NYTV

On the morning of Sunday, June 22, NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams made a much anticipated announcement at the end of Meet the Press, which he was moderating in the wake of Tim Russert’s sudden death of a heart attack nine days earlier.

“Beginning next week, my friend Tom Brokaw has agreed to step in as moderator of Meet the Press, to get us through this election season,” said Mr. Williams. “And allow me to add, during these past difficult days, Tom’s been an enormous comfort here in this Washington bureau.”

A comfort: yes. A full-time presence in Washington: no.  read more »

What does the long-term future hold for local television news business? Unclear. What does the short term promise?

Widgets.

On Wednesday, June 18, executives as WCBS, the CBS-owned and -operated station in New York City, unveiled a new online business venture in which they will supply “widgets with real-time news feeds” to a network of local blogs.

Reached on the phone recently, Dan Shelley, the director of digital media for the station, explained that WCBS was offering bloggers a variety of different widget packages to choose from, ranging from sports to entertainment to breaking news.

“We have a ‘water cooler’ section, which is a robust section full of weird news stories,” said Mr.  read more »

At 1:30 p.m., the line of mourners on Mount Saint Alban in Washington, D.C., for Tim Russert, NBC Washington bureau chief and host of Meet the Press, who died so suddenly last week at the age of 58, stretched all the way from the front doors of the St. Albans School Refectory out to Wisconsin Avenue.

Before the hearse arrived bearing Russert’s dark wooden casket, the presidential motorcade had arrived; President George W. Bush and Laura Bush were among the first mourners. Then the hearse arrived to bear Russert’s casket into the refectory, followed by his son, Luke, and his wife, Maureen; then a host of his famous television news friends.  read more »

Over the past few weeks, HBO has announced a series of moves to stem the tide of speculation that the network is faltering. After canceling 12 Miles of Bad Road, a series starring Lily Tomlin, HBO announced deals with Oscar winners Alexander Payne (of Sideways and Election fame) to develop a dark comedy called Hung, about a man who divines power from his generous equipment; and Alan Ball, the creator of Six Feet Under, who is working on not one but two shows for the network. (One of those is about vampires, the other about a women’s prison.) Then came the news that Frank Rich would join Tina Brown in serving as a “creative consultant” to the network.

“In recent years, since giving up criticism in 1993, occasionally someone has asked me to look at something, whether it was a play or a manuscript, and to try and tweak it or whatever,” said Mr. Rich. “I love this stuff so much. This is a way to kind of do it in a less amateur fashion and on a more regular basis. It’s a way to satisfy this craving I have had.”

HBO needs the help. Even as its documentary, original-movie and comedy programming remain strong, the network has been without a new hit series for some time now. Lucky Louie tanked. John From Cincinnati is practically a punch line. In Treatment, the five-day-a-week peek into therapy that aired this past winter, was a little too much like, well, therapy to draw a mass crowd. The Wire, which reliably delivered critical acclaim for five seasons, is over.

And Flight of the Conchords? Although it was renewed, that show is kids’ stuff compared to the shows that kept HBO series so far ahead of the rest. What they do next has to be big, smart, serious, bold. But what can journalists do to make that happen?

 

HBO’s SOPRANOS FINALE a year ago drew 11.9 million viewers, meaning that over a third of HBO’s 30 million subscribers at the time tuned in to witness the end of Tony on television. By contrast, HBO’s most recent series, In Treatment, drew such poor ratings on its debut—under a half-million viewers—that the network decided to stream it for free online. Their popular miniseries John Adams did better—with an average of 2.2 million viewers over seven weeks—but it was hardly a blockbuster, and it was temporary.

So what’s next? Besides the development deals with Mr. Payne and Mr. Ball, pilots have been ordered for a Darren Star adaptation of Tracy Quan’s Diary of a Manhattan Call Girl, and Surburban Shootout, based on a U.K. series, about a woman in the suburbs stuck between two housewife gangs. (Showtime, it should be noted, also has a call-girl show in the works, and Weeds, which is also about a housewife in the suburbs, is a steady hit for the rival network.) Neither of HBO’s projects have yet been green-lighted; they may be old before they see the light of day.

This is the first time in recent years that HBO, which for so long has been at the very forefront of creative programming, has been without a hit or a hit-in-the-making. Remember when Entourage debuted? Surely the network wasn’t helped by the departure of programming guru Chris Albrecht last year. That’s when Richard Plepler, a longtime PR man for the network (after whom Tony Soprano’s surgeon was named in “The Sopranos”), became co-president of the premium cable network, along with Michael Lombardo in L.A.

Since then, Mr. Plepler has earned the reputation of a man about town who is not exactly shy about using HBO’s money to harvest connections among the city’s elite power brokers and creative talents, which he thinks will benefit his network.

“Frank is an enormous talent who understands our brand and what makes HBO unique,” said Mr. Plepler. “To have a part of his energy focused on the network can only be a good thing for us.”

Roughly five months ago, Mr. Plepler and Mr. Lombardo also signed former Vanity Fair and New Yorker editor Tina Brown to a deal that Mr. Plepler says is “spiritually” similar to that of Mr. Rich’s.

