• by Wayne Friedman , Staff Writer, January 19, 2005

Future news personalities on "The CBS Evening News" will be younger, and not the "voice of God, single anchor" type, according to Les Moonves, co-president, co-COO of Viacom and chairman of CBS.

Young viewers don't respond to a single anchor, he said. CBS' "Early Show's" quartet of younger hosts could be a possible model for the evening news. That's good considering the average age of network news viewer is in the 60-plus demographic.

Moonves was speaking yesterday at the semi-annual TV Critics Association meeting in Los Angeles.

News ratings have dropped across all networks, a factor that can't be ignored. CBS is third place in its early evening newscast and CBS's news show is not getting any younger. One reporter offered up Jon Stewart of Comedy Central - and Moonves didn't exactly dismiss it out of hand.

"Jon Stewart is part of our company," said Moonves. "We speak to him regularly about all sorts of different things."

All the major daily entertainment trades, as well as The New York Times led with this item, although much of the early Q&A with Moonves focused on the repercussions of the Dan Rather-President Bush Texas Air Guard controversy.

To get TV critics off the scent, he started his remarks by pleading he did over a dozen interviews on the subject before coming to the TV Critics meeting here in Los Angeles.

The press, however, would have none of it.

The press pressed Moonves on why Andrew Heywood, president of CBS News, didn't take the fall. Moonves explanation was that Heywood specifically warned "60 Minutes Wednesday" producers they should not push the story unless they nailed it. In Moonves opinion, Heywood did all the right things - but his producers did not, and that is why CBS made some firings. In the Navy, said one reporter to Moonves, if a mission goes bad the captain of the ship resigns.

"We are not the Navy," said Moonves. The Air Force, Army, or Marines wouldn't fit the bill either for Moonves.

It's hard to argue with much else on CBS. The press did their best though, including questions concerning an incident on a recent "Amazing Race," where a male contestant seeming came close to physical abuse of his wife. On other issues, CBS executives held their own in the presentations yesterday. Though newly installed Nina Tassler, president of CBS Entertainment, in her first public moment at the TV critics tour, initially misspoke about a new Elvis Presley project schedule for May, saying Camryn Manheim would be playing Ann-Margret in the mini-series.

But Manheim will be playing Elvis' mother. Oh well. No one got all shook up.