New Format Will Dawn For ‘Cbs This Morning’

You can thank “Late Night with David Letterman” for the new format that “CBS This Morning” is breaking out on Monday.

With solo guest Colin Powell, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, “CBS This Morning” will introduce a new studio, a live studio audience and, its producer hopes, a different kind of morning television.

“This program will be so different that I’ll be able to compete on a playing field that I’m creating, instead of one that I can’t compete on,” said Jim Murphy, the show’s executive producer since September 1994.

CBS’ morning shows have sailed under a curse ever since the network canceled “Captain Kangaroo” in 1984. After a few false starts, “CBS This Morning” debuted Nov. 30, 1987, worked hard, and settled into third, where it has remained.

“We do every bit as good a job as the other guys do, often much better and more responsibly, and it doesn’t matter,” Murphy said. “History’s against us, and the tide of television right now is against us.”

The first hour of the new “CBS This Morning” will have news segments, anchored by Jane Robelot, with longer segments for interviews by co-anchors Paula Zahn and Harry Smith and weatherman Mark McEwen.

The second hour will be devoted to in-depth exploration of a single issue or interviews with a single personality, like Powell. Through it all, the studio audience will there.

So what’s the Letterman connection?

When Letterman’s producers took “Late Night” for its London visit in May, they let Murphy stage his show in the Ed Sullivan Theater.

“All they said was, ‘Don’t screw up the audio board; it’s expensive,”’ Murphy recalled.

“I felt that if we could get great bookings and keep the audience involved, it was going to be fine,” he said. “A couple of days before we got it there, I started to feel it was going to be really good.”

After three exhilarating shows in the Ed Sullivan, “Basically we realized that we were involved in producing a better program than anything we’d ever worked on,” Murphy said.

It’s all because of the studio audience, he said.

“You can get immune to the cameras and forget there are six or eight or 10 million people watching,” Murphy said.

“When there are people sitting right there in front of you, you can’t let down. The energy level goes up by 20-30 percent, and we’ve got really intelligent, interested audiences.”

With Powell, “CBS This Morning” is declaring its plans to have shows that will make news and get written about.