Ms. Brown said that since January, she’s pitched two projects—an idea for a series and an idea for a movie—that the HBO executives liked and are in the process of “taking a little further.” According to Ms. Brown, she does not regularly meet with the HBO heads, nor do they send her material to vet. Typically, she contacts Mr. Plepler or Mr. Lombardo at her own discretion. “It’s up to me,” said Ms. Brown. “If I collide with some interesting material, I’ll call or e-mail them. Sometimes it’s something I’m interested in doing. Sometimes it’s something I think they should know about. Richard wants to encourage people who have good relationships with the creative community to simply be thinking about HBO when they’re out and about. It’s working out well.” Next Page >

On the morning of Wednesday, May 14, Torrey Meeks, a 25-year-old freelance writer and producer in Las Cruces, N.M., rolled out of bed and checked his various Web pages. “Unbelievable,” he thought to himself. “This thing is blowing up.”

The previous afternoon, Mr. Meeks, along with thousands of others, had taken his first (and second, and third … ) look at the Internet’s viral video du jour—specifically, a decades-old clip, freshly unearthed on YouTube, featuring news anchor Bill O’Reilly (long before his current Fox News fame), unleashing a curse-filled tirade on the set of Inside Edition.  read more » Next Page >

Not long ago, Chuck Scarborough, the news anchor of WNBC-TV here in New York, was working on a story about the future of electric cars. For the piece, Mr. Scarborough conducted an extensive interview with one of the creators of the Tesla Roadster. In the end, as so often happens in an evening newscast, only about 45 seconds of the interview made it onto the air.

“But it was a cohesive interview that one could listen to, if you were so inclined, for the full 19 minutes,” said Mr. Scarborough. “So I put the whole thing on our Web site.”  read more » Next Page >

On Tuesday, April 29, Chad Hurley, the pup-faced 30-year-old CEO of YouTube, popped up on the Internet along with the mayor of New Orleans, the governor of Louisiana and an executive from Google to invite the 2008 presidential candidates to participate in a “town hall meeting” to be held on Sept. 18 at the convention center in New Orleans, where, 32 months ago, thousands sought refuge from the devastation of Hurricane Katrina.

In the YouTube clip, the image of a bridge spanning a broad, muddy river flashed onto the small screen as the boosters took turns talking about the vague parameters of the would-be debate.

A Google senior vice president promised an “online discussion” and “a real-time forum.”

An accompanying press release noted that the showdown might be televised. Or not.

“The Internet has opened up public dialogue in ways we never imagined possible,” said Mr. Hurley of YouTube.

Their invitation had the distinct aura of something that had not been fumigated by the relevant authorities; in the increasingly big business of televised presidential debates, it was not an invitation at all, but a challenge—to the candidates, the major television networks, and to that man behind the curtain, the Washington-based nonprofit called the Commission on Presidential Debates.

For the past 20 years, in the general elections, these three parties have determined who debates whom; who moderates; and where the debate is hosted.

And recently, New Orleans, Google and YouTube have all seemingly smarted from being excluded. Sure, they’ve teamed up with television networks before, to add if-you-must Webbish features to the highly rated run of primary debates. CNN worked with YouTube. MTV hooked up with MySpace. ABC partnered with Facebook. Somewhere along the way, questions submitted by homespun Web heads became all the rage, and a whole new crowd of media executives, like the Voice of God broadcasters before them, threatened to bloom into full-blown podium hounds. For a low-key nonprofit like the commission, that could be dangerous. The organization has maintained its monopoly over debates largely by capably brokering sensitive deals between the major TV networks, the candidates, and the Republican and Democratic party leadership. And by choosing moderators and questioners who are palatable to everyone. And that does not include what Time magazine, in its 2006 Person of the Year cover, called “You.”

It is not for lack of trying to deal directly with the commission and the networks that Google and YouTube are going commando. According to sources familiar with the situation, long before they gave up and went their own route, executives from Google (and its somewhat recently purchased video-sharing sibling YouTube) were the first digital pooh-bahs to push the commission about a potential partnership.

The tentative talks began in May 2007, when Bob Boorstin, a former speechwriter for the Clinton White House who now serves as a communications executive for Google, set up a meeting with the commission’s leaders in Washington, D.C. At the time, as part of their ongoing efforts to boost their companies’ profile in the nation’s capital, Google and YouTube execs were already working with CNN honchos to host what would become two well-received primary debates.

But Mr. Boorstin, a seasoned political operative, must have already been looking ahead to the general election. Presumably in order to make a splash in the fall, Google would have to win over Janet Brown, the executive director of the commission. But after the meeting, Ms. Brown remained noncommittal.

To wit: Early that summer, Ms. Brown hired Elizabeth Wilner, the former political director of NBC News, to help the commission research what was being done with the Internet in the primary debates. What worked? What didn’t? Who were the players?

That summer and into the fall, Ms. Wilner went on a preliminary listening tour of sorts, introducing herself and the organization’s mission to various Internet players. Along the way, she met with everyone from Yahoo! to AOL to Google.

In November, after months of sifting through applications from universities and institutions around the country, the commission announced it had chosen four sites for the 2008 general-election debates: Hempstead, N.Y.; Nashville; Oxford, Miss.; and St. Louis. Next Page >

“This is not your father’s Watergate,” said James Rosen.

Mr. Rosen, an on-air D.C.-based correspondent for Fox News was speaking to NYTV on Monday afternoon. Next month, Doubleday will publish Mr. Rosen’s first book—a revisionist history of Richard Nixon’s downfall, called The Strong Man: John Mitchell and the Secrets of Watergate.  read more » Next Page >

On the night of Wed. April 16, comedian Mo Rocca walked across the stage in the spacious auditorium at the Hilton Washington on Connecticut Avenue in Washington D.C. and thanked several hundred reporters, politicians, and celebrities for showing up at the annual Radio and Television Correspondents Association Dinner.

