CBS Maintains Confidence in Gumbel’s Newsmagazine

Despite lackluster ratings for “Public Eye With Bryant Gumbel,” CBS News executives on Wednesday expressed confidence with the rookie newsmagazine and said they were sure it would eventually attract a large audience.

“We’re off to a good start,” Andrew Heyward, president of CBS News, told a gathering of television writers and critics in Pasadena. “A lot of the stories that we’ve done on that show have been excellent.”

The show ranks 78th among all prime-time series this season, averaging about 10.1 million viewers a week compared to 19.1 million for CBS’ “60 Minutes,” 15.9 million for the Tuesday edition of “Dateline NBC” and 15.8 million for ABC’s “20/20.” Gumbel, who anchored NBC’s “Today” show for 15 years, is being paid $7 million a year by CBS.

Heyward said it was too early to judge “Public Eye,” noting that most other newsmagazines, including CBS’ “60 Minutes” and “48 Hours,” were not instant successes. He also praised Gumbel as an excellent interviewer and said he hoped to employ more of the newsman’s skills on the program.

“We want to continue to grow,” he said. “But we’re on track.”

Don Hewitt, executive producer and creator of the perennially high-rated “60 Minutes,” also said that Gumbel probably would need more time to work out the bugs.

“Give it time,” he said. “We’re a freak occurrence. To compare other TV newsmagazines to ’60 Minutes’ is just not fair.”

Hewitt also said that CBS executives have discussed the possibility of creating a second prime-time edition of “60 Minutes,” as ABC recently did with “20/20.” But he added that such an addition was unlikely.

“The problem is not finding the on-air talent,” Hewitt said. “But it’s difficult to find 20 producers worth their salt who could turn out what we already turn out on ’60 Minutes.’ It’s really a team effort, and it would really depend on finding those 20 producers.”

Hewitt announced that “60 Minutes” will be close-captioned in Spanish beginning Sunday. The Spanish subtitles will be provided by the Boston-based Caption Center, which already provides English-language captioning on CBS programs for the deaf and hearing-impaired.

“I’m thrilled to finally be able to say to a large portion of this country, ‘ “60 Minutes” speaks your language.’ ”

Such captions are transmitted in the same broadcast signal that carries picture and sound, but can only be accessed by using the remote control (on TV sets sold since 1993) or a special decoder box (on sets sold before 1993).