Before Sarah Palin can continue her crazy career with a lucrative talk show deal, she'll have to prove that she can hold her own in front of other sympathetic hosts. So right now, she's getting courted by everyone from Babs to Oprah to suspender-wearing Larry King.
So far though, she's only accepted one offer, and the most obvious one to boot, Greta van Susteren over at the "sympathetic" Fox News.
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Brian Williams of the NBC Nightly News was the last reporter in line to get their interview with Sarah Palin. And the network also got the brunt of the backlash while reporting on the RNC, when Republicans surrounded the cameras and chanted "NBC! NBC!" as some sort of war chant. Although, hell, those sound like fans, not detractors, but who knows.
So why is the McCain camp, and conservatives in general, about as anti-NBC as they are anti-NYT? Well, if you haven't noticed, NBC is just two letters away from MSNBC, that evil biased station with the angry man (not Bill O'Reilly) and the lesbian (not Brian Kilmeade). But NBC does not "control" MSNBC, per se, and their association is only through parent company General Electric's NBC Universal. They are more like estranged siblings (that sometimes share producers and anchors via the NBC News unit) than anything else. Or, you know, so they would have you believe!
But actually, the defense from 30 Rock brass — that the opinions of MSNBC don't impact NBC News proper — might have traction! CONTINUED »
Chuck Todd was in the room when the Mcainiac and Palindrone did their one-two step interview with Brian Williams last night. And not to mince words, the NBC News Political Director was a little underwhelmed: "I couldn't see chemistry between John McCain and Sarah Palin. I felt as if we grabbed two people and said 'here, sit next to each other, we are going to conduct an interview.' They are not comfortable with each other yet."
No chemistry between old man and frigid beauty queen? You don't say:
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After getting dissed and dumped, David Letterman has been on a John McCain tear of late. From bashing the candidate in his opening monologue to inviting actress Julia Louis-Dreyfuss on the show for another dose of vitriol, the Late Show host has been snuffing up the YouTube views. On Friday night, NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams sat down for another opportunity for Letterman to attack Palin after watching her dodge-y VP debate performance.
Kudos to Williams for not only remaining neutral — "I can't correct you because I have no opinions" — but steering Letterman to seeing all sides … and then letting him crap on Palin.
Interesting, however: CONTINUED »
Warren Buffett, the billionaire Berkshire Hathaway investor who seems to have more billions of dollars to spare than the U.S. government, just threw down a $3 billion stake in General Electric, the parent company of NBC, after throwing $5 billion at Goldman Sachs to float the bank's bragging rights as a survivor of the economic fallout. And while we care about Wall Street and all that, it's Buffett's investment in GE that piqued our interest, particularly because of the favorable terms he worked out with maybe racist Jeff Immelt.
GE sold Buffett $3b worth of preferred stock, which pays a 10 percent dividend, though NBC is entitled to buy back the stake in three years so long as they fork over a 10 percent return, or $3.3b. But Buffett wouldn't have extended an olive branch to GE if things weren't even more favorable to him. And indeed, they are: Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway "is receiving warrants to purchase $3 billion of G.E. common stock for $22.25 a share, at any time over the next five years." With GE trading at $24.50 a share now, if the stock goes up, Buffett gets to pick up a larger stake at a discounted rate. And now that Buffett has given GE his vote of confidence, well, that's a pretty possible scenario, since Wall Street sees Buffett's touch as that of Midas.
So, good news for everybody, right? All of this dealmaking, though, has one individual raising a single eyebrow: Brian Williams. CONTINUED »
So, this Friar's Club roast of Matt Lauer – will it be terribly boring? You bet! Check out the hilarious roasting committee: Meredith Vieira, Katie Couric, NBC president Jeff Zucker and Brian Williams. Comedy heavyweights there!
We predict about a million jokes about how "glib" Matty is and very few about how great he is at helping killers evade justice. Also, we highly doubt the night will come and go without the word "metrosexual" popping up at least once. Hahahahahahaha! Try the chicken.
