To listen to Dan Rather, you'd think there was almost a war going on between the Entertainment and News divisions at CBS.
The anchorman yelled long and loud when his prime-time news magazine, "48 Hours," was shifted from Wednesday to Thursday and Connie Chung's "Eye to Eye" slid up an hour on Thursday - opposite "Seinfeld." Rather opined that the president of the Entertainment division, Peter Tortorici, was trying to kill off both shows to get the hours back for his programming.Not so, Tortorici told critics.
"I'm interested in success wherever it comes from. And when news magazines can be successful, then I'm interested in having them," he said.
"I think a good network schedule has a strong news presence in prime time. But it's a competitive marketplace, and it's got to be able to compete. I don't think it's fair not to hold those shows up to the same kind of competitive standards."
In other words, if the news magazines don't shape up they're going to have to ship out.
Tortorici said his move of "48 Hours" and "Eye to Eye" has been "misunderstood" and "miscategorized." While Dan Rather and other CBS News staffers have seen it as an attempt to kill the shows, Tortorici said the opposite is true.
"In my own heart of hearts I really believe that `48 Hours' would have a very difficult time surviving if it was against "PrimeTime Live' on Wednesdays," he said.
(ABC just moved "PrimeTime" from Thursdays to Wednesdays, scheduling the struggling news magazine "Day One" in the vacated Thursday at 9 p.m. time slot.) Tortorici cited his attempts to build a comedy block of programming from 7-9 p.m. on that night, while "PrimeTime Live" would have ABC's powerful "Roseanne' and "Ellen" as lead-ins. And he cited the fact that - faced with a strong news magazine contender - the best "48 Hours" could hope for would be to split the audience with "PrimeTime Live" and hand NBC's "Law & Order" a win in the time slot.
While Rather has also criticized the scheduling of "Eye to Eye" and "48 Hours" consecutively on Thursdays - saying viewers won't stick around for both shows - Tortorici, not surprisingly, holds an opposite view.
"You know, any station manager will tell you that nothing leads in better to news than news," he said. "On Thursday night, yes, it's going up against `ER.' But do we expect it to beat `ER'? No.
"We're looking to see if we can beat `Day One,' which is nowhere near, in our view, as formidable as `PrimeTime Live.' "
Even CBS News President Eric Ober didn't argue with Tortorici's reasoning - at least not much - saying it was "not illogical."
Tortorici said there's really no difference between CBS News and any other program supplier, be it Paramount or Warner Bros. or any other show producer - they all want as many shows on the air as possible and in the best time slots possible.
"And somebody in a network chair has the responsibility to be impartial and say you're measuring up to a standard or you're not measuring up to a standard. And that's tension," he said. "I think there's always a tremendous amount of passion and emotion that accompanies these debates. . . . And with that passion comes friction."
But both Tortorici and Ober refuse to categorize that friction as a feud or a rift within the network.
"There's been an effort to kind of whip up or fan the flames of a news division-entertainment division dispute, argument or whatever," Ober said. "But that's just not so."
But you can bet that Rather still isn't happy.
ALREADY CANCELED? During the NBC portion of the current Television Critics Association press tour, Andy Dick showed up as a cast member of the upcoming NBC sitcom "The Station."
Which was a bit of a surprise, because he's currently starring in the Fox sitcom "Get Smart." Although that's less of a surprise because, if you've seen the "Get Smart" revival, you know it won't be around long.
"Did anyone see `Get Smart' last night?" Dick asked. "I'm sorry. That's all I want to say."
By the way, you may recall that your local television editor told you not to expect much from "Get Smart" because Fox had failed to provide critics with preview copies. Although Dick said the first episode was shot nearly a year ago, Fox insisted review copies weren't ready.
However, the producers of "The Station" had the pilot episode of that sitcom ready for critics to see this week - just three weeks after it was shot.
"Isn't that weird?" Dick asked facetiously.
SCARED AWAY: When Phil Hartman left "Saturday Night Live" last year, it was announced that he would star in his own prime-time sketch comedy show for NBC.
Now he's joined the cast of the upcoming NBC sitcom "The Station" as a news radio anchorman. And this change in plans had no small amount to do with the disastrous failure of Martin Short's attempt at a sketch comedy/sitcom hybrid last fall.
"I don't want to say I got scared," Hartman said. "Well, for six weeks I shivered in the corner naked with the lights out.
"I felt that maybe I didn't want to be the next person to go down in flames trying to bring variety to prime time."
(As for Short, he's finishing up a movie, after which he will produce six episodes of a straight sketch comedy half hour for airing sometime this spring on NBC.)
Hartman said it was "such a relief" to find a place for himself on "The Station," although he apparently was a little surprised about how his character appears in the first episode.
"From what I saw of the pilot, apparently I based the character on Orson Welles," he said. "I am as big as a house.
"It's the holidays and I stuffed my face and I apologize to you all. I'm losing weight. I mean, I'm going to trim down."
(For the record, Hartman appears much, much slimmer in person.)
As for "Saturday Night Live," Hartman said he doesn't miss it. Much.
"When I saw Michael McKean doing Bill Clinton, I just burst into tears," said the man who used to do the president on "SNL." "I did an Elvis move and put a couple of bullets in my TV."
Now that he's left that show, Hartman's observations are about the same as most everyone else's - the show is not what it once was.
"The show, I think it's no surprise to anybody, is in a bit of a slump right now," he said. "And I just think all it needs is an infusion of talent.
"It needs another Eddie Murphy . . . or Dana Carvey. And then the overall chemistry of the show will improve. There are a lot of talented people there, but they don't seem to be coalescing into a really workable whole."