Video: CBS's Latest Soap Opera

Andy Rooney, the elfin curmudgeon of 60 Minutes, usually gripes about quaintly trivial matters like hand soap and junk mail. But in his syndicated newspaper column two weeks ago, he launched an angry attack on a more substantial target: his own bosses. Recent layoffs and the just announced demise of the CBS Morning News, he charged, were symptoms of a growing bottom- line approach to news that is unworthy of a once great network. "CBS, which used to stand for the Columbia Broadcasting System, no longer stands for anything," Rooney wrote. "They're just corporate initials now."

The initials these days might well stand for Can't Buy Serenity. Over the past few months the former No. 1 network has been rocked by enough traumas to fill a season of Dallas. Last year CBS was the target of takeover attempts by Atlanta Entrepreneur Ted Turner and a right-wing group allied with Republican Senator Jesse Helms of North Carolina. Financially drained by its anti- takeover maneuvers (the company repurchased 21% of its own common stock for nearly $1 billion), CBS has since embarked on a painful cost-cutting campaign. The Broadcast Group last month announced that it was eliminating 700 jobs, more than 8% of its work force. The cuts included 90 positions in the news division, where 125 jobs had already been lost in a cutback last fall.

The network's woes have been exacerbated by falling ratings. In prime time, CBS finished a weak No. 2 last season after six years in first place, and prospects for the coming season appear no brighter. The CBS Evening News, long the undisputed king of its realm, is now embroiled in a fierce three-way battle. And the travails of the CBS Morning News have become a corporate embarrassment. After trying everything but food stamps to help the third-rated broadcast, the network announced that it would remove the show from the news division and start from scratch in January with a new, as yet undetermined, program for the time period.

As if that were not enough, a high-level corporate struggle may be brewing. Laurence A. Tisch, who cofounded the Loews Corp. with his brother Preston and emerged last year as a white knight to protect CBS against further takeover attempts, has assumed a more threatening visage. Tisch began buying CBS stock last summer and in October got Government permission to increase Loews' holdings to as much as 25% of CBS's voting stock. But Tisch, who now has a seat on the CBS board of directors, reportedly refused the company's request to sign a standstill agreement that would bind him to the 25% limit. Last week his holdings reached 24.9% of common stock (though less than 24% of voting stock), causing concern at CBS that Tisch may be readying a move to take control of the company.

Speculation over what Tisch might do if he were at the helm of CBS is swirling around the broadcast community. First to go, some contend, would be Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Thomas Wyman, brought in from Pillsbury in 1980 as CBS Founder William S. Paley's hand-picked successor. (Indeed, Wyman and other top executives are guaranteed lucrative severance packages if any single interest acquires more than 25% of CBS's voting stock.) Close behind, say insiders, could be Van Gordon Sauter, the president of CBS News, whom many have blamed for the stumbling performance of the Morning News.