On Television
KITMAN, MARVIN
On Television BLUES AT THE CBS MORNING NEWS' BY MARVIN KITMAN ONE OF MY favorite pastimes, next to sleeping late when I should be watching the network TV offerings, is reading about all the...
...Arnold Schwarzenegger, homemaker...
...Shriver was given the option of going back to LA as the West Coast anchor...
...No, this Georgetown alumna is well-versed in affairs both f oreign and domestic—as one might expect of someone whose uncle was President of the United States and whose father was a Democratic candidate for Vice President...
...It didn't work...
...I'll be taking a few days off," she said, without mentioning why...
...They made a wonderful offer to Hartman last April, proposing to trim his salary by 50 per cent...
...I was impressed from the start by Shriver's erudition, even if her voice seemed a little irritating—too shrill for the morning...
...Given what David Hartman does, that sounds like a good deal...
...The latest nominee for anchorwom-an number 217 at The CBS Morning News was Linda Ellerbee, formerly of NBC...
...They saw it as "houseclean-ing...
...and failed...
...I began to admire her courage in appearing on national television with one of her lower front teeth missing...
...Or Sherwood Forrest...
...Suddenly, however, there were counter-indications...
...Others have praised his "honesty...
...Ellerbee, failing to grasp the grandeur of this conceit, rejected the chance of a lifetime to be the Morning News anchor in Chicago...
...She is no Barbie or Phyllis doll, no mannequin disguised as a journalist...
...Who would have dreamed they might end up working on the same show together...
...Last spring Prince Charming was running away from the people at ABC Sports, whom he accused of intellectual abuse...
...Three or four bloodbaths ago, if memory serves, CBS hired George Mer-lis, who invented GMA for ABC, to salvage the Morning News...
...It was the right time to pick him up at a bargain price...
...It further revealed that the hapless Shriver-Sawyer team was on the verge of a generous vacation, with no one in particular slated to "fill in" for them...
...To be sure, The CBS Morning News had already gone through around 97 producers...
...New York was still open...
...But Susan Winston knew that Ellerbee alone was not enough to shore up the sagging show...
...let's call it a brainsqualt) that what they needed was a new anchor-woman...
...Although this chagrined Winston, at least it made sense...
...The CBS Morning News must have the most immaculate house in broadcasting—it gets cleaned every 10 minutes...
...The loss of Ellerbee could not grieve Winston long, because CBS soon let it be known that it would not renew her contract come October...
...They brought in backroom superstar Susan Winston, a former producer of ABC's Good Morning America (GMA), to save the morning...
...AS I WATCHED the smoke pour out of the ears of the executives who were contemplating, making, and unmaking all these changes, I wondered: Were they really necessary...
...Their decision left poor Frank no choice other than to carry on with the degrading MNF Nevertheless, there continued to be a lot of talk at CBS News about bringing in someone like the Giff...
...That was what she always wanted to do, according to the papers...
...Its small, unfaithful audience is enough to satisfy CBS News honchos, but not the top brass at Black Rock, the corporate headquarters on Manhattan's Avenue of the Americas...
...On Television BLUES AT THE CBS MORNING NEWS' BY MARVIN KITMAN ONE OF MY favorite pastimes, next to sleeping late when I should be watching the network TV offerings, is reading about all the goings-on at The CBS Morning News...
...The next day—July 25—came the climactic announcement: CBS would can the Morning Xews at the end of the year...
...But Winston, whose initial title was Executive Director of Planning, was different from the others...
...It should have been called "Mr...
...Why would the Giff want to remain at ABC Sports if, as all the newspapers copiously reported, it had kicked him in the teeth...
...A highlight of my summer months has been the public quarrel between the heads of the News and Entertainment divisions—Van Gordon Sauter and Donald B. Grant, respectively—over West 57th's chances for eventual success...
...Rather will change his sweater some day and regain his supremacy...
...She didn't let them make too much of her wedding this spring...
...He said, "Let's turn it into GMA...
...This came as news to Maria...
...CBS News eventually denied negoti-atingfor Sandy Hill's services...
...Green Jeans' Revenge," for no matter how the CBS News executives struggled to improve the show, they could never make it as good as Captain Kangaroo...
...But I could tell Maria's early morning TV days were numbered...
...That didn't make much sense...
...Many viewers still think his name is Forrest Tucker...
...Last December the executive troika tried to put Connie Chung into this hot seat...
...The papers said that Frank had decided to stick with MNF, and that Susan had put aside her personal feelings for the good of the show...
...This seems drastic to inc...
...I have some friends who feel the same way...
...You will recall that she used to work for The CBS Morning News...
...Chung, alas, wouldn't bite...
...The new contract was for something in the neighborhood of $980,000 a year...
...The papers had simply said CBS was holding talks with Hill for the purpose of "seeking her out...
...Of course, the Morning News is not their only problem...
...Why keep her around, he must have reasoned, when she'sdoingsuchagoodjob...
