known as “The Hook” to friend and foe alike, he is described by one network honcho as “a big but not a major player.” That’s only because his clientele is small in number. “I have a boutique as opposed to a factory,” says Los Angeles-based Hookstratten, who spurns most publicity.

Locally, as one producer says, “Hook rules this town.” Hookstratten--a lawyer in his late 50s who also represents some non-news people, such as talk-show host Tom Snyder, Dodgers broadcaster Vin Scully and Pat O’Brien of CBS Sports--manages Tom Brokaw, Bryant Gumbel, Paul Moyer, Hal Fishman, Ann Martin, Jim Hill, Colleen Williams and Steve Rambo, among others.

“When you’re negotiating with Hook, you’re playing at a big poker table,” says NBC News President Lack. “Does he occasionally bluff? Sure. But he takes care of his clients, and I like him enormously.”

Those currently represented by him--and they tend to stay put--see the tough and tender sides.

“He can be a real (expletive) when he wants to,” says Moyer, whom Hookstratten took from KABC-TV Channel 7 to KNBC-TV Channel 4 for a whopping $1.4 million a year in 1992. “And that’s what I pay him for. Underneath he’s a sweet man, and not that complicated. But he drives the networks crazy.”

Bob Barnett

Washington-based Barnett represents about 300 news people, including Katie Couric, Sam Donaldson, Bernard Shaw, Jeff Greenfield, Judy Woodruff and his wife, CBS correspondent Rita Braver. Shunning the title agent in favor of lawyer , he insists that only two things differentiate him from the others: “I charge an hourly fee, and I don’t move local talent from one market to another.”

Barnett, 48, a highly regarded figure in the capital, says most news agents do little more than take their clients’ money and send out their tapes. He describes himself as a problem solver for clients throughout their contracts, something to which one client, Andrea Mitchell of NBC, attests.

“I really feel he has an interest in my well-being at the highest level,” says Mitchell, explaining that Barnett was keenly involved with helping define a new beat for her (foreign affairs) when she was recently moved aside at the White House. “What I’ve observed is that agents do very well with big anchor talent but they don’t have much time for the others.”

Still, many on the management side say that while they like Barnett and find him the most realistic when it comes to salaries, he does not offer the same amount of follow-up as his peers: “Believe me, there’s very little maintenance with Barnett. He’s not the one calling to say, ‘Hey, I hear you’re developing a new show. Are you interested in so-and-so?’ ” says one network news producer. “He’s best with those who are perfectly happy where they are.”

One such person is ABC correspondent Greenfield. “My relationship with ABC has been pacific, and it’s not like I need things like a dressing room or that I’m angling for an anchor job,” he says. “Bob’s a good negotiator, and that’s what I need.”

Alfred Geller

Probably the most controversial figure of the group, Geller is described by some as “two-faced,” and “a pig,” while others hail him as “a real champion of minorities”--including standing by his client, Max Robinson, while the black anchorman was dying of complications of AIDS.

Geller, 62, a native New Yorker and former Wall Street lawyer, got into the news management business about 30 years ago. He now represents 90 clients, the most high profile being the married couple of Connie Chung and Maury Povich.

Geller says he may be the “least liked” agent because “I don’t play ball.”

Al Roker, the NBC weatherman, who has used Geller for 18 years, says he likes that Geller’s agency is smaller than others. “I’ve never not gotten him on the phone; he’s someone who really cares,” Roker says. “On the other hand, I understand Alfred may get some people upset, but I didn’t hire him to win popularity contests.”

Geller does extensive work with clients, especially local ones, in constantly monitoring their work. “He’s always critiquing me and is very concerned about any problems I might be having,” says Dana Tyler, a WCBS-TV anchorwoman in New York whom Geller discovered on the air in Oklahoma. “He’s opened my eyes about myself, and I would not be here if not for him.”

“I’m in the business of helping my clients touch other human beings,” Geller says. “But first and foremost, they are performers.”

Art Kaminsky

Kaminsky, a former Yale classmate of Bill Clinton and Hillary Rodham Clinton, came of age in the agent business by representing hockey stars--a group of whom went on to become the 1980 Olympic Dream Team.

