How Lund Plans to Deal With Eye’s Storm

With its well-oiled press conferences and $19-billion price tag, the Walt Disney company’s acquisition of Capital Cities/ABC has dazzled the media with its global possibilities. By contrast, the $5.4-billion acquisition of CBS by Westinghouse Electric Corp. has raised more questions than it has answered. Given CBS’ problems, from ratings to distribution, some of its competitors are saying it can never regain its former luster.

In his first solo interview in his new job, CBS President Peter Lund said this week that he believes CBS will be successful again.

“We’re going to surprise people,” said Lund, 54, seated in an office once occupied by former CBS Chairman Laurence Tisch. “We’ve got a new owner with a long history in broadcasting and a new, combined group of CBS-owned TV stations that reaches 34% of the country and will be a great platform for promoting CBS’ programming and launching new syndicated shows. We’ve got a terrific executive in [entertainment chief] Les Moonves, we’ve just named [longtime CBS News producer] Andrew Heyward to head CBS News, and we’re putting other strong executives in place. Westinghouse is willing to spend money to build the business. The challenges are daunting--but they’re by no means insurmountable.”

Lund confirmed that CBS is in discussions with executives at DreamWorks SKG about creating children’s programming for the network now that Disney has said it intends to program Saturday morning on ABC. DreamWorks previously was planning to produce such fare for ABC.

He also said that CBS is “very interested” in creating a 24-hour cable news network, as ABC and NBC are planning; intends to bid again in two years for the National Football League TV rights that it lost to Fox; and is in negotiations to buy the Maxam Entertainment syndication company, a sign that CBS intends to create programming for syndication.

Lund, who worked as a page at a CBS radio station in Minneapolis when he was in high school, has been with the CBS network since 1977 and had served in a variety of roles, from vice president of station services to president of CBS Sports, before being named to succeed Howard Stringer as head of the CBS Broadcast group a year ago.

He was a popular choice among CBS affiliates to be president of CBS-Westinghouse. “He knows the secret handshake, and he’s done every broadcasting job there is,” observes Alan Bell, whose Irvine-based Freedom Communications owns several CBS-affiliated stations.

CBS is in third place in the prime-time ratings this season, but Lund cited the recent multimillion-dollar deal with Bill Cosby and producers Marcy Carsey and Tom Werner for a new comedy as evidence that there will be renewed life in its schedule next fall. He also expressed enthusiasm for CBS’ long-term deal with producer Steven Bochco (“L.A. Law,” “NYPD Blue”), which will begin this fall with a comedy.

CBS is hampered in its rebuilding efforts by having few “platforms”--successful programs from which to launch new shows. But Moonves, the former head of Warner Bros. TV, is meeting with “all of the major players” as well as lesser-known producers, and, Lund said, has several promising dramas in development for the fall.

And the combined clout of the CBS-Westinghouse TV-station group (the nation’s largest with 15 stations, including seven in the Top 10 markets) and its 49 radio stations may be the network’s secret weapon, he suggested.

“Those radio and TV stations have a stake in the success of CBS’ prime-time schedule,” said Lund, explaining that CBS plans to promote its programming on both local radio and TV.

Lund declined to give details about the possible DreamWorks deal for children’s programming, but sources said the proposal is for a joint venture between CBS-Westinghouse and the company operated by media moguls Steven Spielberg, David Geffen and Jeffrey Katzenberg.

In contrast to Tisch, who pursued a much-criticized “broadcast-only” strategy, CBS under Westinghouse Chairman Michael Jordan “absolutely wants to get into the cable business,” Lund said emphatically.

Industry sources speculate that CBS could decide to get into the cable news business in a relatively low-budget way, combining news-gathering from CBS News and the Westinghouse-CBS local stations.

“It’s hard to imagine that there’s room for four or five cable news channels,” Lund acknowledged. “But part of the appeal to networks is that it helps defray the cost of news-gathering.”

Lund said CBS wants to be the first of the Big Three networks to create a major syndication arm to distribute and create syndicated programming beyond its current venture, “Day and Date.” That is why CBS is trying to purchase Maxam Entertainment, a Los Angeles-based syndication company.

One area that Lund can’t do much about is the weak local-news lead-ins that have been hurting both David Letterman and Dan Rather in several markets where CBS lost stations to Fox and had to move to weaker outlets.

“We’re working with our new affiliates, but we won’t be getting those Fox stations back--those are 10-year deals,” Lund said. “The best thing we can do for Letterman is improve our ratings in prime time.”

Yet while he said he understood Letterman’s frustration at a situation “over which he has no control,” Lund admitted that he wasn’t crazy about the late-night host’s barrage of barbs about the network, trashing it to his young viewers as a network nobody watches.

“It’s fine to pick on me and CBS executives,” said Lund, noting that he was amused by the actor occasionally introduced as “CBS President Peter Lund” on Letterman’s show. “But picking on the network--that’s a little harsh.”