Late Late Show

CBS schedules news at 2 a.m.

Late-night television is a wasteland of old movies and shopworn reruns. But Ted Turner's 24-hour cable news service has shown the networks that there is a big off-hours audience for news. Now CBS has moved to meet his challenge. Starting in September, it will offer its affiliate stations three hours of news weekdays between 2 a.m. and 5 a.m., when a surprising 4.9 million of the nation's 81 million TV households are still tuned in. Says Gene Jankowski, president of the CBS Broadcast Group: "CBS will be the first [broadcast] network on which news in effect will be available 24 hours a day."

The new show will practically double the number of hours CBS News is on the air. It is a major step, perhaps the most important to date, in a trend that network executives have been predicting for several years: a growing network reliance on news, sports and other live events. The networks feel that their resources and experience give them a big advantage over cable operators in these areas. But Turner's improving Cable News Network already reaches 11.25 million homes. Another cable news service, jointly owned by ABC and Group W, starts June 21 in an estimated 2 million households. By that time, Turner's second round-the-clock news service will be available to broadcast stations. This venture, called CNN2, may pose the first serious challenge to the networks as exclusive providers of news to their affiliates. CNN2's first broadcast customer: WBNS of Columbus, a CBS affiliate.

All this jockeying for the future is painfully costly in the present. Turner has lost an estimated $50 million. The ABC-Group W operation projects large initial losses. And CBS will not disclose how large an audience is needed to break even on its new service, which will cost an estimated $10 million annually. But among CBS affiliates there is widespread enthusiasm. The chairman of the affiliate board, James Babb, executive vice president of WBTV in Charlotte, N.C., says: "If this is a way of stemming long-range losses [to cable], then the short-range benefits may not be easily measurable."

The new show's format, on-air personalities and content are still under debate at CBS. Despite plans for a relaxed morning-show style, the late-night news may take on a feisty chemistry all its own. The audience, notes CBS Vice President Tony Malara, will be primarily "insomniacs, shift people and people who watch a lot of television." Those who appear for live interviews, adds News President Van Gordon Sauter, are likely "to have bizarre living patterns or something they desperately want to say."

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