Still largely involved with sports figures, Kaminsky also has about 25 clients at the network news departments, including Forrest Sawyer, Christiane Amanpour and Robert Krulwich.

He managed to get Sawyer into a network job one month after taking him on in 1985--”He was so clearly the best newsman not at a network at the time”--and recently moved Krulwich from CBS to ABC. But although all the networks made serious runs at foreign correspondent Amanpour this year, she ultimately chose to stay at CNN. “Let’s just say she left a lot of money on the table,” Kaminsky says.

Kaminsky, 47, has guided Jim Lampley’s career from sports to news anchor--and now back to sports again. “When Jim went to CBS Sports and KCBS (as a sportscaster),” he says, “I got as part of the deal that he could do a handful of things at CBS News, including occasionally hosting the morning show. It was his work on that show that made the KCBS people hire him as a news anchor.”

Ken Linder

The newest and hottest kid on the block for quasi-news personalities, this Hollywood-style “New Age-nt” is based in Century City and already has hundreds of clients.

Linder’s business is sometimes referred to by others as the House of Blondes, or the House of Bimbos, since he represents largely beautiful folks, primarily female ones. “If you want a blonde, you go to Kenny,” one network honcho says.

The man in charge, just 40, is certainly no bimbo. He’s a Harvard and Cornell Law School graduate who worked under Jim Griffin for years at William Morris before striking out on his own.

“I choreograph careers” is how he describes his work. “I love to find people and help them grow.” Some of those he’s currently helping include Nancy Glass (“Inside Edition”), Barry Nolan (“Hard Copy”), Giselle Fernandez (CBS) and Matt Lauer, the popular news reader on the “Today” show.

In selecting an agent, Lauer says, “You need to choose a voice for yourself, someone respected who gets his calls answered. Kenny has tremendous access. But agents don’t get you jobs; your body of work gets you jobs. I also chose Kenny because he’s in Los Angeles. I can make my own contacts here (in New York); it’s good to have someone doing my bidding there.”

Linder is sometimes accused of having too many clients in the same arena and taking on anyone who asks. “First, you have to have a certain number to make ends meet,” he responds. “But we treat them all first-class, even by sending out all their tapes Federal Express. I don’t think there’s an agent who doesn’t occasionally put up two people for the same job. But we’re in the business for the right reasons. I could have made twice as much money on Wall Street.”

Would the news business be any different if there were no agents?

When Ed Joyce asked that question and took them on as CBS News president in 1983, the answer was chilling.

Joyce declared public war, calling Leibner in particular and agents in general “flesh peddlers.”

“I did it not just because of the money (being demanded) but because they were trying to have a voice in journalistic decisions like choosing their (clients’) assignments,” says Joyce, now living in the Santa Ynez Valley.

“I feel agents have to share some responsibility in the closing of so many news bureaus, because if a news division is going to pay $8 million for one person’s salary while working for a corporation that is constantly reducing budgets, something has to go.”

What went, however, was Joyce. His criticism of the representative for Rather, CBS News’ most valued asset, drove a wedge between him and the anchor that Joyce considers a factor in Rather helping to engineer his ouster two years later.

So the mega-agents are here to stay. Their “penetration,” as Joyce calls it, is overwhelming, but still there are some talents who just say no. Ted Koppel, Harry Smith and Bob Schieffer are three who do their own bidding.

“I just don’t want a middleman between me and my management,” says Smith, who without an agent managed to be plucked from the Midwest to co-host “CBS This Morning.” He acknowledges having had lunch with Richard Leibner but says, “There was too much adrenaline there for me.”

CBS veteran Schieffer has also managed to cover Washington, host a Sunday news program and anchor a weekend broadcast with no agent in sight. Why not?

“I’m too tight,” he says with a laugh. “And I’m kind of private and never did like anyone else knowing how much I make. The agents just have to go around telling that information as they negotiate. Frankly, I find negotiating very interesting, and I’ve discovered I can say, ‘If you don’t tell, I won’t tell. Matter of fact, maybe you can even give me a little more.’ “*