Miscues In The Morning Deborah's down. Kathleen's out. And who is Paula Zahn?

By Richard Zoglin

Can't anybody here play this game? The rules for morning TV have changed & little since they were invented by the Today show back in the 1950s. Put a perky, good-looking couple together on a homey set; mix in a potpourri of news, weather and feature segments; and keep it all going for two hours. Do it right, and you'll grab a sizable share of the audience that can't get through the pre-work hours without some TV chatter percolating in the background.

Lately, though, the networks' morning-show managers have committed some major miscues. Last fall the Today show turned what should have been an orderly transfer of power -- from Jane Pauley to Deborah Norville -- into a public-relations Chernobyl. Norville, cast as the usurper of Pauley's job, took over in January with viewers already against her. And they don't seem to have changed their minds: after nearly four years as the top-rated morning show, Today has slipped in the past six weeks to No. 2, behind ABC's Good Morning America. CBS, in the meantime, has dumped its morning co-anchor, Kathleen Sullivan -- oddly, just when the program's third-place ratings were inching upward. Sullivan, whose last day was Friday, will be replaced by a relative unknown: Paula Zahn, who has been doing the newscasts on Good Morning America.

One cannot ignore the whiff of a double standard here. After all, it was Bryant Gumbel who wrote the nasty memo about his co-workers at Today, but it was Pauley who had to watch her heir apparent being groomed on the couch next to her. Norville too was probably treated unfairly in the press. Would a man in the same position have been so rudely characterized as a conniving climber? And why, some may wonder, does Harry Smith, the competent but colorless male half of the CBS This Morning team, get to stay on while Sullivan is forced to dust off her resume?

For better or worse, TV's women of the morning have a tough responsibility. To succeed in this league, they must not only be bright, attractive and versatile enough to talk comfortably with Hollywood celebrities, South African leaders and weathermen wearing Indian headdresses. They must also project a warm, cozy, familial glow. Pauley, with her big-sister perkiness, had it. So does Good Morning America's Joan Lunden, who is no newswoman but goes down as easy in the morning as mom's Cream of Wheat. Is it just a coincidence that both of them are also very public mothers?

Sullivan, by contrast, was always too much the glamour girl, as well as prone to gaffes both on and off the air. (An open microphone once picked up $ her off-camera reference to CBS as the "Cheap Broadcasting System.") And Norville, even without the controversy that attended her rise, seems too brittle and pushy for her gentle morning duties. She comes across as the executive secretary whom everybody in the office hates dealing with.

NBC executives insist that Today's ratings sag does not imply a rejection of Norville. "Whenever there's an anchor change on a broadcast, there's always a reaction," says Tom Capra, who took over as executive producer last month. "Part of the audience is happy, part of the audience is sad, and usually the ratings drop." CBS This Morning also has a new executive producer, who is expanding the show's feature and entertainment coverage; the hope is that a new co-anchor will lure viewers to sample the broadcast at a time when they might be shopping for alternatives.

And how will the newest member of the morning female triumvirate do? Zahn, 33, reads the news with bright-eyed brio and overdramatic retards at the end of each story. ("At least five . . . have been reported . . . killed.") She has solid journalistic credentials -- nine years in local reporting and anchor slots before joining ABC News in 1987 -- and soft brown hair. Oh, yes, and she has an eight-month-old daughter at home. Looks like she came to play.

With reporting by William Tynan/New York