"I know that the White House Correspondents' dinner in about 10 days gets most of the glory," said the ubiquitous political satirist and sometime MSNBC contributor. "I think of this one as sort of the Nicky to that one's Paris Hilton. This is sort of the Jamie Lynn to that dinner's Britney. Well that dinner is sort of like CNN. This one is MSNBC."  read more » Next Page >

On Monday morning, shortly after 7 a.m., Mark Sollars, a chatty teenager in a gray hooded sweatshirt, stood in a crowd at Rockefeller Center and glanced over a police barricade at the alfresco portion of NBC’s Today studio.

Sensing a potential interview subject, NYTV pounced. So what exactly should Katie Couric do next with her career?

“Katie should come back here,” said the young demo-defying Today fan. “This is where she belongs. Everyone loved her here.”

Nearby, production assistants had decked out a slab of Today’s outdoor set in Western décor (haystacks, etc.), in anticipation of an upcoming feature on lasso lessons.  read more » Next Page >

“We’re mostly a bunch of newspaper hacks,” said Jim VandeHei, the executive editor of the political media entity Politico, which, if you are, statistically speaking, like most Americans, you are more likely to recognize as the somewhat obscure co-sponsor of some of this election season’s televised presidential debates than from its Web site, politico.com, or its printed Beltway cheat sheet, The Politico.

He was talking about himself and his boss, John Harris, whom he followed out of The Washington Post in 2006 to join the nascent Allbritton-owned media property amid some print-industry-rankling hubris.  read more » Next Page >

“I’m going to stay for sure through the inauguration.” That’s what Bob Schieffer, the host these last 17 years of CBS’s Sunday morning, half-hour news program Face the Nation, told TV Guide’s Stephen Battaglio at the end of 2007. “Quite frankly, I don’t know what I’m going to do after that.”

Neither does CBS News. Which must be why he told The New York Times recently that he was going to put off his retirement for an indefinite period of time at the behest of CBS News president Sean McManus.

“We’re going to have a transition period, maybe try some people out,” Mr. Schieffer said.  read more » Next Page >

 

 

Above: Jefferson Han demonstrates his Perceptive Pixel technology.

On the night of the Super Tuesday presidential primaries, John King and Wolf Blitzer stood in front of a camera in a studio at CNN’s headquarters at the Time Warner Center and provided some live analysis of the night’s upcoming contests. Behind them was a device that looked like a widescreen television, showing a map of the United States.

The conversation eventually focused on California. While Mr. Blitzer gave a basic run down of the state, Mr. King turned and touched the screen with each of his forefingers. As he pulled his fingers slowly in opposite directions, the map of California expanded.

“The delegates for the Democrats, the way they proportion and decide who gets those delegates is going to be very important,” said Mr. Blitzer.  read more » Next Page >

On the morning of Friday, March 21, Chris Wallace woke up at his home in Washington, D.C., grabbed some fruit and yogurt, and turned on the Fox News early show, Fox & Friends.

Steve Doocy, Gretchen Carlson and Brian Kilmeade were talking about Barack Obama’s recent characterization of his grandmother on a Philadelphia radio show: She was a “typical white person, who, if she sees somebody on the street that she doesn’t know, there’s a reaction that’s been bred into our experiences that don’t go away and that sometimes comes out in the wrong way.”

“Can you say ‘typical white person’ if you’re white?” asked Mr. Doocy. Of course not, noted Ms. Carlson. There’s no way that Senator Hillary Clinton could use the phrase “typical black person,” they noted. “So there is a certain double standard in society,” said Ms. Carlson. And also: “I sort of take offense at that line: ‘typical white.’”

Mr. Wallace was getting a little bit annoyed.

“I didn’t think it was fair. I didn’t think it allowed Obama to make his point,” Mr. Wallace later told The Observer in a telephone interview. “I thought it made it sound like he was just engaging in a racial stereotype, which I think he was. But it was in an interview, not in a speech. I thought that as he went on and finished the thought over the next sentence or two, he softened that kind of harsh phrase. And saying, listen, a typical white person who has grown up and had a certain set of experiences, and reacts in that way. I thought he was softening it. I didn’t think we were providing the full context of what he was saying.”

After breakfast, Mr. Wallace went to work and began his usual Friday routine, patching into sister programs to promote the lineup of guests he is expecting on the next broadcast of Fox News Sunday.

Between “hits” with affiliates around the country, he kept an eye on the Friends. “Typical white person,” “typical white person,” “typical white person,” he heard over and over again.

“I think I was especially disturbed by the fact that the clip as they played it—which cut off after ‘typical white person’ without Obama’s elaboration—did not do justice to his explanation,” he said.

Soon it would be time for him to pop in on Fox & Friends to do his shtick; he made a snap decision.

“Hey, listen, I love you guys but I want to take you to task, if I may, respectfully, for a moment,” said Mr. Wallace on air. “I have been watching the show since six o’clock this morning when I got up, and it seems to me that two hours of Obama bashing on this ‘typical white person’ remark is somewhat excessive, and frankly, I think you’re somewhat distorting what Obama had to say.”

