Chung, Povich Team Up for a Future Affair

Connie Chung, whose meteoric rise and high-profile 26-year television career abruptly ended last year after a much-publicized split with “CBS Evening News” co-anchor Dan Rather, is on her way back. And this time she has a new anchor and partner: none other than her talk-show host husband, Maury Povich.

Together the pair will anchor and oversee a weekday series for syndication providing news, information and analysis.

The show, targeted for either a 7 or 7:30 p.m. time slot, is scheduled to debut in the fall of 1998. It will be produced under the aegis of DreamWorks partners Steven Spielberg, Jeffrey Katzenberg and David Geffen.

Asked Wednesday at a Beverly Hills news conference whether she is still bitter at losing her CBS position 13 months ago--when she claimed she was made a scapegoat for the newscast’s problems--Chung began seriously, then delivered the quip of the day:

“Everything that’s happened seems like a long time ago. It’s really ancient history. Let me put it this way--I’d rather,” Chung said emphatically, “work with Maury.”

Povich, meanwhile, said he will finish out his two-year contract with Paramount for his syndicated “Maury Povich Show” even as he helps prepare for the new project.

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“I am very committed to that talk show,” he said. “It’s been a successful show for five years. I have tremendous partners at Paramount. They’ve been very good to me. . . . It was painful for me to tell them that at the end of my current contract that the relationship is going to end.”

It was an altogether festive atmosphere as Katzenberg, in shirt-sleeves, came into the press conference first, hailing, “Good morning, good morning, another DreamWorks announcement. . . . I am very pleased and excited to be able to introduce to you one of the genuine great news icons.”

Then Chung walked in alone, saying, “I do have an announcement about my future, but I’m only half the story. The other half is right back there--Maury.” Then the couple--she is 49, he is 57--stood side by side, arms touching. Meanwhile, Katzenberg passed out the news releases: “I’m Connie’s advance man here.”

Despite the hoopla, the format of the show was uncertain. Both Chung and Katzenberg said it will “evolve.” Chung said it will focus on the story America is talking about around the dinner table. Povich offered that an installment may hinge on the “story of the day” or the story “we ourselves will investigate and enterprise.”

Katzenberg said he approached Chung and Povich several months ago in search of a show that would “look at the story of the day and really tackle it in-depth [with] some real analysis on it.”

“It was one of those very lucky, fortuitous things,” he added. “Connie having taken a year’s sabbatical”--a reference to her having stayed at home with the couple’s adopted son until her contract with CBS ran out--”was really ready to find the next mountain to climb.”

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Chung said that what appealed to the couple most about the proposed show is that “it has to do with in-depth analysis and interpretation,” noting that “it’s something I think we have [not] enough of in the news business and during a time period [7-8 p.m.] in which this doesn’t exist at all.”

Asked whether the show would have a he-said, she-said aspect to it, Povich, who was an anchor on “A Current Affair” before his own show, asserted that they will offer the viewing public a nice contrast. “We’re very different people. Connie is a very meticulous, fastidious person. I am a sock thrower. We are a combination of opposites that have managed to live and love each other a long time.”