Lane Vernardos, at 67; was vice president of news at CBS
NEW YORK - Lane Venardos, executive producer of the “
The cause was a heart attack, his daughter Kelly Venardos-Ward said.
Mr. Venardos started out in broadcast journalism at the Chicago radio station WBBM in the late 1960s. His 30-year career with CBS began in 1971, when he came to New York as a producer of special events for CBS radio news.
After working as a senior producer for CBS radio in Washington and as the assistant director for the local CBS television station in Chicago, he returned to New York in 1974 to become a producer for the “CBS Evening News With Walter Cronkite.’’ He was named executive producer in 1984, three years after Dan Rather took over as anchor after Cronkite’s retirement.
In 1986, Mr. Venardos was named the executive producer of CBS’s special events division, which covers breaking news, elections, and summit meetings and prepares special reports in anticipation of notable deaths and important news events.
In May 1989, he interrupted the show “Dallas’’ to bring the unfolding events in Tiananmen Square in Beijing to American living rooms. That year he also produced the network’s coverage of Mikhail S. Gorbachev’s trip to China to restore normal relations and end the 30-year Chinese-Russian split.
In 1990, he started a late-night news program, “America Tonight,’’ with Charles Kuralt and Lesley Stahl as anchors