It was easy to gloss over most of the material in today’s New Yorker profile of Keith Olbermann. Namely, the revelation this his name was on the short list of candidates when, in 2005, Les Moonves and then-CBS News president Andrew Heyward (later replaced by Sean McManus) wanted to shake up the newscast following Dan Rather’s exit, they reached out to Olbermann. Meeting at his Manhattan apartment, as the Countdown host was nearing the end of his MSNBC contract, he told the duo that he didn’t imagine himself completely revamping the broadcast right away, but would do so gradually. And also: He argued networks waste far too much cash on anchors, who so often hand off to correspondents. (For what it’s worth, CBS pays Katie Couric an estimated $15 million per year; Olbermann was looking for $4 million per year when he renegotiated with MSNBC.) As you probably surmised from the way history played out, Mr. Olbermann was not offered the job.
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When it comes to Katie Couric, CBS’s official line is “While CBS News ratings are up, NBC and ABC ratings are down.” Technically, when CBS spokesman Gil Schwartz points out the numbers – CBS is up 8 percent from this time last year, with 7.4 million viewers, while NBC is down 8 percent (to 8.5m) and ABC down 5 percent (to 7.9m) – he’s right. But that still leaves Couric dragging in third place, and more than a few CBS insiders have declared the $45 million investment in the former Today show host a flop.
But what about the investment in PR chief Schwartz (aka Fortune columnist Stanley Bing)? Schwartz – who’s held his job in one form or another since 1994 and reports directly to Les Moonves – continues to draw ire from industry insiders. It was only Monday night, at Broadcasting & Cable’s Hall of Fame Dinner at the Waldorf Astoria, that many a mouth were wagging about his current Katie Couric tragedy. And this time, it wasn’t just about the slimmed down photo than ran in the CBS promotions magazine Schwartz oversees.
Nobody can quite figure out how Gil has managed to bungle Katie Couric’s rep so badly. While the numbers may do the talking, Schwartz should be doing the spinning — and NBC’s Jeff Zucker has given him the perfect platform. The GE-mandated 700 job cuts at NBC Universal is, one would think, the perfect platform to cast the network TV spotlight entirely on the Peacock’s problems. But Gil hasn’t managed to do much of that, evidenced by the continued hounding of Couric. On the attack: USA Today’s Peter Johnson, Matt Drudge, the Los Angeles Times, Broadcasting & Cable’s Andrew Tyndall, the New York Times, Newday’s Verne Gay, and the New York Post’s Page Six all raking Katie over the ratings coals. NBC’s press coverage, meanwhile, remains plenty anti-Zucker, but sometimes apologistic.
And it’s not just the random hacks in the TV news business kivetching: We hear Katie herself is fuming over Schwartz’s inabilities to put the spin in her favor. Not one to befriend a network’s PR team, Katie already has Freud PR chief powerhouse Matt Hiltzik on her roster. And (indirectly) taking Katie’s side is former CBS head Andrew Heyward. Speaking to The Strategist’s John Elsasser:
In the frenzy that erupted, you, along with many of your colleagues at CBS, found yourself in the media???s crosshairs. How did you deal with being part of this media onslaught? What can PR professionals learn from your experiences?
Heyward: First of all, I think we handled the aftermath poorly and exacerbated the problem. There are lots of lessons there for PR professionals. In retrospect, they seem so obvious: Be quick to recognize not only that there is a problem but also the magnitude of the problem; be quick to address it, not only with the outside world but also with your own colleagues; and be open-minded about what your critics are saying. At the beginning, it might have been a commendable instinct to stand by your colleagues, [but] loyalty . . . should have been balanced more effectively and quickly with the responsibility to get to the bottom of the criticism and find out what had really happened and whether we had, in fact, fallen short in our reporting ??? which we had. That took way too long, and that was partly because we were too busy fending off attacks and had placed too much faith in colleagues based on their track records as opposed to the evidence that was before us.
It was only 2004 when Gil’s head was rumored to be on the chopping block after his continued follies advising Heyward on how to handle the Dan Rather fall out. And you know what happened there. Unfortunate for CBS and Katie Couric, it sounds like Les Moonves doesn’t know what’s happening here. “I like Gil, he’s a nice guy,” a senior level CBS insider tells us. “But he’s a disaster.”
