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Eyewitness News led its newscast on Wednesday night with the Justice Department's victorious bid to break up Microsoft. Channel 4 focused on a hate crimes bill, then the software monopoly.
Channel 2 took a different tack. A slain pregnant woman In Jersey City, a drowned baby in Paterson and two young children in Brooklyn grieving for their murdered mother preceded Bill Gates' fate. Then the station quickly cut to a former exotic dancer suing her plastic surgeon for putting silicon breast implants into her derriere.
WCBS's just-arrived news director, Joel Cheatwood, is dearly trying to distinguish the station from its competitors.
Veteran eye
Mr. Cheatwood, a veteran with a reputation for boosting ailing news franchises around the country by adding sensationalized coverage, is the latest in a long line of executives hoping to pull WCBS out of its stupor. His mission also includes improving the fortunes of CBS's local news operations at stations in other markets around the country, including Los Angeles, Dallas and Philadelphia. But New York is his first headache.
"I am firmly in the throes of rebuilding," says a confident Mr. Cheatwood, 41. "WCBS, over the last number of years, has underperformed and the task ahead is to build an organization that has the ability to succeed."
It won't be easy. "The challenge is absolutely enormous," says Jerry Levy, president of JL Media Inc., a firm that buys advertising time.
May sweeps low
Channel 2 has been a perennial loser in the ratings wars for some two decades, a far cry from its glory days when Edward R. Murrow roamed the halls. WCBS had the worst May sweeps in its history this year...