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THREE BLIND MICE: HOW THE NETWORKS LOST THEIR WAY

by Ken Auletta; Random House; 656 pages; $25

It was a grim day for CBS chief executive Laurence Tisch. News writers were on strike against his network; employees were up in arms over another round of layoffs; criticism in the press was mounting. Now, on this March morning in 1987, Tisch opened his New York Times to see an op-ed piece signed by none other than Dan Rather, bitterly attacking the Tisch-instigated news cutbacks. The Washington Post offered yet another litany of complaints from news staffers about the cost cutting.

"Unbelievable!" Tisch moaned on reading one charge, tossing his newspaper against the flowers that adorned his private dining table. To reports that some CBS News stars had offered to take salary cuts in order to save jobs, Tisch scoffed, "These are the biggest bunch of liars I've ever seen in my life!" His son Jimmy came into the office to commiserate. "Calm down, Dad," he pleaded.

Ken Auletta, a resourceful and very fortunate reporter, was sitting at breakfast with Tisch that morning. In fact, Auletta seems to have been practically everywhere he wanted to be over the past six years. He began researching Three Blind Mice, his exhaustive behind-the-scenes look at the three broadcast networks, just as they were entering the most turbulent phase in their history. Cable and other competitors were gaining power; network audiences were shrinking; new corporate owners, with a bottom-line orientation, were taking control. Through it all, Auletta was the proverbial fly on the wall. He talked regularly with the corporate chiefs as well as with network programmers and news anchormen; sat in on sales meetings and affiliate conferences; examined the workings of the TV business from Madison Avenue to Universal City.

Name a well-publicized episode over the past six years, and Auletta supplies the kind of detail that sources offer only when they know their accounts will not blow up in their faces in the next day's papers. What led to NBC News president Larry Grossman's downfall? Auletta traces it partly to a disastrous dinner party that Grossman gave on the night of the sixth game of the Mets-Red Sox World Series. (General Electric chairman Jack Welch, a rabid Red Sox fan, wanted to watch the game.) Why did Dan Rather walk off the set in September 1987, leaving six minutes of dead airtime on the CBS Evening News? Auletta's second-by-second account is more sympathetic to Rather than many others. There are fresh nuggets as well. ABC anchorman Peter Jennings, before signing a new contract in late 1987, was weighing an offer from CBS to become Rather's co- anchor. NBC president Robert Wright once suggested that stars like Bill Cosby and Don Johnson be used as hosts of news documentaries.