Over the years, Mr. Wallace’s brusque manner has raised the hackles of many a subject. According to Time magazine, Mr. Wallace, during a press conference in March 1987, asked Ronald Reagan a particularly tough question about Israel’s involvement in arms sales to Iran. Famously, in September 2006, during an interview with President Bill Clinton, Mr. Wallace referenced the reporting in Lawrence Wright’s Pulitzer Prize-winning The Looming Tower, and asked Mr. Clinton, “Why didn’t you do more to put bin Laden and Al Qaeda out of business when you were president?” A red-faced Mr. Clinton responded, in part, by accusing Mr. Wallace of a “conservative hit job.” This past November, during an interview on his Sunday show, Mr. Wallace asked Fred Thompson, then a presidential candidate, about all the “buzz” about his “disappointing” campaign. A visibly angry Mr. Thompson responded by accusing Fox News of being biased against him.

Back in the studio, the members of the Fox & Friends crew seemed similarly miffed to find themselves on the receiving end of their colleague’s bluntness. (Mr. Wallace is the son of Captain Confrontation himself, CBS’s Mike Wallace.) In response, Mr. Doocy and company defended their analysis. Mr. Wallace stuck to his point. “I still love you,” Mr. Wallace said in conclusion. “Yup, okay,” replied Mr. Doocy. “An odd way of showing it.”

On Monday afternoon—with clips of the confrontation having seemingly ricocheted to every far-flung corner of the Web and with everyone from official Obama bloggers to MSNBC’s Chris Matthews rushing to pat Mr. Wallace on the back—NYTV caught up with Mr. Wallace via phone. The longtime newsman said that in retrospect he had mixed feelings about making the remarks.

“I didn’t have any second thoughts about the substance because I still believe what I said was right,” said Mr. Wallace. “But after the fact, you do think to yourself—on a professional level with colleagues I very much like and respect—should I have done that off camera?” Next Page >

A recent episode of 'Race For the White House.'

“MSNBC and NBC are one,” said Phil Griffin. “We’ve said that for over a decade. It actually is true now.”

Mr. Griffin, the senior vice president of NBC News, was speaking on the phone to NYTV on Monday afternoon. He had brought up the unification of the two news operations as a way of explaining the internal politics underpinning the launch of MSNBC’s new prime-time show, Race for the White House, which premiered on March, 17 at 6 p.m., replacing Tucker.  read more » Next Page >

On the morning of Wednesday, March 12, reporter Dan Rice was riding shotgun in the WNBC “Chopper 4” helicopter, roughly 2,000 feet above then-Governor Eliot Spitzer’s apartment on the Upper East Side, when he noticed something strange.

For the past half hour, Mr. Rice and his ace Norwegian pilot Lars Andresen had been hovering above Manhattan, along with a handful of other news choppers, waiting for Mr. Spitzer to emerge from his apartment at 80th Street and Fifth Avenue. At the time, the governor was on the verge of stepping down. And the plan was to provide aerial coverage of Mr. Spitzer’s drive to his office on Third Avenue near 40th Street, where he would presumably deliver his resignation speech.  read more » Next Page >

“Happy Super Tuesday,” the prolific conservative talk-show pundit Glenn Beck told viewers of Turner Broadcasting’s stepchild cable news channel, Headline News, on the evening of Feb. 5. “We’ve got a very low budget. This is, like, the fourth-most-impressive election team on television.”

It was just his excessively self-effacing way of countering the slogans coming out of the big cable channels that night: CNN’s “Best Political Team on Television,” MSNBC’s “The Place for Politics,” Fox News’ “Best Political Analysts.”

Mr. Beck was on the phone with NYTV on Monday afternoon, discussing his latest professional gig: hosting live coverage of big political nights for Headline News.  read more » Next Page >

Tuesday, March 4, around 8 p.m., Bill O’Reilly bounded across a chilly studio on the first floor of the News Corp. building on Sixth Avenue toward the desk at the back of the room.

There, the members of the Fox News Super Tuesday II political team—Brit Hume, Juan Williams, Bill Kristol, Nina Easton and Fred Barnes—were wrapping up another back-and-forth session, chewing over the night’s early returns. Mr. Kristol made an observation about the rationality of voters. A producer announced a break.

The team would have a few minutes to stretch its legs. As they backed away from the desk, Mr. O’Reilly approached.

“Throw Juan Williams out of here,” Mr. O’Reilly bellowed with a half-grin.

Mr. Williams and the rest of the Fox politics team chuckled. The longtime NPR contributor gave way to the longtime NPR adversary. A few minutes later, Mr. Reilly was sitting next to Mr. Hume, delivering his five minutes of commentary, before departing for the night.

"NBC News cannot continue to openly root for one presidential candidate, thereby teeing off everybody else in the country, and expect to prosper,” he told his viewers. “Number one, it's corrupt. If they're going to be the Obama network, NBC News should say that we're rooting for Obama."

The Media Mob headed for the elevator. Alexis Glick of the Fox Business Network was waiting in the wings, ready to deliver some commentary on the state of economy. She was dressed in blood red.

Up on the second floor, the Fox News control room was buzzing. There was a much-ignored sign on the door warning no food and drink beyond this point. A man flew by, two slices of pizza precariously stacked on a paper plate.

Marty Ryan, silver-haired control-room warhorse who serves as the network's executive producer of political programming, stood calmly in the heart of the madness, answering questions, giving orders and deciphering the banks of monitors in front of him.

