Budget-Conscious NBC News Drops Oliver

NEW YORK — NBC News, which recently decided to close its San Francisco bureau, is dropping longtime Los Angeles-based correspondent Don Oliver.

“My contract was not renewed,” Oliver said Thursday when asked by The Times about his status. “I really don’t want to work for them any more, and I don’t think they want me to work for them any more, either.”

The 54-year-old Oliver has been covering Los Angeles and the West Coast for NBC since 1976. He also did a stint in the Los Angeles bureau from 1969 to 1973 before taking an overseas assignment.

Oliver said that he had been told that his services no longer were needed by the network. He declined to give any further details on his departure. There was no immediate word from NBC on whether he will be replace.

Some NBC hands expressed concern that other correspondents, particularly older ones whose salaries are at the high end of the scale, may be let go as their contracts come up for renewal.

NBC News is in the midst of a cost study to determine how it can cut back to compensate for the huge expenditures made during the Persian Gulf War and for continuing, industry-wide revenue shortfalls caused by the recession. The network previously had said that it is closing its San Francisco bureau as of June 1. David Burrington, the 60-year-old correspondent there, is being offered early retirement.

According to sources at NBC, one idea under study is to do some sort of sharing of news-gathering functions between the network and its owned-and-operated stations. NBC News employees were said to have recently visited KNBC Channel 4 in Los Angeles to investigate the sharing of camera crews and editing facilities.