• Embroiled former CBS News prez Andrew Heyward would’ve given up his post a while ago, had it not taken till October 29 (his 55th birthday) for his lucrative pension plan to kick in. [Radar]
• Thanks to a keen eyed Newsweek staffer, the mag’s baby boomer issue this week hit newsstands with the real Cher on the cover, not a drag queen. Now if only People’s eye check-ups were more frequent. [R&M]
• A Fox News exec used crude language to describe the female body? That’s as far fetched as a MSNBC primetime show scoring a 2.0 rating. [NYDN]
• Jay Leno is now leading David Letterman by more than his chinny-chin-chin. The latest ratings results show the NBC comedian’s ratings are up 4 percent this year while his CBS counterpart saw viewership slide 5 percent. [Fox News]
• Anderson Cooper said hello to his new timeslot (and Aaron Brown’s old viewers) last night, complete with a new set that’s getting a better response than Jon Stewart’s. [TVNewser]
Now that the question of Andrew Heyward’s replacement at CBS News has been answered (read: Sean McManus), we’ve got a couple more serious issues to address in the TV news business. Luckily, the New York Times created this handy pull-out guide that we’re guessing is also available as a wallet-sized laminated card.
????Who will anchor the ABC evening news after the death of Peter Jennings?
????Who will eventually take over the CBS evening newscast, if CBS will even have a traditional anchor format on the program?
????Who will lead NBC News, which is still without a permanent president?
????Will the long-running ABC News program “Nightline” be able to survive with an ensemble anchor team replacing the program’s highly regarded anchor/patriarch, Ted Koppel?
????Will the evening newscasts at each network be regarded as lesser programs in comparison with the far more profitable morning news programs like “Today” and “Good Morning America”?
And, most importantly, now that Mark McGrath is in his 16th minute as an Extra host, how’s he going to top himself?
After CBS’s Decision, Networks Face Many More [NYT]
Related: Andrew Heyward is done with CBS ???????? officially
It’s not Brian Graden who’s taking over at CBS News, but chief Andrew Heyward is definitely on the way out as expected. He’s been on the job 10 years and now it’s CBS Sports president Sean McManus who’s on the way in.
But Heyward isn’t exactly “taking off” like Steve Florio pretends to.
Heyward wrote to staff: “As for my own plans, I do not intend to ???????pursue other interests??????? or even ???????spend more time with my family,??????? wonderful as it is. I am going to remain fully engaged in the media business.”
Once a media schlub who neglects his family, always a media schlub who neglects his famliy.
Change At The Top At CBS News [CBS News]
Earlier: Les Moonves is MTV-ifying CBS News
Andrew Heyward: CBS’s black eye
What to do when your middle aged-targeted news operations are stalling like a hurricane relief effort? MTV-ify it!
Which is exactly what CBS chief Les Moonves plans on doing, replacing CBS News president Andrew Heyward with some MTV talent — namely entertainment head Brian Graden.
Graden, who’s been busy piecing together Viacom’s gay network Logo, has been a superstar talent at the company, helping launch 300-plus programs, many of them among the company’s most popular (Newlyweds, Pimp My Ride, Laguna Beach).
Of course word from inside CBS is that Graden is only one option. There is always, of course, Rick Kaplan.
CBS: Pimp MY News [New York Post]
Earlier: Andrew Heyward: CBS’s black eye
Related: Media Blitz: Rick Kaplan getting the MSNBC boot
Lloyd Grove’s much talked about contract negotiations isn’t keeping him from ruminating on the contracts of other media personalities. Namely, CBS News president Andrew Heyward, who might be on the outs like Jeff Zucker’s on the ins.
I hear that the 55-year-old Heyward’s contract is up at the end of the year – his 10th as head of the news division – and CBS Chairman Leslie Moonves isn’t likely to keep him at the helm at W. 57th St.
There was a frenzy of speculation about Heyward’s future recently after Moonves was quoted in The New York Times Magazine as saying, “We have to break the mold in news,” “I want to bomb the whole building” and that Heyward might not be able to “lead a revolution.”
There’s that — and the fact that Heyward is barely holding on to his “supervisory” role in the search for Dan Rather’s permanent replacement, which Les Moonves has essentially taken on himself.