Dotted among the monitors were the faces of correspondents standing at campaign locations across the country—Texas, Ohio, Rhode Island, Vermont—waiting to be called into action, waiting for some precious airtime.

But just now, they were not playing for the cameras that were trained on them. One reporter was adjusting his seat, another wiped his face with a towel. A blond correspondent ran a brush through her hair. It was like watching a Harry Shearer “Found Object” video, in 10-part harmony. The din of the control room provided the soundtrack—a Robert Altman-like tapestry of densely layered noise.

“Hemmer first.”

“Ninety seconds.”

“Get Brit.”

“Make it tight.”

"Where’s Michael?”

“Is that better?”

“In Ohio.”

“I have him.”

“Sixty seconds.”

Of the hundred or so screens, the Media Mob began fixating on one way down in the corner of the room. The screen was labeled “Future.” It was completely dark.

Time to check in with the prognosticators!

Up on the 14th floor, Fox News had set up their “Decision Desk” in a space adjacent to the dot-com newsroom. There a team of stat hounds hunched over laptops, rifled through bags of mini candies (Tootsie Rolls, Reeses Pieces Peanut Butter Cups) and crunched the numbers as they came in.

Michael Barone, a Fox News contributor and the principal big brain behind the Almanac of American Politics, sat in a nearby fishbowl of an office, looking at numbers and seemingly peering into the future.

At 9:19, a bald-headed fellow, sporting glasses and a goatee, piped up. “Call Rhode Island for Hillary.” Everyone nodded and shifted their gazes to a bank of screens on a nearby wall. Sure enough, seconds later, the announcement appeared that Senator Clinton was the projected winner of Rhode Island. A few minutes later, MSNBC and CNN followed with the projection. Next Page >

On Feb. 5, during MSNBC’s Super Tuesday political coverage, anchor Keith Olbermann joked that during this long primary season, it sometimes seemed like everyone in the business had already anchored a debate. “I think most people at home have now moderated one as well,” said Mr. Olbermann.

If Katie Couric was watching at home, chances are she wasn’t laughing. Eight months and more than 20 debates into podium season, Ms. Couric has yet to get anywhere near the big stage.

How did the highest-paid anchor on evening television get upstaged by Brian Williams, Brit Hume, Charles Gibson, Wolf Blitzer, Tim Russert, George Stephanopoulos, Campbell Brown, Chris Wallace, Natalie Morales and on and on?

The official explanation from CBS: Ms. Couric was the victim of circumstance.

“I wish we had been able to work it out,” said Sean McManus, the president of CBS News. “I think [Ms. Couric] would have been really good at it. I think it would have been a good showcase for CBS News. But it just wasn’t to be this cycle.”

But recent conversations with competitors, current and former CBS News employees, and experts in the TV-debate business raised the question whether CBS News, facing a perpetually shrinking budget and having already committed to a reported $15 million a year to Ms. Couric, has enough resources—emotional and financial—to deliver big for their biggest star.

Throwing a debate is a budget-busting expenditure for a news division because of both the cost of setting up a staging facility and because of the advertising revenue lost due to the limited commercial inventory during such news events—but what networks gain is a voice in the election cycle, for the network and for the network’s rising and established stars.

In the past, CBS has not been reluctant to shell out money to maximize on the Katie Couric phenomenon.

“You think about how much they wasted early on in billboards and other crap, wouldn’t it be smarter to invest in substance now?” said one source, with knowledge of CBS’s aborted debate plans. “Either the network is fundamentally dedicated to spending the money, or they’re not. If you’re really dedicated to bumping your news to another level, you host a debate. But there’s either no interest or no follow-through.”

Mr. McManus said that CBS News remains committed to all things political, including hosting primary debates.

“It wasn’t a financial decision,” said Mr. McManus, of this season’s shutout. “It’s a programming decision and finding an appropriate time to put it in prime time. It does cost a fair amount of money in preemption costs to put them in prime time. But that wasn’t the primary reason it didn’t happen.”

The story began back on May, 16, when the Democratic National Committee announced the dates, locations and media sponsors of six DNC debates. CBS would host one in Los Angeles on Dec. 10. It was a choice assignment because of (a) the timing (it would be the final debate before the Iowa caucus) and (b) the location. As CNN would later prove at the Kodak Theater on Jan. 31, a debate in L.A. is bound to attract stars—Jason Alexander!—and eyeballs.

Shortly thereafter, during the summer of 2007, CBS News informed the DNC that they wanted to hold the debate inside a studio at the CBS Television City in Los Angeles and—notably—without a live audience.

According to several sources, that idea didn’t sit well with the DNC. Holding the debate in a closed studio rather than in front of a live audience is seen by those in the business as a classic cost-saving gambit—and one (collateral damage!) that would deny Democratic diehards and donors the opportunity to show up and get crazy for their candidates. The plan was also at odds with the terms already hammered out with the Democratic candidates. Negotiations sputtered. According to sources, at several points over the summer, the debate appeared on the brink of death.

At the same time, CBS News executives were grappling with the absence of political director, Molly Levinson, who had gone on maternity leave in July. Barbara Fedida, a CBS News executive charged in part with recruiting talent, began looking for somebody who could fill in and help Ms. Couric prepare for the debate. According to sources, CBS eventually reached out to a number of individuals, including former NBC political director Elizabeth Wilner; and—more surprisingly—to Michael Feldman, a former senior adviser to the Clinton-Gore administration and a founding partner of the Glover Park Group.

