THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, May 22, 1995 TAG: 9505220044
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A5 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: [LARRY BONKO]
LENGTH: Medium: 86 lines
It seems like only yesterday when your humble columnist was in California listening to the CBS brass toss bouquets at Connie Chung.
The president of CBS News, his vice president and the executive producer of the network's morning show were rallying round Chung as if she were a helpless kid sister being bullied on the schoolyard. That was about five months ago, when Chung and her colleagues at CBS News were feeling the heat for broadcasting, and gleefully promoting, Chung's between-you-and-me, Hillary-is-a-bitch interview with Newt Gingrich's mom.
While addressing a gathering of the Television Critics Association in Pasadena, Calif., including members with knives sharpened, Chung's immediate boss said he was standing by her even after Chung had sort of ambushed Newt's mom on camera - even after Chung embarrassed herself chasing after Tonya Harding and Nicole-Simpson-pal Faye Resnick.
``I respect and like Connie very much,'' said Andrew Heyward, CBS News vice president and executive producer of the network's 6:30 p.m. newscast, which was third in the ratings when Chung joined Rather as co-anchor on June 1, 1993, and is still No. 3.
Heyward, CBS News boss Eric Ober, and Jim Murphy, executive producer of ``CBS This Morning,'' went on and on about how great Chung is and what an asset she is to the network of Edward R. Murrow, Walter Cronkite and Eric Sevareid. ``She has tremendous talent,'' said Heyward.
From Ober: ``Connie is an earnest, hard-working reporter who has spent over 20 years leading the charge for a new generation of female correspondents in our business.''
The same men who had reached out as if to give Chung a big hug and say, ``We still love you,'' lowered the boom on ol' Con over the weekend. They pulled her off the ``CBS Evening News,'' leaving TV's original wooden Indian, Dan Rather, to go it alone.
Chung said she wasn't interested in any other job at CBS. Her news magazine, ``Eye to Eye,'' is about to be canceled after finishing 87th in the ratings. And she's asked out of her contract, which is up in less than a year. Her agent, Alfred Geller, said Chung ``had dismissed the network's other offers.''
Chung, once the darling of CBS News, the reporter who so often charmed David Letterman and his stay-up-late audience, finds herself persona non grata at the network for which she left NBC. After announcing that Chung was out of the picture on the 6:30 p.m. news, Ober said he would like Chung to have a future at the network.
Yeah, right.
Chung couldn't do what Jane Pauley at NBC and Diane Sawyer at ABC did - pull together successful prime-time magazine shows; bring viewers by the droves to CBS. She didn't click with Rather on camera. Then there was the Gingrich thing and the Oklahoma City thing, when the firefighters and police thought she had slighted them, and there was the Harding thing.
It took a while, but Ober, Heyward and Murphy came to the realization that Chung is a lightweight who blew her opportunity to become a major force in network news. After listening to Ober in his January meeting with the TV critics, I decided that Chung is guilty of another sin in the eyes of her CBS bosses.
She isn't Diane Sawyer.
At the gathering in Pasadena, Ober wasn't bashful about saying how he admired Sawyer for the way she can handle hard news and the candy-and-popcorn stuff without giving up any of her classy coolness.
Some of what Chung has been doing, said Ober, was not quite on the high road. ``We're looking for the kind of balance achieved by one of our competitors, Diane Sawyer. She has done a remarkable job of balancing investigative reporting with major interviews.''
The Diane Sawyer-ing of Connie Chung failed, and now Chung is out the door, waiting for other networks to make offers. Maybe ``Hard Copy'' will call.
``This is personally disappointing and unjustified,'' Chung said in a statement after the guillotine fell. ``The network's proposal to give me a lesser anchor position does not work for me.''
Bye, Connie. I guess this means we won't be seeing her schmoozing with David Letterman any time soon. by CNB