With Rick Kaplan gone from The Early Show, and Zev Shalev stepping in, surely everything at the CBS morning show is about to be peaches and cream, right?

You're silly.

Early this week, we told you senior producer Laurye Blackford, a Shelley Ross "mean girl" hire, announced she was quitting. Now we're told she's staying on for a little, but that she'd like be gone in the next two weeks. Yesterday, she finally confirmed to producer colleagues that the rumors she was leaving are true.

But – and there's always a but – Barbara Fedida, CBS's talent/development VP, didn't accept her terms. Those two are supposed to meet by the end of the week to agree on a final date.

As for David Shenfeld, the senior producer who just stopped showing up for work? He hasn't been in the office for three weeks, we're told, and staffers haven't been told whether he is or isn't returning. Perhaps they might be tipped off by the fact that somebody else has already moved into his office, and swapped nameplates on the door?

And then there's this beautiful tidbit of nepotism:

Guess who just started working at The Early Show? Katherine Gibson, daughter of Charlie, who was hired to apparently replace a "longtime producer" who was laid off thanks to budget cuts. "Should be interesting," quips a source, "since she has no hard news background and has never done live television producing." (But Katherine does "seem nice.")

So how'd she get hired? Well, her news legend father Charlie is tight with Rick Kaplan, and Blackford and Fedida are said to like her, but that probably had nothing to do with the decision.

The decision to lay off staffers and hire less experienced ones must be part of some grand strategy, right?