News Budgets Latest Casualty in Persian Gulf : Networks: Covering the crisis has proved costly for ABC, CBS, NBC and CNN. Reallocation of resources has shunted aside some domestic stories.

NEW YORK —  At a time when network managers are looking at ways to cut the costs of global news-gathering in a soft economy, the responsibility of covering the crisis in the Persian Gulf is wreaking havoc with their news budgets.

Until recently, ABC, CBS, NBC and CNN each had been spending about $1 million a week to cover the international crisis that developed when Iraq invaded Kuwait Aug. 2. With the story more quiescent at the moment, the figure has dropped closer to $500,000 a week.

Annual “contingency funds” for unanticipated expenses have been depleted and, said one network executive, “We’re all over budget because of this.”

NBC News President Michael Gartner recently told a convention of TV news directors that Persian Gulf coverage has pushed his division $10 million to $15 million over its $250-million budget for 1990.

With the networks currently preparing their budgets for next year, staffers are wary that personnel cutbacks may be around the corner. But news executives said that they do not expect layoffs as a result of the Persian Gulf story. So far, they said, the impact has primarily been felt in the reallocation of resources to the Middle East, which means that some other stories haven’t been covered.

“All of your careful planning goes by the boards because you have to cover this story, which is potentially the most dangerous of a generation,” said Ed Turner, the executive in charge of news-gathering at Cable News Network. “The Middle East is an expensive place to be, and the Arabic culture does not open its doors to Western journalists. But, beyond that, I’ve never seen a story as widespread as this one. It stretches from the Middle East to Kennebunkport, the United Nations, Tokyo, London and the man-on-the-street at the gas pump.”

“We’re a very healthy company, and I don’t expect layoffs as a result of the gulf story,” Turner added. “But the gulf crisis affects us in two ways--because it is accelerating the recession in this country, and because it costs so much to cover. The costs are manageable for now with careful planning but, if it comes to it, nothing can get in the way of the gulf story.”

Sources at CNN said Friday that each of the network’s departments has been asked to reduce its projected budget for 1991. But the scaling back was said to be related not only to the gulf crisis but also to lowered projections for advertising revenue.

CNN’s plans for election coverage in November have been somewhat curtailed, and producers are being asked to watch their travel budgets.

“Up to this point, nobody has told me, ‘You can’t do this story,’ but we’re being told that our plans for expansion are on hold,” said Brooks Jackson, a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter who was recently hired from the Wall Street Journal for CNN’s investigative unit. “I don’t know if I’ll be doing an eight-part series on Caribbean banking schemes.”

At CBS News, “They’re looking very carefully at everything we do,” said one employee who asked not to be identified. “I’m sure (CBS chief executive) Larry Tisch was not happy with what it cost us to cover the gulf. But the coverage was also a source of pride for the company, and you have to cover the Middle East if you’re going to be competitive in news. Besides, with Major League Baseball a big loss financially and prime-time ratings down, news is still a cheap buck by comparison.”

Executives at the broadcast networks said that while some stories may not have gotten covered because of the gulf crisis, cost was only one factor that went into the decision. Available air time also was an important consideration.

“In the old days, the networks covered everything that moved and then decided what to do with it,” said Steve Friedman, executive producer of “NBC Nightly News.” “Today, we have the resources to do the job, but we’re not going to do a bunch of stories that are not going to get on the air.”

At its height, Friedman estimated, coverage of the Persian Gulf crisis in its various aspects took up 60% to 70% of the 22-minute evening newscast. “If I’m going to send Tom Brokaw to Saudi Arabia, I’m not going to cover some stories here,” he said.

Paul Friedman, executive producer of ABC’s “World News Tonight” (and no relation to Steve), feels much the same. “Although we are spending an enormous amount of money, it was practically the only story we were doing on many nights,” he said.

“There was a time when we stopped shooting most optional domestic stories because we knew Iraq was going to dominate,” the ABC producer said. “But this broadcast is on budget, and there’s no story or series that we haven’t been able to do.”

At CNN, where there are no restrictions on the amount of time given to news, Turner said that story cutbacks have had more to do with people than with money.

“I think we were all over the recent big domestic stories--the floods in Ohio, the Gainesville, Fla., murders, the Mapplethorpe (artworks) trial, for example,” he said. “But we were looking at some stories for the beginning of (the school year) at colleges and secondary schools, and we didn’t have the staff for it.”

NBC, meanwhile, is planning to lay off as many as 25 employees, including closing a bureau in Budapest and consolidating its staff in Atlanta, according to executives there. But Don Browne, NBC News executive vice president, said, “Those changes were planned as part of a reorganization before the gulf story, and we will have a net gain in staff” for the year of about 100 people.

NBC is adding news personnel for a prime-time series to be hosted by Jane Pauley and for “Expose,” a projected magazine series.

One way that the networks have cut down on the expense of covering the gulf is by pooling some satellite costs. In the early days of coverage, NBC estimated that it was spending $100,000 a day to transmit Middle East footage from the Middle East. Now the four networks share a satellite uplink in the Saudi desert, although they have uplinks of their own in other locations in the region.

“There are some situations where we’ve had an opportunity to pool some videotaping now,” Browne said. “We don’t all have to get our own charter to get aerial footage of ships now sitting at sea.”

Browne added, “You have to ask yourself, ‘Is this competitive or is this redundant?’ In a story like this, everyone wants to have the competitive edge. The trick is to reinvest (the money saved by pooling) in something that gives you that edge.”