...You have to feel sorry for the guy...
...Yet there was something fishy about this...
...Today, in its current peripatetic mode, would have taken the whole show to Hyannis Port for a week...
...Only on television...
...The future looked none too bright for Forrest Sawyer, theincumbentmaleco-anchor...
...One day in May I read that The CBS Morning News was talking to Sandy Hill—yes, the same lady who foundered as David Hartman's partner on GMA in the '70s...
...I also liked her class...
...His stock has been plunging, along with the reputation of Capital Cities (ABC's parent company), ever since NBC's Today started wiping up the grease on the road with GMA around 26 weeks ago...
...Chung, then riding the airwaves as an exotic yet dull reporter on NBC's A merican A Imanae (since rechristened 1986), had earlier done a stint as the toast of dawn television on that network's News at Sunrise...
...Slowly, Shriver grew on me...
...Winston's second bid for a quick fix from her old network brings me to one of my favorite TV news fairy tales: how Frank Gifford of ABC's Monday Night Football (MNF) nearly became co-anchor of The CBS Morning News...
...The CBS Evening News with Dan Rather recently lost its ratings lead among news shows after a zillion consecutive weeks as number one...
...No wonder the anchorwoman's position on this show became known as the electric chair of TV journalism...
...Sauter thinks Grant's pessimistic remarks betray a "lack of enthusiasm...
...But making sense has never been a high priority for the show that hired Phyllis George (an-chorwoman number 215...
...It's always the New Improved Better-Tasting Absolutely Caffeine-Free Version...
...The Chung offer made perfect economic sense...
...Have they considered filling the time slot with West 5th...
...After a brief period of quiescence, the CBS executive team made their next move...
...Actually, CBS News has been known for years as "welfare for the middle class...
...The executives in charge—Howard Stringer and Eric Ober, under the overall supervision of Van Gordon Sauter—had this frequently recurring brainstorm (no, "storm" is too strong...
...And Paramus, N.J...
...In fact, it was the executive trio of CBS News—not the Giff—that poured cold water on Susan's idea...
...They wanted someone more "qualified" (Phyllis George...
...But Ellerbee would not be one of them...
...Itseems Sauter's operation wasa little overstaffed...
...The network sources forgot to tell her how unhappy she was...
...But it is the story of The CBS Morning News that endlessly fascinates me...
...moreover, it would take the 7-9 a . m . period away from CBS News, with the almost certain result of more layoffs...
...I gave the apparent Sandy Hill-for-anchor move three-and-a-half carrots—too hastily as it turned out...
...It made me want to wake up with Joan Lunden, which isn't hard to do...
...What integrity...
...Susan Winston seemed beguiled by the same strategy...
...It never is...
...She must have been talking to herself out there on the coast...
...Given Susan Winston's keenness for an ABC makeover—Gifford and Hill would have formed the perfect anchor team for "Good Morning CBS News"— the next logical step would have been to goafter David Hartman himself...
...amid all the confusion she signed a contract with ABC...
...They also neglected to tell him that he was about to jump...
...In an effort to squeeze more money out of ABC, Cap Cities has been cutting everything in sight...
...She started by taking a few months to simply sit and watch...
...All together, there would be more anchors on the show than in the New York harbor...
...Kismet...
...Then there were the budget cuts—an unhappy development for 525 of the network's employees, some 90 of them in News...
...Better to let her go to NBC, then try to lure her back at double, triple or quadruple the price...
...Would he not dare to be the new Bryant Gumbel...
...It was obvious what her network thought of her when, just after the wedding, a spate of stories began to appear—all quoting CBS sources—describing how she would like to give up the daily grind and become a full-time Mrs...
...West 5 7th is a more nettlesome matter...
...She didn't know about her frustrated domestic aspirations or her impending decision...
...Susan, new in her role at CBS, happened to be Frank's girlfriend...
...That's the way it goes at CBS News, as poor Lane Varnados, erstwhile producer of The CBS Evening News with Dan Rather, found out earlier this year...
...That's merely a glitch, though...
...How in the world could the Kennedy Clan have deprived one of their very own, who was clearly destined for a career entailing public scrutiny, of a dentist...
...So she concocted an idea, one that no one had thought of before—except Roone Arledge, who tried it eight years ago...
...I should inform anyone who has watched the show once in the last six months— and that's about average, judging from the ratings—it is not the same show it was...
...But Sauter saw fit to get rid of her...
...Sandy hasn't exactly kept a high profile since sinking with the sun beneath the Western horizon after GMA dropped her...
...Now scheduled for extinction in December, this program has for five years been a serial saga, a miniseries in epic time...
...It's had about 216 occupants since the day Sauter courtmartialed Captain Kangaroo...
...What was wrong with Maria Shriver (anchorwomannumber216...
...Susan wanted to have lots of anchors all over the place—Dallas, Los Angeles, New York...
...She wanted to be paid to view the show...
Vol. 69 • July 1986 • No. 10