In some quarters, word of the latter meeting raised eyebrows.

“Networks use political consultants as outside contributors to do commentary all the time,” explained one source with extensive knowledge of TV debate logistics. “But you should not have one in charge of your debate preparation. The debate is a news event. They should know better.” Next Page >

In the spring of 2001, Chez Pazienza was sitting in his apartment in the West Hollywood neighborhood of Los Angeles, smoking heroin and watching The Filth and the Fury, a documentary about punk legends the Sex Pistols, when he realized he had a problem.

At the time, Mr. Pazienza was an ambitious young producer running the 11 o’clock news for Los Angeles’ NBC affiliate KNBC. Ratings were up. His anchor drove a Ferrari. The job was good—great.

But Mr. Pazienza’s marriage was falling apart. And as he listened to Sid Vicious describing the sensations of heroin withdrawal, Mr. Pazienza finally acknowledged his own raging addiction. “I was like, okay, I’m screwed,” Mr. Pazienza said. Shortly thereafter, he checked into rehab.  read more » Next Page >

WASHINGTON, D.C.—"Sometimes the end comes like a thief in the night," said Sam Donaldson.

Mr. Donaldson was standing on a stage at the Newseum in Washington, D.C., yesterday morning, quoting the Bible. Like the hundred or so mourners who had gathered in the large auditorium, Mr. Donaldson was struggling to make sense of the sudden recent death of his friend and former colleague, John "Jack" McWethy.

A week earlier, on Feb. 6, Mr. McWethy had been skiing with his wife Laurie at a resort in Keystone, Colo. He was cruising down an intermediate slope, when suddenly the accomplished, veteran skier lost control and slid chest first into a tree. The fluke crash proved to be fatal. He was 61.  read more » Next Page >

It was a little before midnight on Tuesday, Jan. 27 that MSNBC correspondent David Shuster hit the “Send” button on a curt e-mail to Republican rabble-rouser Roger Stone.

Days earlier, Mr. Stone and others had filed papers with the I.R.S. to form a “527” organization dedicated to educating “the American Public about what Hillary Clinton really is.” The organization was called “Citizens United Not Timid,” i.e., C.U.N.T.

“Hey Roger Stone,” wrote Mr. Shuster in an e-mail to Mr. Stone’s personal Web site, the Stone Zone. “Why not put your own name on this?”  read more » Next Page >

"The safer thing would have been to stay at MSNBC,” said Alison Stewart. “To abandon your comfort zone is scary but it’s also very exciting.”

Ms. Stewart was speaking to NYTV, not long ago, about her decision to leave TV for radio after roughly 15 years of experience—from rocking the vote for MTV News in early 90's to anchoring shows for MSNBC to contributing pieces to the Nightly News with Brian Williams.

This past fall, Ms. Stewart began hosting the Bryant Park Project, a quirky, newfangled morning news show from NPR aimed at a young audience, which is now carried by 18 stations around the country. The show is produced out of the NPR’s New York bureau on 42nd Street, across from—you guessed it!—Bryant Park.  read more » Next Page >

Chris Matthews woke up on Super Tuesday at the Ritz Carlton on Central Park South. For breakfast, he tore into a bowl of Raisin Bran with skim milk, slurped down a cup of coffee (no cream, no sugar) and attacked a stack of newspapers. Moving from story to story, he scribbled notes directly onto the newsprint, circling important facts and figures and jotting down the occasional exclamation points. He particularly liked an article in the Daily News by Rich Cohen suggesting that Barack Obama should be president, and Hillary Clinton his chief of staff.

Mr. Matthews underlined the phrases “flag burning illegal,” and “her vote was politically motivated.” He tore out the article to review later that day.

Afterward, MSNBC’s prizefighter—the political pundit who knows more and filters less than anyone else in the business and who with his manic emotional odes to a certain senator from Illinois has become a fascinating sideshow attraction in this crazy primary circus—had hoped to go for a morning constitutional. Surviving Super Tuesday would take stamina, he knew. Adrenaline would be the key. And a little exercise wouldn’t hurt. Twenty-four hours earlier, he had gotten lost during a walk in Central Park, ending up on the West Side, thinking it was the East Side, thinking up was down. He was amazed at how disorienting it was. Not like the stomping grounds of his youth in Philadelphia. The streets reminded him of a campaign he had worked on in 1974 in Brooklyn.

But this morning, in lieu of going for a walk, Mr. Matthews, who is 62, called the South African embassy. Recently, MSNBC announced that Super Tuesday would be broadcast live in South Africa, and Mr. Matthews, who spent two years in the Peace Corps, “spreading capitalism in the bush,” wanted to greet properly his faraway viewers. The nice woman at the embassy signed off on Mr. Matthews’ phrase of greeting: Sanibonani! Mr. Matthews planned to use the phrase later that night.

In the meantime, he continued to ponder the big factors in the campaign. History. Courage. Change. Hope.

“I’ve been following politics since I was about 5,” said Mr. Matthews. “I’ve never seen anything like this. This is bigger than Kennedy. [Obama] comes along, and he seems to have the answers. This is the New Testament. This is surprising.”