Accustomed to playing defense, MSNBC president Phil Griffin finds himself in a worn-in seat prescribing euphemisms toward his embattled network. With the in-fighting between Keith Olbermann, Chris Matthews, Joe Scarborough, and David Gregory taking a backseat to the assumption that Griffin & Co. caved to right-y criticism that the network's coverage leaned too far to the left — thus resulting in K+M moving back to pundit-only chairs — MSNBC now finds itself again defending its internal decisions. If only criticism of the cable news network, then, were coming from Fox News and sites like Olbermann Watch. In fact, for months it's been NBC News insiders who've besieged the ears of Griffin, NBC News president Steve Capus, and GE chief Jeff Immelt, begging for change. So who's been complaining? CONTINUED »
BriWi is about one major coverage short of a nervous breakdown. It's already duly noted that NBC is scheduling Williams so many places at once that he can't even blog, but that was apparently just the beginning:
From the Olympics in Beijing to the Democratic convention in Denver to Hurricane Gustav coverage in New Orleans to the Republicans in St. Paul to L.A. tomorrow for a cancer awareness special with his Big 3 competitors.
By Williams' calculation, it comes to 38,486 miles — including two Pacific crossings, two Atlantic crossings and 10 overseas cities.
All in less than a month, remember. Well that explains why he's getting so snippy when talking about Bristol Palin, "Families are messy and complicated and American and normal…it's where public officials kind of close the door behind them. Home is home. Family's family."
Here that America? Brian Williams wants you to stop the clamoring so he can finally catch some Z's.
JOSSIP REPORTS — With Keith Olbermann back in New York and supposedly making up with Chris Matthews, and Joe Scarborough insisting everyone at the network is going to have Thanksgiving together, everything should be hunky-dorey at NBC News, yes?
No.
Joe Scarborough is still taking shots at Olbermann on the air (excellent video here). Oh, and then there's this little matter of Chuck Todd, David Gregory, and Brian Williams — and Meet The Press. It's a clusterfuck, and these are the details: CONTINUED »
Walking past the newsstand, we're sure to check in on Men's Vogue each month just to see which masculine metrosexual fella they wrangled into a suit and promised not to make him come off too dandy. (This month, it's Eli Manning.The anti-dandy thing didn't work: "Manning favors conservative Zegna suits for big events — receptions on the White House lawn, ring ceremonies at Tiffany — and prep-school casual at home. On the afternoon he invited me over to his Hoboken apartment, he wore pressed jeans, a crisp tattersall button-down, and brown suede loafers with no socks.")
Which is how we spotted CBS News correspondent and tabloid boldfacer Lara Logan peering back at us from the inside pages. Normally, Logan's empowering tale of returning to the U.S. from a war zone would be an excellent Vogue (proper) story: No more Kevlar, hello pencil skirts! But it's Logan's relationship with a married man, and a CNN star, that make her more appealing to the readers of Men's Vogue, where she is a fantasy: Hot and doesn't mind being around guns.
Except this photo of Logan? Yeah, it seems eerily familiar. CONTINUED »
Poor BriWi; the man's schedule for the last couple weeks has been tres hectic. Full Olympic coverage in Beijing, now Denver to cover the DNC, and maybe NBC will give him five hours to sleep (read: blog) if he's lucky.
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One television watcher is surprised that, after paying nearly $900 million for domestic broadcast rights for the Olympics, NBC wants to talk about the games endlessly, even on its news program. [WaPo]
Bad information often gets a reporter into trouble. WMDs and Judy Miller, anyone? But for Bob Costas, a bad tip didn't get him into trouble — it got colleague Brian Williams into an embarrassing lie. You see, Costas had heard that Bruce Springsteen had, during a live concert, congratulated World's Best Athlete Michael Phelps (who Amanda Beard totally didn't make out with) for snagging his seventh gold medal and then dedicated "Born in the USA" to him. Costas wanted to ask Phelps what he thought about The Boss' personal dedicated, but his interview ran long, so he passed the tip to Williams, who brought it up in his own interview with Phelps. Except Springsteen never congratulated Phelps during the concert, nor did he dedicate a song to him. CONTINUED »
SRSLY, Brian Williams, we all have a crush on Michael Phelps, you don't need to rub it in our face that you guys are both lovin' it:
All he wanted after yesterday’s race was McDonalds. Before our interview, a producer asked him for his order. He initially wanted a cheeseburger, Big Mac and fries. Then I stepped in (having done the research) and told him that the double cheeseburgers here were good, better than in the States. I told him there was no mustard on them, and that the minced onion was kept to a minimum. I could see in his eyes that he realized he was in the company of a fellow aficionado. He changed his order – so excited at the thought of McDonalds for the first time since arriving here in Beijing — and the interview began.