And we fully expect The Public Eye to blog, blog, blog all about it.
ABC News President David Westin is hard at work trying to find a permanent replacement for Peter Jennings, quickly growing tired of tossing Charles Gibson and Elizabeth Vargas into rotating anchor chairs while NBC’s mainstay Brian Williams is cleaning up in the hurricane ratings game.
Meanwhile, CBS News prez Andrew Heyward (or rather, CBS head Les Moonves) has been on the hunt since November when Dan Rather stepped down and Bob Schieffer began filling in — and still ABC is expected to name their nightly news replacement first.
But you already knew all this, right?
ABC is conducting its search for a successor very privately. CBS has struggled, although it gave itself the bigger challenge.
NBC’s ratings spiked high in the wake of Katrina and the very visible work of its anchorman, Brian Williams. Even though its anchor decision hasn’t been made, ABC moved aggressively to make sure its biggest names were on the scene with Rita: Charles Gibson and Bob Woodruff both reported from Texas, and Diane Sawyer spent a rare Saturday co- anchoring “Good Morning America.”
If only they had snagged Katie Couric in time, she could’ve uncrossed her legs for CBS instead of hammering nails on the Today show.
If there’s one magazine you should pick up this week, it isn’t Men’s Vogue. Not that Jay Fielden’s creation isn’t worthy of your newsstand patronage, but, well, you should’ve bought it last week. This week is all about New York, which hits magazine racks touting its “Salary Guide” cover story.
Hundreds of salaries – supposedly accurate! – of New York’s industry players are revealed, from the movie and film biz to media and (gasp) bloggers and (double gasp) porn moguls.
Rather than scroll through the whole list, we’ve put together the most satisfying comparisons for your cable news media-sized attention span.
• Brian Williams, Anchor, NBC Nightly News ($4 million) vs. Anderson Cooper, Host, Anderson Cooper 360 ($2 million) vs. Pat Kiernan, Anchor, NY1 ($200,000)
• Roger Ailes, Chairman, Fox News Channel ($7.1 million) vs. Andrew Heyward, President, CBS News ($1.5 million)
• Jake Gyllenhaal, Actor, Jarhead ($3 million) vs. Maggie Gyllenhaal, Actress, upcoming untitled Oliver Stone 9/11 film ($500,000)
• 50 Cent, Rapper, hyphenate ($50 million) vs. George M., Street musician, Astor Place subway station ($16,800)
• Martha Stewart, TV Star ($9.6 million) vs. Susan Lyne, CEO and president, Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia ($4,714,469)
• Richard Johnson, ???????Page Six??????? gossip columnist ($300,000) vs. Jim Romenesko, Blogger, the Poynter Institute ($169,187) vs. Jessica Coen, Blogger, Gawker.com ($30,000)
• Bonnie Fuller, Editorial director, American Media ($1,574,851) vs. Janice Min, Editor, Us Weekly ($1.2 million)
• Russell Simmons, Founder, Phat Farm (from the sale of Phat Farm alone) ($119 million) vs. Kimora Lee Simmons, Creative director, Baby Phat ($17 million)
And just when you thought listicles were going out of industry fashion.
Don’t forget about Les Moonves. He won’t be having any of that, mind you. With all the attention ABC News has been getting since Peter Jennings death, we can’t simply start ignoring CBS News’ own efforts at reinventing its newscast.
(Oh wait, we can ignore it? Actually, it’s in our contract to mention it.)
So here’s the deal: Les and CBS News prez Andrew Heyward are trying new formats to see which clicks — while completely ignoring what their interns have to say, of course.. Among them:
One version opens with a five-to-seven-minute presentation of the news of the day by John Roberts, the network’s chief White House correspondent, complete with “two-ways” between Mr. Roberts and several reporters. After a commercial break, the pace of the broadcast slows, and two or three “60 Minutes”-style segments are presented, albeit not at “60 Minutes” length, the last of them light and more humorous. After another break, Mr. Roberts, who is neither seen nor heard introducing those segments, returns to wrap up the broadcast with a good-night.
And then, at Jossip HQ, everyone does a Happy Dance. There, we’ve kept you up to date on CBS News. Next!