THE TV COLUMN: [FINAL Edition]

Abstract

NBC News Management ChangeNBC News president Michael Gartner Friday announced the retirement of Thomas B. Ross, senior vice president, who has been in charge of the planning for restructuring of the division since General Electric purchased NBC parent RCA in 1987 ...

Some time ago, Gartner realigned the management team he had inherited from [Lawrence Grossman], installing three senior vice presidents as his top aides-including Ross, Joe Angotti and Tim Russert. Last summer Gartner added a fourth, bestowing the title of senior vice president in charge of the "Today" show on NBC Sports president Dick Ebersol. (A month after his accession, Ebersol promised that "as long as I am involved with the `Today' show, I am determined to have Jane Pauley and Bryant Gumbel as co-hosts and Deborah Norville as the news anchor." But we digress ...)

[Allan Horlick] told the prognosticator that he was sending her a cassette of Thursday's "Inside Edition" with the [Glenn Brenner]-Sister [Marie Louise] segment intact. Sister Marie Louise ended the regular season tied for first place with "Santa Claus," whose record fell to 11-3 after Minnesota beat Cincinnati 29-21 last night... .

Channel 7, which never seems to stop fiddling with its weekend news lineup, has hired Doug McKelway to be weekend anchor. He will start in late January ...

McKelway will replace Meredith Buel, who replaced Robin Chapman a couple of years ago ...

This past fall, Seven has used sports director Frank Herzog at the top of the weekend newscasts on Redskins game days, usually handing off to Buel back in the studio. Designed to capitalize on Herzog's play-by-play chores for WMAL-AM earlier in the afternoon, the Herzog-led lineup has had so-so ratings impact ...

Buel, who is on vacation, will leave the station sometime this spring, according to news director Bob Reichblum. "I first talked to Meredith about the change two months ago," Reichblum said Friday. "He's exploring a couple of options" ...

McKelway also signed as an investigative reporter working with the new director of Seven's investigative unit, John C. White ...

McKelway is a native Washingtonian (he attended Landon) and a member of a distinguished family of journalists. His grandfather Ben was editor of the Evening Star; a great-uncle, St. Clair McKelway, was with the New Yorker when that really meant something. Currently his brother Bill is a reporter for the Richmond Times-Dispatch and his uncle John, a veteran of the Star, writes the Rambler column for the Washington Times ...

Good bloodlines aside, Reichblum said McKelway first came to his attention two years ago when he was working for KCTV in Kansas City. Most recently he has been co-anchor of the evening news at WJKJ in Jacksonville, Fla... .

In a statement Reichblum said, "Doug knows Washington and has strong ties to this community. His insights and experience will add another dimension to the News 7 team" ...

No date has been set for his first appearance on the air ...

The switch in anchors is the latest change on weekends at Seven. The station recently announced an open-to-the-public contest to find a weekend weatherperson, following the departure of an unhappy Nancy Russo, who found a good job in Boston. In February there will even be on-air auditions for the finalists ...

NBC News Management ChangeNBC News president Michael Gartner Friday announced the retirement of Thomas B. Ross, senior vice president, who has been in charge of the planning for restructuring of the division since General Electric purchased NBC parent RCA in 1987 ...

Ross, who has many Washington ties, will become senior vice president and director of media relations worldwide for the major public relations firm Hill & Knowlton Inc., based in New York ...

He had been Washington bureau chief for the Chicago Sun-Times when he was named assistant secretary of defense for public affairs during the Carter administration. After a year with the Celanese Corp., he joined RCA as senior vice president, corporate affairs, in 1982, working closely with chairman Thornton Bradshaw ...

He joined the News division in June 1986, reporting to then-president Lawrence Grossman ...

In a memo to his staff, Gartner said Ross several months ago had informed him of plans to retire next year, in order to take advantage of a lump sum retirement package available to former RCA executives, but apparently the Hill & Knowlton offer speeded up the timetable ...

Ross will serve as a consultant to NBC News throughout 1990, however ...

Gartner praised his friend for his "enormous help to me" since he took over from Grossman 16 months ago, particularly for rethinking and redefining the goals and makeup of the News division ... "always at my elbow with sage advice, keeping me from doing the things I shouldn't do," while urging him to do what is right ...

In a telephone interview, Ross pointed out he had turned 60 in September and that the lump sum payments in the RCA plan would have diminished the longer he remained with NBC ...

"I'll stick around for a year, and keep my hand in," he said ...

