More anchor chairs at CBS?

CBS Chairman and Chief Executive Leslie Moonves on Tuesday said it’s “very possible” that retiring anchor Dan Rather will be replaced with multiple hosts on the “CBS Evening News,” and he didn’t rule out asking Comedy Central host Jon Stewart to play some role in the newscast.

Moonves’ comments were the strongest indication that the network is seriously weighing the benefit of having more than one anchor in the chair. Given the competition from the Internet and cable news, he said, the network is exploring several ideas, including placing multiple anchors in different cities.

Appearing in an open forum for the first time since dismissing four news staffers connected to a “60 Minutes Wednesday” story, Moonves was peppered with extensive questions at the semiannual Television Critics Assn. meeting in Universal City.

He defended the network’s handling of the aftermath of the flawed “60 Minutes” report about President Bush’s military service, calling it a mistake that will lead to changes in the news division.

An independent panel report on the Bush story released last week, as well as Rather’s scheduled exit March 9, gives CBS “a great opportunity” to reexamine the role of its news division, Moonves said.

“We’re looking from top to bottom at how things are done,” he said. “The world is very different than it was when Walter Cronkite was in the chair.”

Under Cronkite, “Evening News” was long the No. 1 network newscast. But CBS has been ranked No. 3 for most of the last 20 years.

Moonves noted that the network has had some success with its “Early Show” ensemble of four co-hosts and that “there can be a parallel drawn to the evening news.”

CBS and other networks have experimented with multiple anchors before, with mixed results. Rather and Connie Chung co-anchored “Evening News” from 1993 to 1995. Barbara Walters co-anchored “ABC Evening News” with Harry Reasoner from 1976 to 1978; ABC later installed an “anchor team” with Frank Reynolds, Peter Jennings and Max Robinson.

Early speculation about who might replace Rather, either as a single anchor or as part of a team, has included ABC’s Diane Sawyer and the “Today” show’s Katie Couric, as well as lesser-known internal candidates such as CBS correspondent John Roberts.

Noting that the average age of news viewers among broadcast and cable networks is “way over 45,” he said that “one of the things we’re looking at is how do we make [the newscast] younger [and] more relevant....

“We have to do something really different to get people’s attention ... ,” Moonves said. “As opposed to an evolution, maybe we’re dealing with a revolution.”

Younger people aren’t watching the news on television, Moonves said. But Stewart’s “Daily Show” has more appeal for those viewers, which may explain the CBS executive’s willingness to view a “fake news” anchor as a potential participant in a real newscast.

“Jon Stewart is part of our company. We speak to him regularly about all sorts of different things,” Moonves said. Comedy Central, like CBS, is owned by Viacom.

Calling the Bush story a “screw-up,” Moonves revealed that three senior news staffers who were asked to resign last week -- “60 Minutes Wednesday” executive producer Josh Howard, his deputy Mary Murphy and CBS News senior vice president Betsy West -- have still not officially left the company.

“There are discussions going on with them” about their departures, he said. But he declined to say what would happen if they failed to exit the company as requested: “I’m not allowed to talk about that.”

Moonves reiterated his support for CBS News President Andrew Heyward, who kept his job despite the scandal. Some CBS staffers have privately wondered why Heyward was spared.

“Andrew asked the right questions” about the Bush story, Moonves said. “I think he was let down by his people.”

Throughout the forum Tuesday, he remained cool and composed, allowing his irritation to poke through only once or twice, as many of the more than 100 reporters and critics in attendance attempted to extract clues about who might succeed Rather.

Tuesday’s session came at a crucial time for Moonves, 55, the head of CBS as well as the co-president and co-chief operating officer of Viacom, the network’s corporate parent.

Moonves is engaged in a power struggle within Viacom. His co-president is Tom Freston, who made his name developing MTV Networks into a broad-based entertainment giant. Both men are vying to assume control whenever Viacom Chairman Sumner Redstone, 81, exits the stage.

CBS is having an impressive season, especially in prime time, where its ratings among young adults are up 5% compared with last year.

Among adults ages 18 to 49 -- the category most prized by advertisers -- CBS won the November sweep period for the first time since 1980. The quarterly sweep periods are used to help local stations set ad rates. This represents a big turnabout for CBS, which for decades was traditionally drawing the oldest viewers among broadcast networks.

Taking a slap at a longtime rival, Moonves joked: “Frankly, [NBC’s] Jeff Zucker’s looking a little older these days, and I’m feeling a lot younger.”

But the Bush memo scandal has cast a dark cloud over CBS’ legendary news division.

A Sept. 8 “60 Minutes Wednesday” story suggested that Bush received preferential treatment during his years in the Texas Air National Guard. The story relied on copies of four documents allegedly written by Bush’s commander. Critics aggressively challenged the documents as fakes.

In a report released last week, an independent panel charged that “myopic zeal” led the network to rush the story on the air without adequately verifying the documents. The panelists also accused CBS of making repeated misstatements in defending the story after critics went on the attack and suggested that Rather, who served as correspondent on the story and publicly defended it for two weeks until the network commissioned the investigative panel, had minimal involvement in its preparation. In November, Rather announced that he would retire in March.

The memo flap is the latest in a series of high-profile embarrassments for Moonves and CBS. In 2003, Moonves made a controversial decision to pull the plug on a miniseries about President Reagan after critics complained that its portrayal of the first family was unfair.

Early last year, the Federal Communications Commission slapped CBS with a $550,000 fine after singer Janet Jackson bared her breast during the Super Bowl halftime show, leading to an outcry over alleged indecency in broadcasting. The network is appealing.

“We’re still very upset about the FCC’s treatment of us,” Moonves said. But “it’s not having a ‘chilling effect’ on our shows.”