For days, in a black, palm-size book, he had been gathering items that he wanted to bring up on the air. Already he had more than two dozen. The list was expanding. “If I don’t get to use them, I don’t get to use them,” Mr. Matthews had explained to NYTV over lunch a day earlier. “I can’t just burp them out. I can’t just say, oh, that reminds me … BURRRRRRRRP. I’m not going to sit there without thinking ahead. It’s not totally spontaneous. I care. I think about it.”

One idea in the notebook was something a congressman had told Mr. Matthews years earlier. The congressman had said that every so often in life, the galloping horse of history comes by and you have to make a decision. “You have to jump on that horse or you miss your turn,” Mr. Matthews had said. “The country is facing that. Do I want to jump on the horse, or not? It’s too tricky. It’s too scary. It’s moving too fast. I’m not ready.”

The galloping campaign, in Mr. Matthews’ estimation, was that of Senator Barack Obama. He had the momentum, was in the saddle, was holding the reigns. But had Mr. Obama become the avant-garde candidate? If so, he was in trouble. The middle-class workers would pull back in suspicion. Who was this Ivy League guy on his, um, high horse? They wouldn’t get on board. The galloping horse of history might pass them by.

They would be left with the Clintons. Again. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. Age would benefit Ms. Clinton in a general election against Senator McCain, Mr. Matthews thought. Sometimes, on a good night, she looked great. She sparkled. Voters would see her standing on the stage next to Mr. McCain and they wouldn’t even need to hear the candidates speak. The image would convey all.

Personality mattered less. Americans, according to Mr. Matthews, had voted for President Bush because of his personality, and look how that had worked out. Picking someone you want to have a beer with had lost its charm, he thought. Charm had lost its charm.

But who knows? It was the morning of Super Tuesday. Everything was still in play.

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Recently, Shepard Smith stood in his office at Fox News and gestured at a football, on his bookshelf, signed by Giants quarterback and fellow University of Mississippi alumnus Eli Manning.

“I’ve met him a number of times,” said Mr. Smith. “He’s a private guy. He’s likes to stay to himself. Eli, as a friend, would be weird. I like him being my quarterback.”

It was Friday afternoon and Mr. Smith—the host of Fox News’ Studio B, anchor of the The Fox Report, and possibly the highest-paid on-air talent in cable news history—was giving NYTV a tour of his office. Ole Miss madness was the decorative theme. A Rebels welcome mat warmed the entrance. Commemorative Ole Miss coins sat alongside bowl-game souvenirs. A framed photograph of Mr. Smith and his younger brother, pregaming under the oak trees on the Ole Miss campus, hung on the wall.  read more » Next Page >

On the afternoon of Jan. 18, dozens of staffers at Thirteen-WNET, PBS’s flagship station in New York, shuffled into a conference room at headquarters on West 33rd Street for an address from Neal Shapiro, the station’s boss.

According to a source at the meeting, Mr. Shapiro said that in the digital age, public television employees should keep in mind the variety of ways in which people consume information. He praised the station’s recently revamped Web site. And he showed off a promotion, highlighting Thirteen’s new block of multiplatform, Saturday night programming dubbed “Reel 13.”

In early February, capping a year-long transition period, Mr. Shapiro will officially replace William Baker as C.E.O. of the Educational Broadcasting Corporation (EBC)—the licensee of Thirteen-WNET and 21-WLIW.

Mr. Shapiro, who served as President of NBC News from 2001 to 2005, is generally regarded as a smart, low-key manager with a solid track record. But over the past year, Mr. Shapiro has raised the hackles of some longtime Thirteen veterans, who are uncomfortable with the former “Dateline NBC” producer’s bottom-line sensibility, commercial background, and focus on technological progress.

Which is perhaps not too surprising, considering that Mr. Shapiro came into Thirteen vowing to shake up the old guard.

“As successful as Channel 13 is, everyone agrees there is still room to innovate and to change,” Mr. Shapiro told Current in Jan. 2007 on the eve of joining the station. “I think it’s interesting to take something and change it and mold it and make it better than it is. The status quo is rather boring.”

One former senior manager at Thirteen told NYTV that Mr. Shapiro has his work cut out for him—in part, because trying to bring a stepped-up commercial metabolism to the aging Thirteen staff is bound to provoke some teeth-gnashing.

“My mandate when I came in was to find ways to do things differently,” said the former executive. “But that wasn’t to be. There’s too much institutional resistance.”

Recently, Thirteen’s institutional resistance manifested itself in a complaint to the Writers Guild of America, East, which represents a number of Thirteen employees. A W.G.A. spokesperson confirmed that a complaint had been made but declined to discuss the specifics.

According to sources, a rumor has circulated recently among staffers that in February, Mr. Shapiro, taking a page out of the NBC-Universal-G.E. playbook (see Welch, Jack) will impose a round of staff layoffs. (Through a Thirteen spokesperson, Mr. Shapiro did not respond to request seeking comment.)

At Friday’s state-of-the-station talk, Mr. Shapiro did not say anything about cuts and, according to one source, suggested that the station’s fund-raising efforts were going well.

Whether the cuts were ever planned, the virulence of the rumor illustrates the siege mentality present at the station today.

Mr. Shapiro’s first year in public broadcasting will be remembered by some for the surprising departures of two longtime senior managers: Stella Giammasi, the former spokesperson for the station, and Tamara Robinson, the longtime programming chief.

