THE CBS MORNING AGONY: DIGGING INTO GRAB BAG

One more time, but probably not the last. So the network of Edward R. Murrow, Walter Cronkite et al. is going to retool “The CBS Morning News”--again--in a stab at shedding its supposedly rigid, semi-hard news image, building ratings and giving viewers more fun before 9 a.m. There’ll be a new look, and a new title too.

Here’s one vote for “The CBS Morning Nudes.”

It’s catchy, provocative and a ratings-sure bet for the kind of boffo morning lead-in that CBS affiliates have been demanding as a replacement for the present program, a perennial poor third in the ratings.

That title may also capture the tone, flexibility and style the program will acquire in January when it ceases being produced by CBS News. This new, softer show will come under the banner of a new, separate production unit reporting directly to CBS News President Van Gordon Sauter in his other network role as executive vice president of the CBS Broadcast Group.

The new production unit is a corporate eunuch, being neither news nor entertainment. If you’re looking for a name, though, try Sautertainment.

It hasn’t been defined, but we do know that Sautertainment excludes Maria Shriver and Forrest Sawyer from co-anchoring the new January morning show. The capable and appealing Shriver and Sawyer were jettisoned Friday as co-anchors of “The CBS Morning News,” although both said they have been offered other jobs in the news division.

Sautertainment also doesn’t include the much-traveled Susan Winston, who was hired last spring to design CBS’ new, revamped morning show. But many of Winston’s ideas were reportedly rejected by her bosses and she resigned last week, saying she disagreed with the decision to withdraw the program from the news division.

That’s a good one when you consider that non-journalist Winston is the former executive producer of ABC’s “Good Morning America,” which is produced by that network’s entertainment division, and the former producer of last season’s biggest syndicated bomb, the silly “America.”

Sauter has said that having a separate unit produce the new morning show will free it from the restrictive “traditional boundaries” separating news and entertainment. Presumably, without the spirit of Murrow looking over its shoulder, the show will be able to cut loose and go on to dizzier and daffier things.

Truth is, however, that the separation Sauter refers to is often non-existent and was surely invisible on Jan. 1, 1985, when CBS News reached deep into its funny bag and hired Phyllis George to join Bill Kurtis on “The CBS Morning News.”

In fact, all the morning shows blend mostly light news and entertainment. It’s a format in which even NBC’s news division-produced “Today” show can accommodate Willard Scott giving weathercasts in drag.

And although “The CBS Morning News” with Shriver and Sawyer was no softy, it was no starched collar, either. It was essentially a tighter, straighter, harder-edged clone of “Today” and “Good Morning America.”

Faith Daniels and Bruce Morton will temporarily replace Shriver and Sawyer on “The CBS Morning News” starting today.

CBS was providing only an hour of morning news as late as 1981. So there’s no edict in stone prescribing a CBS newscast from 7 to 9. Anything goes.

Feel like dreaming? It would be swell if CBS would use this opportunity to make a bold, two-hour programming statement at 7. With affiliate pressure for bigger audiences, though, don’t hold your breath.

A daily children’s program? Sure, and Van Gordon Sauter is Capt. Kangaroo. A thoughtful two hours a la “CBS News Sunday Morning”? Not likely when you recall that Charles Kuralt and his “Sunday Morning” senior executive producer Shad Northshield were labeled too languid when they got their brief shot on “The CBS Morning News” a few years ago.

Other options? Well, Ronald Reagan will be free after 1988.

With the two other morning news clones still alive and CNN available on cable, the nation will not fall apart when “The CBS Morning News” is turned into pudding. If the program won’t be greatly missed, though, Shriver and Sawyer will. They didn’t sing or tap-dance, but they were warm, comfortable and smart, and what else could you ask for?

Calls to their New York offices Thursday found both surprisingly upbeat as their year together on CBS was about to end. Their contracts expire Sept. 1.

“Yes, I’m glad I did it,” Shriver said. “Yes, I’d do it again. My only disappointment is that they didn’t stay with the broadcast a little longer and let it grow.”

Sawyer said he was talking to CBS about another news job, but hadn’t made a decision. Shriver was undecided about an offer to return to the network’s Los Angeles bureau, where she spent two years as a West Coast correspondent for the morning news. This time, though, she would be working weekends and also for the more prestigious evening news.

Although Sawyer and Shriver were losing their high-profile jobs, neither had much to complain about. A year ago, Sawyer was anchoring the news at WAGA-TV in Atlanta and Shriver was a relative unknown in Los Angeles. Now both are national figures.

“I’ve got more opportunities than I ever had,” Sawyer said. And Shriver said that she’s turned down numerous big-paying local news anchor jobs, including one from WBBM-TV in Chicago. “I come out of this better off and with my head above the rubble,” Shriver said.

They didn’t catch the opposition, but their ratings were still better than those for the show they inherited.

“Not in the slightest,” said Sawyer when asked if he considered the year a failure. “Our goal was to stabilize the program and do a broadcast that was respectable. We did first-rate journalism and I’m highly satisfied.”

Shriver, who is the niece of Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) and the daughter of Sargent Shriver and Eunice Kennedy Shriver, said that previous experiences suffering through family political disappointments had helped her at “The CBS Morning News” during times of media speculation about whether she and Sawyer would be fired.

“Certainly no one likes to pick up papers in the morning and read about their fate,” she said. “It doesn’t make for a good cup of coffee. But it doesn’t come as a great shock that there would be people who would write about that.”

Shriver came to the morning news job with heavy baggage and she expected--and got--close scrutiny. “In this business, you can go either of two ways,” she said. “You’re a queen one day, a jerk the next.” Her hair, her wardrobe, her general demeanor and just about everything else became fair game for critics.

“Whenever somebody criticized me, I would write them a note,” she said. “I was very busy in the fall.”

She also carried the burden of pedigree: “There was my name and where I came from. Is she smart? How did she get this job? Can she do this job? Can she get up at 3 in the morning? Will she get married and leave the next day?” Shriver said the talk now is only about her accomplishments.

At the end of their final program Friday, Sawyer and Shriver said goodby to viewers and displayed an enormous greeting card bearing the names of their numerous predecessors on the numerous earlier versions of “The CBS Morning News.” Sawyer followed Shriver’s parting words with his own terse goodby, paraphrasing an earlier, more famous CBS anchorman. “And that’s the way it was ,” he said, “Aug. 1, 1986.”