Chaunce Hayden, the Steppin’ Out editor whose name regularly appeared in Page Six until he found himself embroiled in a false report about a Bam Margera and Lynsi Smigo sex tape, is the center of this Radar profile, which lists his various past careers: male stripper, car washer, failed punk rocker, bartender, swimming pool digger. Hayden acknowledges that nobody actually reads his publication, which is littered around New York and New Jersey, which might be a growing concern because until lately, it’s been his single entry into getting his gossip items, and his name, in the press. Then the Post banned him (Smigo has since filed a $10 million defamation suit against him and the paper); MSNBC blacklisted him after a he caused a commotion on Joe Scarborough’s show; he’s persona non grata at ABC, when he went on-air to report Diane Sawyer had just shushed him; and Howard Stern would like to see him dead after Hayden said, on ABC, that Stern should be looked at for insider trading for allegedly leaking details of his then-impending move to Sirius. Interesting, though, that Radar is reporting all of this. Not because the gossip industry isn’t the pub’s territory — it is — but because paragraphs like this:

CONTINUED »

When a trio of ABC News writers were asked to sign a waiver agreeing not to be compensated for checking their BlackBerry when they were off the clock, a mini debate began between the news network and the Writers’ Guild of America, East, which wants to make sure its members aren’t being required to maintain a 24/7 workplace without compensation. The dispute, since resolved (though the Times doesn’t explain what terms were reached), raised an issue we often hear from media types with and without guild representation: Everybody wants a BlackBerry, but nobody wants to be required to be on call after they leave the office. And now, the issue reintroduces itself at none other than the Times: Later this summer, as the newspaper’s IT department switches to Microsoft Exchange, staffers will be able to access their company email on practically any smartphone, not just BlackBerrys. Meaning the iPhone-toting geeks will also be expected to interrupt their sleep when their gadget dings. Suckers.

Is Good Morning America going easy on its celebrity guests? The morning shows have always been the place for creampuff interviews where talent can plug their latest TV and film projects while their publicists stand by ready to pull rank if an anchor so much dares as violate their “Do Not Ask About X” agreement. But perhaps ABC’s morning show is all too eager to please A-list (and below) stars.

CONTINUED »

Was the coverage of Tim Russert’s death really overkill? It might help to put it in perspective by, for example, comparing the amount of air time Russert posthumously received to the amount Peter Jennings did when he died in August 2005. And while that might be the most accurate comparison, keep this in mind: Russert died while still manning a broadcast, while Jennings died three months after his sign-off; when Russert died, there were big-ticket news stories to cover, while Jennings’ passing took place during a lull in major events. The numbers are below.

CONTINUED »

If you want to listen to the abridged audio version of Barbara Walters’ over-hyped memoir, you can forget about hearing one thing in particular: moaning coming from the upstairs bedroom. That’s because the five-disc, six-hour spoken edition of Audition cuts out the most talked about talking points: “None of her romantic relationships outside of her three marriages — not even the most-publicized revelation from the book, her secret romance with former Massachusetts Senator (and then married) Edward Brooke — are anywhere to be found.” Some readers (listeners?) might view this as the publisher cheating consumers out of the most interesting, raunchy details of the TV vet’s life, but don’t go crying to them; they’re standing by their “abridged means edited” excuse. And Cindi Berger, Walter’s publicist, says that her client “approved the abridged version of the book,” but just didn’t feel the love stuff was important enough to include. “The focus was just to be about her work,” Berger explains. “The men in her life was not her priority.” Somebody should have told her endless publicity tour that.

Is Good Morning America exec producer Tom Cibrowski, left, being shown the door? That’s what what inbox insider claims. If our source is right, Cibrowski is meeting with ABC’s top execs next week, before his contract is up, to see what can be done about his “his temper” which was “gotten so bad that the nastiness is starting to show on the air,” which we already chronicled here.

ABC’s The Mole, which put Anderson Cooper on a map other than his mother’s, returned to the network last night after a weeks-long semi-subliminal advertising campaign. And performed terribly, with a mere 1.9 rating for the 18-49-YO demo. [MLM]

CNN’s Jessica Yellin will explain, in a blog post, what she really meant last night when she told Anderson Cooper there was pressure from top network execs, at her old ABC job, to play nice with the Bush administration during the beginning of the Iraq war. [TVN, earlier] Did somebody shit where she didn’t mean to?

Surprise! When that little war in Iraq was beginning, television news execs pressured producers not to air stories critical of the Bush administration. That was always sort of known, but like Fight Club, never talked about.

And then last night, CNN’s Jessica Yellin, who used to get a paycheck from ABC News, told Anderson Cooper all about it: “The press corps was under enormous pressure from corporate executives, frankly, to make sure that this was a war presented in way that was consistent with the patriotic fever in the nation and the president’s high approval ratings.”

Responded Cooper in exasperation (that she’d admit to it?): “You had pressure from news executives to put on positive stories about the president?” Video below.

CONTINUED »

Charlie Gibson has been giving Brian Williams a run for his ratings — so do you really think ABC is going to let him go? Uh uh. So sit on your hands while Gibson’s agent finds out how much they can gouge Disney for while he resigns his contract, and while Diane Sawyer continues to fume. [NYT]

So after all the chatter about what Katie Couric’s big announcement on this morning’s Today show would be, and the revelation that she and NBC’s Brian Williams and ABC’s Charlie Gibson would be announcing a joint one-hour cancer telethon, here’s the big reveal. And yes, Katie’s legs are on display.