In December, at the time of Ms. Robinson’s departure, a Thirteen spokesperson told the Observer that Ms. Robinson was taking a year-long sabbatical. But some staffers believe that their former colleagues were forced out and doubt that Ms. Robinson will be returning, citing as evidence her office at the station, which was recently cleaned out (When contacted via phone, both Ms. Giammasi and Ms. Robinson declined to comment).

“They were two of the most beloved executives in the building,” said one longtime Thirteen staffer. “They were worshipped. They were our Rabbis. They were delightful, wonderful people who understood the mission of pubic television. For those of us who have been here for years and years, it gives us severe pause.”

“The people that [Mr. Shapiro] has brought in are bottom-liners,” said the aforementioned staffer. “That’s the first thing they look at. Not, is it a great program? There are so many more suit types now--accountants, lawyers--than there were in the old days. That’s the main worry.” Next Page >

On the first weekend in February, Katie Couric and her CBS News colleagues will run through a mock election, complete with fake returns, and pseudo projections: a Super Rehearsal for Super Tuesday.

Paul Friedman, senior vice president for CBS News, recently explained to NYTV that CBS will use the weekend rehearsal to tune up for their Feb. 5 Super Tuesday coverage, which will culminate in a one-hour live special hosted by Ms. Couric, beginning at 10 p.m.

Mr. Friedman said that he will spend the super night strapped into a headset, in the CBS News control room, helping to flip and shift and shuffle dozens of fast moving parts—reports from the field, exit poll data, delegate calculations—into one (hopefully!) seamless production of gripping political theater.

Much has been said about Feb. 5, which, aside from the general election in November, will be the biggest televised political event yet this year. (One day, 24 states! “Giga Tuesday,” some have renamed it.) “This is, without a doubt, the most intense campaign I’ve ever covered,” said Marty Ryan.

In the coming weeks, Mr. Ryan, the executive producer of political programming for Fox News and a control room warhorse, will pull double duty for News Corp. On Feb. 3, Super Bowl Sunday, Mr. Ryan will man the control room for a three hour, football-cum-politics extravaganza (dubbed “Super Sunday”) that will feature Fox News talent and will be shown on Fox broadcast stations around the country.

Two days later, Mr. Ryan will jump back in the control room saddle to produce Fox News’ Super Tuesday coverage.

“Sometimes you hear athletes talk about slowing down the game,” added Mr. Ryan. “That’s what you have to do on election night. Things happen so fast. So you need to slow it down for the viewers, so that they can understand what is going on.”

“We’ve been getting ready for Super Tuesday for two years now,” said Sam Feist.

Mr. Feist, a senior executive producer of political programming for CNN, will help oversee CNN’s continuous Super Tuesday programming from the election center at the Time Warner Center. Among his many responsibilities, Mr. Feist said will help project the winner of the races. “It’s the most extraordinary primary night in American history, 24 states and American Samoa—don’t forget American Samoa!” said Mr. Feist. “We’ll be well positioned to do it.”

“It’s just a ton of moving parts,” said David Chalian, the political director of ABC News. Mr. Chalian said he will spend Super Tuesday in a makeshift election room, at the ABC News headquarters in midtown Manhattan, just off the set from the live action. Although the plans are still being finalized, ABC is currently scheduled to air an hour-long special from 10 to 11 p.m. (and like CBS, ABC will have a Super Tuesday rehearsal beforehand).

According to Mr. Chalian, the conference room will be packed on Super Tuesday, with members of a team pouring over exit polling, a unit analyzing who turned out and why, and a law and justice team patrolling the returns for voting irregularities. Next Page >

On Jan. 3, the night of the Iowa caucuses, ABC political reporter Jake Tapper appeared on Nightline from Des Moines, where he reported live on Mike Huckabee’s surprise victory.

Afterward, he caught an overnight flight on the Hucka-plane to New Hampshire, where, around dawn, he filed a story for Good Morning America.

That evening, he was back in front of the cameras yet again, this time from Henniker, N.H., reporting on Mr. Huckabee for ABC World News With Charles Gibson.  read more » Next Page >

On Thursday, Jan. 3, the night of the Iowa caucuses, Chris Matthews interviewed Rudy Giuliani live on MSNBC. “I noticed working with a lot of reporters, even mild-mannered reporters from New York,” observed Mr. Matthews, “they don’t like you much.”

That observation set up the question that Mr. Matthews wanted to explore: “Are you being screwed by the press?” he asked.

Was he? Mr. Giuliani demurred to his host, who proceeded to make the case.  read more » Next Page >

On Monday, Jan. 7, following in the footsteps of Jay Leno, Jimmy Kimmel, and Conan O'Brien, Comedy Central's Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert will return to the airwaves without their shows' writers, who remain on strike. Which guests will cross the picket line to appear on the first night back for The Daily Show and The Colbert Report?

Not Katrina vanden Heuvel, the editor of The Nation, who this afternoon told Media Mob that she had recently turned down Mr. Colbert's invitation to appear on his Jan. 7 show.

She said that she loved The Colbert Report but that she is "standing in solidarity with the striking writers."  read more » Next Page >

When Jim Stewart stepped down from CBS News in November 2006 after some 16 years of reporting on a range of topics for the Tiffany Network, the longtime Washington-based correspondent retired to the warmth of Florida. Now, depending on a judge’s ruling in an ongoing case, Mr. Stewart could be spending a part of his golden years in a much less sunny position—namely in contempt of a federal court.

In legal documents filed on the eve of the holidays, Mr. Stewar