You are such a dork, Williams. You sound like Barbara Walters whenever she starts in about Gabriel Byrne. But to be fair, Matt Lauer is worser.
Know what you get when you spot isolated instances of various television personalities wearing a tie of a certain color? A Times trend story! Eric Wilson spotted folks like Brian Williams, Keith Olbermann, and Bill O'Reilly all wearing ties of a purplish hue in recent weeks, which is apparently their way of announcing they're staying neutral in this heated political climate, where, duh!, wearing a red tie is an obvious sign you're in McCain's camp and wearing a blue tie is the equivalent of licking Obama's feet.
So certain of this trend, Wilson even hooked semi-respectable people into his charade, getting GQ creative director Jim Moore to declare, "Purple is the new neutral," and Bergdorf Goodman's men's fashion director Tommy Fazio to insist, "There are other ways of not being partisan.”
We've seen pure coincidences manufactured into trends before, but OMG, this is ridiculous. Here's why: CONTINUED »
Now that he's on his way to the White House, terrorist-by-satire Barack Obama stands accused of leaning farther toward the center than his left-wing Democratic primary self did. Some might argue that comes with the territory as any candidate progresses into the general election. Fine.
But there's another marked change going on in the Obama camp, and it has to do with his relationship with the press. We noticed three distinct policies that are becoming status quo inside the Land of Change, and they're all rules the press corps now has the grapple with. CONTINUED »
Former firefighter — in real life and on Saturday Night Live — and NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams just happened to be yearning for a chance to bask in some summer sunshine when a "call come in over the fire scanner" (that, uh, sits on his desk?) about "a basement fire at TGI Friday's at 50th and 7th, a block away from our building." So what'd BriWi do? He grabbed his pick ax, oxygen tank, and water hose and shuffled on down the 30 Rock elevator to save the world! [Daily Nightly]
Though Brian Williams filled in the moderator's chair on Meet The Press today, Mr. Tom Brokaw will take over through the election as we suspected. It might've been easy to think Williams was actually quite apt for the gig: He followed Russert's traditional line of questioning that brought up past statements and offered politicos the chance to contradict themselves or reaffirm their past; Joe Biden was today's example, asked about the vice presidency. (He had said before that under no circumstances would he want to be VP. He said that again today. Then he qualified that statement by saying he doesn't want to be VP because Barack Obama just wouldn't ask him — if if Obama did ask, he'd have no choice but to say yes.)
But that's not what Jeff Zucker and Steve Capus had in mind. The official announcement came this morning, and Williams telling viewers at the end of today's broadcast, with 30 Rock revealing Brokaw will take over MTP beginning next Sunday and last through the November election. CONTINUED »
For this week, at least. No decisions about a permanent replacement have been made. NBC News President Steve Capus says they're making decisions week-by-week. Meanwhile, Russert's Saturday show will be replaced with a mix of documentary programming and live news.
On a NBC News conference call this morning, NBC head Jeff Zucker, NBC News chief Steve Capus, and anchor Brian Williams joined in with a number of others to discuss the future of Meet The Press and the D.C. bureau. A source who was not on the call, but overheard a colleague's speakerphone listening session, says Tom Brokaw's name was bandied about. (It's unclear whether Brokaw was on the call.)
More on the post-Tim Russert future is here.
Editorial Director
