President of CBS News Steps Down ( remember the dan blowergate on FAKE national guard memo )
By JACQUES STEINBERG
The chairman of CBS, Leslie Moonves, announced today that he was replacing the longtime president of CBS News, Andrew Heyward, with the longtime president of the network's sports division, Sean McManus.
In a conscious nod to Roone Arledge, who oversaw both the news and sports divisions at ABC for more than a decade, Mr. McManus, 50, will similarly serve in both capacities at CBS. But Mr. McManus will face challenges that simply did not exist in Mr. Arledge's time, as CBS - and other television news divisions, to say nothing of newspapers - struggle to find new ways to captivate viewers who are increasingly defecting to newer outlets like Fox News and Yahoo, and increasingly skeptical of journalists as a whole.
Mr. McManus's most immediate challenge will be to develop the next incarnation of the "CBS Evening News," which has been led on camera, since April, by Bob Schieffer, whose tenure has always been characterized as temporary. It has been nearly a year since Mr. Moonves said he was seeking to blow up what he has described as the "voice of God" single-anchor format for the nightly news in favor of something more innovative - a quest that has thus far proved elusive.
In succeeding Mr. Heyward, whose contract expires at the end of the year, Mr. McManus inherits a once-vaunted news division - symbolized by Edward R. Murrow, whose legacy is celebrated in the current George Clooney movie "Good Night, and Good Luck" - that is now reeling on several fronts.
Last fall, the news division was upended by the fallout from a report, first broadcast on the weeknight edition of "60 Minutes," that purported to present new details about the Vietnam-era National Guard service of President Bush but was later discredited after the network acknowledged it could not vouch for the documents on which it was based.
Mr. Heyward - who, at least initially, fiercely defended the report and the documents, despite fundamental questions raised immediately about their authenticity - managed to hold on to his job in the months afterward. But few others involved in the production of the report did. Dan Rather, the correspondent on the report and the anchor of the "CBS Evening News" for nearly a quarter century, stepped down as anchor in the spring, a year earlier than he had planned.
Meanwhile, after an outside panel concluded that the disputed report had been rushed onto the air under competitive pressure and never should have been broadcast, Mr. Moonves fired the segment producer, Mary Mapes, and demanded the resignations of three other top journalists, including Betsy West, a senior vice president, who was one of Mr. Heyward's chief deputies.
While Mr. Heyward, president of CBS News for nearly a decade, survived that period, he has failed, in recent months, to meet Mr. Moonves's mandate of developing a successor to the broadcasts that were led by Mr. Rather and now Mr. Schieffer.
"Clearly there's a need for a different vision for CBS News," Mr. Moonves said today in a telephone interview. "Obviously the evening news is one issue that has sort of been on hold for a while."
"This has been a very difficult year for CBS News, for Andrew, for other people in CBS News," Mr. Moonves added, a moment later. "I think it was a mutual decision. Andrew's been head of CBS News for a long time, longer than anyone else in many years. It was just time."
And, Mr. Moonves added, "we had another extremely talented executive right down the hall."
Mr. McManus, who has been president of CBS sports since 1996, is the son of the legendary ABC sportscaster Jim McKay, whose legal name is McManus.
In an interview today, he acknowledged a steep "learning curve," but said that there were many similarities between sports and news, not least the necessity of enlisting good story-tellers capable of working on deadline pressure and often live.
While saying he and Mr. Moonves had already begun to discuss ideas for the next "CBS Evening News," he said he was not prepared to share any details of what that format might be.
"One of the things we're going to look at very closely is putting together the best ensemble," he said. "Whether that involves having an anchor or not having an anchor, it's way too premature." |
