'DATELINE' FACES OFF AGAINST '60 MINUTES'.

Byline: Ray Richmond Daily News Television Writer

Like a heavyweight champion that has easily fended off pretenders to the throne before, "60 Minutes" is greeting its new head-to-head challenge from "Dateline NBC" beginning at 7 tonight with a shrug and a yawn.

At least, that's the poker face "60 Minutes" executive producer Don Hewitt is showing on the outside.

"You guys (in the media) are making a lot more out of this than we are," Hewitt said. "I've got a lot of things on my radar screen, and the fact that 'Dateline' is starting this week is a sort of imperceptible blip on it."

Imperceptible?

Perhaps it is merely a startling coincidence that not long after NBC announced it was adding a fourth night of "Dateline" on Sundays to go along with its Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday newsmagazine, "60 Minutes" happened to announce its first major format changes since the 1970s.

Beginning sometime in early April, "60 Minutes" plans to return to a version of its old "Point/Counterpoint" debates featuring liberal humorist Molly Ivins, offbeat conservative satirist P.J. O'Rourke and conservative African-American essayist Stanley Crouch. O'Rourke and Crouch will take turns trading barbs with Ivins. Andy Rooney will continue to be a weekly presence, Hewitt promised.

The 28-year-old mother of all newsmagazines will likewise delay its taping schedule to later in the week to be more timely and allow for at least one breaking news story each week.

As Andy Rooney might ask, did you ever notice how "60 Minutes" seems to go on vacation every June, returning with an original segment only occasionally until fall?

No more. Now, the first-run broadcasts will flow year round.

"We decided that we didn't want to rest on our laurels anymore, and packing up and going away all summer is certainly resting on your laurels," Hewitt said.

Indeed, Hewitt can hardly be blamed for wanting to shake things up a tad. Until a recent rebound that pulled it back into the ratings top 10 for the season to date, "60 Minutes" had lost a full fifth of its audience since last year.

Even now, as it sits tied for eighth with "NYPD Blue" with a 24 percent audience share for the season, "60 Minutes" is down 16 percent from last year's 28 percent share and sixth-place finish. In addition, the show's sterling reputation for toughness and ethics took a hit last fall when it backed away from a segment critical on the tobacco industry.

Hewitt swears he isn't filled with dread at the notion that "Dateline," with far greater youth appeal, will swoop in and steal every "60 Minutes" viewer under 50.

"I'll tell you what concerns me on my radar screen is the fact we lost football a year ago, and that four of our top stations are now on UHF," Hewitt said. "I also don't much like the fact that the official season now runs through the end of May, which means we have to compete with daylight-savings time for four more weeks. That's not so good when you have a 7 o'clock show."

And what of "Dateline NBC"?

"I think, on occasion, 'Dateline' is a quite respectable show," Hewitt said charitably.

For his part, "Dateline" executive producer Neal Shapiro refuses to be drawn into a war of words with Hewitt and seems inclined to be realistic about his show's chances in the time period.

"No one thinks we're going to go in there and blow these guys out of the water," Shapiro said. "It's not going to happen. They will win. Period.

"Our real hope is just to lure a whole new generation of news viewers to that time period."

Indeed, "60 Minutes" is the eldest-skewing newsmagazine on television, its primary audience composed of the middle-aged and elderly. "Dateline NBC," by contrast, scores well with the 18-to-49 age group so coveted by advertisers.

Yet because it has been around so long and is such a proven winner in A.C. Nielsen's overall household ratings count, "60 Minutes" continues to bring top dollar for its advertising, commanding $205,000 for a 30-second commercial spot compared with $100,000 for the average half-minute on "Dateline."

While "60 Minutes" is said to earn in the neighborhood of $50 million in profits each year for CBS News, "Dateline," for its three weekly hours, accounted for roughly $40 million of NBC News' $100 million profit last year.

No matter how "Dateline" fares against "60 Minutes," it has already beaten the odds just by surviving into its fourth year.

It was three years ago that "Dateline" was called on the carpet for loading up a GM pickup truck with explosives to ensure that its faulty gas tank would explode on contact. Everyone connected with that slimy little piece of business has been dismissed, and "Dateline" has grown into a respectable prime-time presence.

While "Dateline" lacks the pizazz and stature of its CBS News counterpart, it makes up for it with pluck and a hustle that has allowed it to add depth to stories that have broken mere hours before.

"We are the ones who put the 'news' back in newsmagazines," Shapiro said. "We don't just spend a lot of time in the editing room fussing over pieces that have nothing to do with what's happening in the world."

Shapiro points to the fact that because "Dateline" airs so often, it has been able to jump on stories such as the Oklahoma City bombing and the recent train crash in Maryland to put fresh spins on them instantly.

It's easy to look at "60 Minutes" as the wise-but-creaking grandpa and "Dateline" the enthusiastic young buck. It's your father's Oldsmobile vs. yours. Yesterday vs. today. Leisure World vs. the Sunset Strip.

But as Hewitt is quick to point out, "60 Minutes" has finished in the annual top 10 for 18 consecutive years.

"Lucy (Ball) never even came close to that," Hewitt boasted. "Nobody has."

Betsy Frank, a senior vice president with Zenith Media in New York, agrees with Hewitt that despite its ratings slippage, "60 Minutes" remains "an enormously popular and prestigious program."

Even a small ratings bump would be a vast improvement for NBC in the 7 p.m. Sunday time period. It has averaged just 9 percent of the viewing audience vs. 24 percent for "60 Minutes."

But Frank doesn't think it's ever a good idea for newsmagazines to go up against one another, since it tends to have a "cannibalizing" effect.

"In this case, though, I think 'Dateline' poses an interesting challenge," Frank added. " '60 Minutes' has the Sunday-night tradition, but this match-up really forces the show to maintain its currency, its relevance."

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Photo (1) As CBS' Sunday-night staple "60 Minutes" turns up the heat, there'll be no summer vacation for Andy Rooney, clockwise from left, Ed Bradley, Steve Kroft, Morley Safer, Mike Wallace and Lesley Stahl. (2) Already running Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday, "Dateline NBC," with anchors Jane Pauley and Stone Phillips, adds a Sunday broadcast beginning tonight to vie with "60 Minutes" for newsmagazine viewers. (3--4) Beginning in April, "60 Minutes" will feature a weekly debate segment with Molly Ivins, left, facing off against P.J. O'Rourke, right, or Stanley Crouch (not pictured). The show had a similar segment in the '70s.