While the existing staff of The Early Show deals with its own dilemma, the saga of executive producer hopeful Ben Sherwood continues. Or maybe it doesn’t.

Despite a push from his CAA team on both coasts, we’re hearing his chances may be slipping, or have all but disappeared already.

But that won’t keep us from bringing you this twenty-year old Spy magazine article! After all, we’ve already gone through his old emails.

The October 1998 article, posted in full after the jump, profiles Ben when he’s a 24-year-old Rhodes scholar at Oxford. What do we learn?

• He went to prep school
• He’s the son of a “well-connected Beverly Hills lawyer”
• His parents paid kids to play with him and his siblings
• His Harvard peers bonded over hating Sherwood and his enthusiasm, with one classmate saying people made it their business to dislike him, and with one going so far as to say, “When you think Ben Sherwood, you think funny stories, you think asshole, you think ‘Thank God I’m not him.’”
• He thinks Machiavelli is misunderstood
• He likes magic tricks. And mime
• He wanted to lead the Harvard Crimson, and ended up with internships at the Los Angeles Times (no thanks to family friend, publisher Tom Johnson) and CBS before spending three months with the United Nations on the Thailand-Cambodia border (where he discussed fellowships with others) and a stint at the World Bank
• He took an interest in rugby to “lock up my Rhodes,” but it’s arguable whether he ever played a single game at Harvard. His teammates did like to strip him naked and force beer down his throat, though

CONTINUED »

“The Hudson Hotel bar should have a permanent booth for Early Show going away parties,” says a CBS veteran, who reports another two staffers on the network’s morning show quit this week, and there are more exits on the way.

It turns out Shelley Ross’ departure hasn’t been the panacea that brass tried convincing everyone, including the press, it would be. Even with interim executive producer Rick Kaplan at the A.M. helm, we’re told “things aren’t any better [there]. No former staffers have returned to CBS despite the media plants to the contrary.”

So how come problems remain? Because of Ross’ “mean girl” confidants are still on the inside, even though, we’re told, they’re the ones responsible for brandishing the largest, most serrated knives when it came to stabbing her in the back.

And look no farther than former Good Morning America colleague and Early Show EP hopeful Ben Sherwood and CBS VP of talent/development Barbara Fedida, who were both, reportedly, on great terms with Ross to her face, but not when she left the room. (Fedida worked in talent at ABC before CBS poached her.)

Fedida and CBS News chief Sean McManus, meanwhile, are taking heat from staffers for “hand pick[ing] one executive disaster after the next” without repercussion.

And that’s easy to do when Les Moonves is asleep at the wheel.

Lots of Ben Sherwood rumors going around. Some have the rumored item-planter edging to become the next executive producer of The Early Show; others say the CBS Evening News will have Rick Kaplan decamp for the morning show and Sherwood replace him at Katie Couric’s haunt. (Even one that has him gunning for the American Morning EP job.)

Naturally, there are the requisite denials: Kaplan will return to News and Sherwood has only had talks about positions there.

But how do we know who Ben Sherwood The Man is? Maybe looking at some of his emails from his days at ABC’s Good Morning America, where he was paired with ousted Early Show EP Shelley Ross, might shed some light.

Where Ross was belligerent to her staff, does Sherwood go out of his way to make his team feel the warm fuzzies?

We got our hands on a Christmas Eve 2004 email that Sherwood, the former exec producer, sent to the entire GMA staff — including the email editing session he had with his wife to make sure everything was phrased just right.

CONTINUED »

Some official movement on The Early Show front: Zev Shalev joins the show today as senior producer. Meanwhile, no word yet on the fate of executive producer hopeful Ben Sherwood (pictured), who, we’re told, resigned from his post at Good Morning America before he could be fired, leaving a tidy severance package on the table to avoid industry ridicule.

Why the ouster? Not only were ratings an issue, but apparently some folks had problems with his nepotism. Rumor has it Sherwood secured on-air promotion for porn doc Inside Deep Throat, which just happened to produced by wife Karen Kehela’s Imagine Entertainment, the studio founded by Brian Grazer and Ron Howard.

Meanwhile, reports a spy, Sherwood dined at Tribeca’s Blaue Gans over the weekend with a large group when, supposedly, a former GMA staffer accosted him in front of his party and “gave Ben quite a piece of his mind.” And what’s this about the incriminating emails of Ben’s that the employee saved?

We’re hearing rumors item-planter Ben Sherwood, the former Good Morning America executive producer currently gunning for the same gig at The Early Show, is also pursuing the EP title at CNN’s American Morning after the post was unceremoniously vacated by Ed Litvak. Who can confirm? Add details?

Though Ben Sherwood may be the leading candidate to take over Shelley Ross’ executive producer job at The Early Show, network brass is fuming over reports in Page Six that are said to have been leaked by Sherwood himself, or from inside his camp.

On Thursday, Page Six reported that at the funeral of GMA producer James Bogdonoff, ABC anchor Charlie Gibson muttered, “It took us six years to get rid of her. How come it only took them [CBS] five months?” From inside CBS, we’re told Les Moonves & Co. understand Sherwood fed that item, and they’re furious he’d go to such lengths to sabotage his predecessor.

And it’s not just them. Gibson is raging, too, that P6 ran that quote, and more furious since he too suspects it was Sherwood-provided. (These two know each other from Sherwood’s days at ABC; he exec produced GMA through 2006, after he returned from writing novels for two years after leaving his No. 2 producer gig at NBC Nightly News.)

But all of that might be swept under the carpet, eventually. We’re told Sherwood retains his lead role on the list Early Show job candidates because of a strong personal friendship, beginning in college, with a senior CBS News executive.

As Steve Forbes is apt to repeat from his father: “There is nothing wrong with nepotism so long as you keep it in the family.” Or, at the very least, the university class.

More from the anonymous mailbag on The Early Show executive producer hopeful Ben Sherwood: “He was seen at an out of the way East Side bar with interim Early Show EP Rick Kaplan earlier this week.” To the untrained eye, this might appear like someone’s trying to get Sherwood the job!

An anonymous tip making its way to our inbox: “Former GMA executive producer Ben Sherwood is the leading candidate to (once again) replace his nemesis Shelley Ross, this time at CBS’ Early Show. He is working with his superagent, CAA’s Alan Berger, as well as through his powerful Hollywood studio exec wife, to secure the position.”