Word: cbs
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...conversation surely ranks as one of the oddest in the annals of broadcast journalism. During lunch at a Manhattan restaurant two weeks ago, Don Hewitt, executive producer of 60 Minutes, asked CBS Broadcast Group President Gene Jankowski a question. Would the company ever consider selling CBS News? If so, said Hewitt, he and several of the division's brightest stars, including Dan Rather, Diane Sawyer, Mike Wallace, Morley Safer and Bill Moyers, would like to buy it. "I told him CBS News is not for sale. It never was, never is," recalls Jankowski. "I didn't take it seriously...
Hewitt, concerned about recent CBS takeover attempts by Ted Turner and a right-wing group called Fairness in Media, says he was only trying to protect the news division from possible meddling by ideologues and corporate raiders. Yet some CBS staffers contend that Hewitt was implicitly taking a swipe at the team of Van Gordon Sauter, executive vice president of the CBS Broadcast Group, and Edward Joyce, president of CBS News. Though Hewitt denies that Sauter and Joyce were his targets, many CBS employees blame the duo for low morale within the division. At the same time, an internal struggle...
Morale suffered its greatest blow last month when 125 news positions were eliminated and 74 employees were dismissed. The cutbacks followed CBS's decision in August not to renew the contract of Supreme Court Correspondent Fred Graham, who reportedly earned $250,000 a year. The reductions, which affected 10% of the 1,250-member staff, were designed to help pare $6 million from the division's estimated $225 million budget. Though the savings were part of a company-wide austerity program put into effect after CBS bought back 21% of its own stock for nearly $1 billion last summer, some...
...many staffers, the firings underscored their fear that the loyalties of Sauter, 50, and Joyce, 52, no longer belong to the news division but to Black Rock, the nickname for CBS Inc.'s Manhattan headquarters. According to their critics, the two men have their feet firmly on the corporate ladder and are eager to advance upward. Though both spent much of their careers as journalists (Sauter worked as a newspaperman for nine years, while Joyce began as a radio reporter), they made their reputations in management positions. Sauter served as the network's chief censor and head of the sports...
...also responsible for changing the way CBS handles the news. Washington coverage has been cut back to make room for more featurish stories from around the nation. Graphics have grown flashier, segments faster paced. Whether these developments should be cheered or booed depends on which staffer is asked. For many critics, the Sauter-Joyce news approach was symbolized by West 57th, a briskly edited magazine show with four young hosts and a predilection for pieces about rock stars and religious cults. Some veterans, including Hewitt, publicly castigated the show, though a few early doubters admit that the program grew better...