So was it hard to get the competing networks to work together on this? Of course not!, says Katie: “It was wonderfully easy, really. I think the opportunity to do something for the greater good, to set aside our competitive differences, to raise money and awareness for something that affects all of us … I think everyone said, ‘Yeah, let’s do it.’”

The only question that needed sorting out, then, was which network’s morning show would get to make the big announcement. Guess that decision was made from a ratings standpoint.

CONTINUED »

Sure, American Idol might be one big Coca-Cola and Ford advertisement. But that doesn’t mean Grey’s Anatomy, the once buzzworthy ABC show that’s taken a nosedive in ratings and interest, has sold its soul to Madison Avenue. In what will likely turn out to be a non-scandal, the show caught flack when its season finale on Thursday, with a plotline that included the doctors freeing a young man from concrete, also aired an ad from Honda’s Pilot, which showed a man trapped in concrete. Paid tie-in, or coincidence? ABC maintains the latter, as does Honda’s ad agency RPA. [NYP] Below, the Honda ad.

CONTINUED »

There is no such thing as bad drugs. Just bad drug addicts. That’s a line an old acquaintance used to feed us. He used meth and was known to dabble in PCP from time to time. But ABC’s John Stossel might agree: He told audience members at a medical marijuana benefit event, “I think all of it should be legal: marijuana, cocaine, heroin and crack.” [P6] The crowd went silent. So, too, we imagine, wil ABC’s publicist.

Guess what? Marketers are being more careful with their ad budgets! Guess what else? Big companies like Disney’s ABC can’t afford to let cash-conscious advertisers spend less on TV buys, because it affects the bottom line, and that scares shareholders!

So that’s why ABC is today, during its upfront presentation, rolling out the new “Advertising Value Index,” which will supposedly help prove the value of TV advertising by letting clients choose specific criteria, rather than just Nielsen ratings numbers, in choosing where they put their 30-second spots. [WSJ] Things like “income level, education, employment status, how long viewers tune in to commercials or how engaged they are with the program” will all be just a checkbox away.

Except, well, media buyers already have this information.

CONTINUED »

James Frey told Vanity Fair that he wasn’t going to do much press for his new book Bright Shiny Morning, which hits this week. Then he blogged on Amazon.com that he would be doing “some press.” So, that’s one new lie.

How about another?

Three weeks ago, Frey and his handler Lisa Kussell at PR firm BWR told ABC News Now, the broadcast network’s digital 24/7 news channel, that he would do a sit-down interview, scheduled for today. Now, Jossip hears, with just an hour before he’s supposed to shoot the live taped segment, he canceled. The excuse? “He doesn’t look good. […] He’s drenched and not shaven.”

So how about a phoner, then?

Nope, Kussel took that off the table too. Perhaps James doesn’t even have a face for radio?

Actually, that’s not true either. Frey will be doing a spot with ABC News Radio.

OMFG there’s so much gay stuff on TV right now. And we don’t even mean American Idol or Dancing With the Stars. Over on ABC’s excellent Brothers & Sisters, (straight-in-real-life) Matthew Rhys’ character Kevin will wed (gay-in-real-life) Luke Macfarlane’s Scotty, on Sunday’s episode, in what’s being billed as network’s first-ever gay wedding between two series regulars. [USAT] Not that those two haven’t been making out in primetime forevs already. And then, on ABC Family’s Greek, that show about frats, Paul James’ character Kevin will smooch Michael, played by Max Greenfield, on the May 26 episode. [AfterElton]

As if you had to wonder why Disney bosses wanted ABC chief Stephen McPherson to stick around.

[Photo: ABC]

The Walt Disney Co. has, after months of back and forth dealmaking, resigned ABC president Stephen McPherson’s contract for an “unspecified” number of years. [NYT] This is significant because McPherson has turned the network into America’s most favoriteist channel, where all the shows worth watching (Lost, Ugly Betty, Desperate Housewives, Dancing with the Stars, Grey’s Anatomy) are housed, bringing the channel’s ratings to the No. 2 spot, while a guy like Jeff Zucker keeps getting re-upped at NBC despite dragging the network from No. 1 to No. 4, and then to No. 3.

The New York Times enterprise story on how media networks have been exploited by military analysts currying favor with the government received, um, no attention from the media.

Well, okay, a analysis of media coverage found two mentions of the story, and both were during the April 24 edition of PBS’ NewsHour.

So how come nobody has picked up what was arguably one of the biggest exposes of White House blunders?

CONTINUED »

The wingspan of Bill Clinton’s power is wide! Or Bill Clinton thinks it is! Back in 2006, he tried squashing the ABC miniseries Path to 9/11, which his inner circle feared would blame some of the WTC attacks on Clinton White House policy (i.e. not finding Osama bin Laden), claims Carol Felsenthal in her new book Clinton in Exile: A President Out of the White House. Even Madeleine Albright jumped on the bandwagon, calling for the series to get killed, even though she hadn’t even seen any of it.

Sound familiar? It should. It’s the same sort of scenario Clinton pulled with GQ, threatening to drop out of participating in the magazine’s “Men of the Year” issue of a critical profile of wife Hillary got printed. Editor Jim Nelson ending up killing the piece (though it was reused elsewhere), and Bill gave him a cover.

ABC, as history tells it, didn’t cave.

Nick Lachey, who made a career out of banging Jessica Simpson, will host ABC’s High School Musical reality TV show spin-off High School Musical: Summer Session, so he can continue bankrolling his current claim to fame: banging Vanessa Minnillo.[AP]