April 10, 1992

The advertising agency that created "the man in the Hathaway shirt" is now being run by a woman. Ogilvy & Mather Worldwide in New York announced yesterday that Charlotte Beers, the former chief executive of Tatham/RSCG, is now its chairwoman and chief executive. Ms. Beers, 56 years old, succeeds Graham Phillips, 53, who had held that post since Ogilvy was acquired by the WPP Group in a hostile takeover in 1989.

Blue Cross and Blue Shield has gone to court in another round of its fight to increase insurance premiums for 475,000 individual customers. The company filed suit in Superior Court on Wednesday, asking that the state's Insurance Commissioner be ordered to allow a scheduled $42.7 million rate increase to proceed.

EASTER'S musical offerings this year seem not quite so grand as in the recent past: fewer extended works, fewer orchestras and extra musicians. It is not always pleasing when sacred-music programs and economic realities intertwine, but in an imperfect world, they do. Times have been tough, and this year's Easter presentations may reflect smaller music budgets. The situation probably means a little less work for freelance professional musicians. Big, ambitious doings are not absent, however. Radio City Music Hall's 60th-anniversary "Easter Show" opens tonight and runs through April 23. Rockettes and Easter bunnies are less Christian statements than old pagan rites with a little glitz thrown in: New York show-business versions of nature reawakened and life in bloom. Mankind has been doing things like this for thousands of years, so why not at Radio City?

Amid concern that the economic recovery remains dangerously weak, the Federal Reserve moved today to stimulate growth by pushing down an influential interest rate. The Fed pumped more money into the nation's banking system to reduce the Federal funds rate -- the rate at which banks lend each other money overnight -- to 3.75 percent from 4 percent.

American Airlines, the nation's largest carrier, said yesterday that it would scrap the convoluted system of airline fares that has evolved over the last decade. It announced a simplified system that includes only four kinds of fares instead of 16, and will mean lower prices for most business and leisure travelers. Other carriers quickly announced similar overhauls; the changes will take effect Monday.