Days Of Distress at CBS

By Richard Zoglin

HELP WANTED: Head of network programming. Experience in creating hit shows and rejiggering prime-time schedules preferred. Must be willing to work long hours in an almost hopeless cause.

It was the most awkwardly protracted job opening of 1989. On the last day of November, after two years of trying unsuccessfully to boost the network's sagging ratings, CBS Entertainment president Kim LeMasters resigned. His departure was not unexpected, but CBS's delay in naming a successor was. For a time the network dickered with Marcy Carsey and Tom Werner, producers of The Cosby Show and Roseanne, but negotiations fell through. Finally, late last week, the network completed a deal with Jeff Sagansky, 37, a former NBC program executive who heads Tri-Star Pictures, which produced this fall's hit movie Look Who's Talking.

The two-week vacancy at the top was a painful symbol of the network's mounting woes. Dethroned from its No. 1 spot in the Nielsen ratings by NBC during the 1985-86 season, CBS has lately sunk to a feeble third place. Its ratings for the November "sweeps" were the lowest for any such period in its history. The ten prime-time shows CBS introduced this fall were a conservative lot, and none has been a ratings hit. Just two CBS series, 60 Minutes and Murder, She Wrote, finish regularly in the Top 20, and both are getting old.

Even more devastating to the network's pride, if not its bottom line, is the ( sinking status of the CBS Evening News, which has been overtaken in popularity for the past two months by ABC's World News Tonight. Some network executives blame the decline on weak lead-in programming on local CBS stations around the country. Others cite ABC's widely praised coverage of the San Francisco earthquake, a bonus of its presence at the World Series.

Slumps, of course, are made to be broken. ABC jumped from nowheresville to first place in the mid-'70s, and NBC was a sorry No. 3 before Bill Cosby helped boost it to No. 1 in the mid-'80s. But CBS may be in more desperate straits than either of them was. For one thing, its low ratings are compounded by poor demographics: its audience is not just smaller but also older. What's more, cable and other viewing choices have siphoned away much of the network audience and made it tougher for a weak network to revive itself. If one drops too far behind, there may be no bouncing back.

Not all the news is bad for CBS. The network still ranks No. 1 in daytime. In addition, it has grabbed the TV rights to several major sports events, including the baseball play-offs and World Series, the NCAA basketball tournament and the 1992 and '94 Winter Olympics -- though for sums that have been criticized as exorbitant. Some industry watchers contend that CBS, under president Laurence Tisch, is flailing for direction. But Broadcast Group chief Howard Stringer insists that the big sporting events, along with a push for more adventurous programming, will help recapture an audience that has grown rather jaded. "You cannot anymore launch shows that simply repeat yesterday's viewing patterns," says Stringer. "That's something we learned the hard way this year." Any other lessons will have to be learned quickly by Sagansky, the man about to fill the toughest job in network television.

CHART: NOT AVAILABLE

CREDIT: TIME Chart by Cynthia Davis

CAPTION: Evening News ratings

Prime Time ratings

With reporting by William Tynan/New York