Shake-Up

For CBS News it has been a year of almost nonstop discord. Morale plummeted after 74 staffers were dismissed in September as part of companywide cutbacks. The jazzy new magazine show West 57th and the revamped CBS Morning News inspired cries of outrage from news traditionalists. A group of CBS News stars even inquired about possibly buying their division from the company. Last week the target of much of the staff discontent, CBS News President Edward Joyce, 52, was replaced. His job goes to Van Gordon Sauter, 50, executive vice president of the CBS Broadcast Group and Joyce's immediate predecessor as news chief.

Sauter is hardly without his critics. Some veteran CBS staffers charge that he is concerned more with "razzle-dazzle" than with journalistic substance; they cite his support of the controversial hiring of Phyllis George as Morning News co-host. Yet the switch was welcomed by many at the network. Sauter is more outgoing and popular than Joyce (who will become senior vice president of CBS Worldwide Enterprises), and he presided over a successful retooling of the CBS Evening News under Anchorman Dan Rather. Said one executive: "Sauter is so forceful a man, he may pump people's creative juices again."