CBS Inc. on Wednesday seemed in need of an emergency crew from ”Rescue 911,” one of its few hits, as it announced a $156 million fourth-quarter loss, removal of anchor Dan Rather`s right-hand man and the resignation of a top female news executive in Chicago.
The company, which warned of a miserable quarter, made good on the promise by disclosing that it lost $156 million, or $6.06 a share, compared with a profit of $59.5 million, or $2.31 a share, a year earlier.
Further, it cut its quarterly dividend 77 percent, to 25 cents per share. For the year, it earned $110.8 million, or $4.30 a share, down from $296.3 million, or $11.51 a share, in 1989.
As expected, CBS was hurt by huge rights payments for sports events and an industrywide advertising slump. It paid $1.06 billion in a four-year deal to broadcast major league baseball and, Wednesday, cited a $55 million after- tax loss on its first season of broadcasts.
Meanwhile, two personnel moves were disclosed. Though unrelated, they appear to be symptomatic of changes forced on the network by well-chronicled difficulties, including uninspired ratings and occasional bashing of its news division.
In Chicago, Colleen Dudgeon, 35, news director of CBS-owned WBBM-Ch. 2 and a 10-year veteran whose tenure began as a writer and included many awards for excellence, resigned. The Kentucky native was one of the highest-ranking female executives at a network-owned news operation.
”I just decided I needed time to plan a new future. It was a decision that I made based on things I need to do,” said Dudgeon, who noted that her first child was born six months ago.
If Dudgeon declined to go further, some colleagues did not.
They suggested that her leaving reflected tensions inspired by executive changes at a station that, though still highly profitable, has suffered from its network`s poor prime-time performance and a drop in prestige for its once pre-eminent, and economically important, 10 p.m. newscast.
Under new general manager William Applegate, who came from New York`s WABC-TV with a reputation for strong opinions, a willingness to make big changes and commercial success, the station`s newscasts have exuded a jazzier, arguably more cosmetic, look that some deride for its more ”tabloid”
emphasis to events.
”I urge you to join me in wishing her the best,” Applegate wrote to workers in announcing the resignation of an employee who had performed
”admirably.”
Though Dudgeon`s decision may have arisen from personal unease, it appeared voluntary. The departure of Tom Bettag, a close associate of Rather, was not.
Bettag, executive producer of the CBS ”Evening News,” was fired, apparently as a sacrifice to affiliated stations unhappy with the newscast`s poor ratings since the Persian Gulf war began.
He was replaced by ”CBS This Morning” executive producer Erik Sorenson, a WBBM alumnus, and Susan Zirinsky was named senior producer. Zirinsky is a longtime CBS News stalwart who received a rash of publicity in serving as model for the Holly Hunter character in the movie ”Broadcast News.”
In announcing Bettag`s removal from a post held since 1986, CBS said nothing about a transfer to another one. CBS spokesman Tom Goodman said Bettag ”is taking some time off before meeting with management and deciding what he wants to do.”
Rather issued a statement praising him but making no direct reference to his firing. He called Bettag ”one of the best broadcast news producers of his generation. . . . Tom`s success is all the more remarkable because he achieved it with modesty and decency, staying true to his principles, to his friends and to himself.”
”It`s because of ratings,” a CBS source said. ”Management had to make a gesture to the affiliates, and Bettag was the gesture.”
Though Goodman denied published reports that CBS News, hard-hit by budget cuts, was ill-prepared for the war, the ”Evening News” got off to a rocky start. It was chided by TV critics amid much good publicity for upstart Cable News Network and was tweaked in a skit on NBC`s ”Saturday Night Live” that seemed to play on a general perception of uninspired performance.
While CNN was delivering a blow-by-blow account of the air raid in Baghdad and ABC had early on-scene coverage, the best Rather could do was report rumors of ”flashes in the sky” over the city because CBS` Baghdad reporter could not find a working phone line.
Once unrivaled among broadcast news operations, CBS long has been held to a warmer analytical flame than competitors.
But while it recovered from its opening debacle, that war coverage still appeared to anger some affiliates. Some had dumped the network feed in favor of CNN and many refuse to air the last half-hour of an expanded hour-long evening news.
Another CBS source suggested that the Bettag move ”is just the peeling of one more layer from Dan Rather`s authority. The budget has been cut and it will be cut again when the war ends, and what budget is left seems to be going to new programs. Rather doesn`t like that; he wants it to go into news, but he`s not getting his way in these things now.”
Rather, who has two more years on a contract that pays about $3.5 million a year, has exercised considerable power over all aspects of the news division. He holds a contractual veto over any co-anchor. But he has not been able to curtail budget cuts, which reflect a less romantic notion of journalism taken by CBS President Laurence Tisch, a hugely successful investor-turned-broadcasting executive.
According to a CBS source, the night the war broke out, Tisch came to the network broadcast center on Manhattan`s West Side and ”found the crew eating sandwiches” ordered from a restaurant and charged to the network.
”He was furious,” the source claimed. ”He ordered the practice to stop and threatened to pull the plug on the whole news division then and there if costs weren`t cut.”
