CBS News’ Connie Chung Takes Pay Cut : Television: Production on her specials has been suspended. Reduced salary reflects her reduced duties, network officials say.
NEW YORK — Production on Connie Chung’s prime-time specials for CBS has quietly been suspended. The CBS anchorwoman--who announced last July that she intended to cut back on her workload in order to have a baby--recently told the producers of the specials that she would prefer not to travel on assignments in the coming weeks so that she could concentrate on her efforts to have a child.
The staff for the specials has been disbanded to work on other projects for CBS News. And Chung, who makes an estimated $1.8 million per year, has agreed to take a pay cut--to $1 million annually--to reflect her reduced duties at a time of cutbacks at CBS News, network officials said. She continues as weekend anchor on the “CBS Evening News.â€
“We’re definitely in temporary holdsville so that Connie can concentrate on trying to have a baby, “ said Andrew Lack, executive producer of the “Face to Face With Connie Chung†specials.
Individual segments for the specials have been completed, but they have not yet been broadcast. The last special, one of four this season, aired during the February sweeps period. There is no special on the schedule for May, network officials said.
Lack said that the suspension of production did not represent a departure from the network’s plans: “I would imagine that we’ve done maybe one less special than I thought we’d do. It was never formalized exactly how many we would do. The specials have done well in the rating whenever they’ve been on, and I think we can get on the schedule with one whenever we want.â€
The 44-year-old Chung--who is said to have one of the highest Q (or popularity) ratings in television news--had been scheduled to do “Face to Face†as a weekly prime-time series last fall on CBS. But CBS management agreed to reduce the weekly series to a series of specials when Chung said that she wanted to have a baby. There was no word from the network about whether the Chung series would be on the schedule next season.
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