Some time ago, Gartner realigned the management team he had inherited from Grossman, installing three senior vice presidents as his top aides-including Ross, Joe Angotti and Tim Russert. Last summer Gartner added a fourth, bestowing the title of senior vice president in charge of the "Today" show on NBC Sports president Dick Ebersol. (A month after his accession, Ebersol promised that "as long as I am involved with the `Today' show, I am determined to have Jane Pauley and Bryant Gumbel as co-hosts and Deborah Norville as the news anchor." But we digress ...)

Since January, Russert has been in charge of the NBC News bureau here. Only two weeks ago, Gartner announced that Angotti was taking a year off to write a book, which, in the argot of network news management, probably means that he's gone ...

Gartner's top staff, in addition to Russert and Ebersol, now includes Don Browne, executive director of news in New York, in charge of all domestic and foreign news coverage, who has risen rapidly in the past year ...

Speaking of Ms. Norville and rapid rises, she will substitute for a vacationing Tom Brokaw as anchor of "NBC Nightly News" starting tonight and through Friday. John Cochran was due to sub last night. Mary Alice Williams, who might usually be anchoring in Tom's place, left on maternity leave after the Sunday broadcasts ...

Hype Award: to Frank Herzog, for that early Christmas present to USA Today TV sports columnist Rudy Martzke Saturday night in the early evening newscast following the 'Skins game ... a preemptive strike if we've ever watched one ...

Strongest comments: Herzog's crediting Martzke with the power to influence network sports decisions, disparaging Martzke's competition in the Washington market ...

Timing award: the Herzog bouquet comes as the talented Norman Chad prepares an article on local TV sportscasters for Washingtonian magazine. Chad has never been overwhelmed by Herzog's work at Channel 7 ...

WRC general manager Allan Horlick, apparently feeling a teensy bit of remorse, called Sister Marie Louise on Friday and apologized for cutting a story about her out of Thursday's "Inside Edition" at 4 ...

The first 5 1/2 minutes of the syndicated show had been devoted to sportscaster Glenn Brenner's "Mystery Prognosticator Contest" on WUSA and included footage of winning NFL game selector Sister Marie Louise of Georgetown Visitation ...

At the time, Horlick claimed it had been such a good news day that the station had been virtually forced by events beyond their control to expand the brief news interrupt on the hour to some seven minutes, effectively muffling Brenner and the 89-year-old nun ...

Friday, Horlick called Sister Marie Louise, apologized and even changed his story. "The only thing I knew was that it was about Glenn. Later when I heard that the story included her I felt I owed her an apology ...

"She was delightful and says she understands these things happen with `news interrupts' and she wanted me to know that she watches NBC" ...

Horlick told the prognosticator that he was sending her a cassette of Thursday's "Inside Edition" with the Brenner-Sister Marie Louise segment intact. Sister Marie Louise ended the regular season tied for first place with "Santa Claus," whose record fell to 11-3 after Minnesota beat Cincinnati 29-21 last night... .

As the spirit of the holidays finally settled over WRC Friday, Horlick, who had been clearly eligible for a lump of coal in his Christmas stocking, instead was presented by his sales staff with a No. 1 made from Baccarat crystal to mark the strong showing of Channel 4 news shows in the November ratings sweeps ...

In case you missed it, James T. Lynagh, who once ran Channel 9 here for Post-Newsweek, has been named president and chief operating officer of Multimedia Inc. He succeeds Walter E. Bartlett, who was recently named chairman and chief executive ...

He had been with Post-Newsweek for 13 years when in 1981 he became president of the Multimedia Broadcasting division, which produces and syndicates TV programming, including the Phil Donahue and Sally Jessy Raphael shows; he owns four TV stations and seven radio stations, and operates cable franchises in four states. William L. Bolster will succeed Lynagh in the broadcasting unit ...

The parent company that Lynagh takes over also owns some 14 daily newspapers and 43 non-daily newspapers ...

In the first hours of the Panama crisis, NBC News apparently helped itself to footage provided by Worldwide Television News (WTN) that was intended for ABC, CBS and CNN only ...

That prompted a rocket from WTN President Kenneth A. Coyte, who complained that when WTN first called NBC's attention to the unauthorized use, an apology and a promise not to use it again was followed by another play of the copyrighted tape ...

This weekend they were still sniping. NBC News noted that ABC News had "lifted off a satellite" exclusive NBC tape of a cameraman in the line of fire in Panama City that showed up on Thursday's "World News Tonight" ...

So far NBC News president Michael Gartner hasn't responded to WTN's complaint. A spokesman for ABC News said "an editor made a mistake on Thursday. The day before, the networks had all agreed to pool everything out of Panama but apparently that didn't last long" ...