Reports the Detroit Free Press:
Star reports (quoting unidentified sources and unnamed friends) that Vieira already wants to jump ship. “Meredith told me she’s already planning her exit strategy so she can leave Today with her dignity intact,” Star quotes a pal. “For her, it’s been a noble experiment that hasn’t worked as well as she had hoped.”
When reached for comment, a beleaguered Katie Couric (the often maligned anchor of CBS’ third place Evening News broadcast and the subject of a scandalous unauthorized bio) sarcastically replied, “Yeah, Meredith. This must have been a really difficult year. For you.”
It’s been almost twelve months since Katie Couric and Meredith Vieira joined CBS and NBC respectively, which means it’s time for their one-year evaluations!
But who will weigh in on Katie’s performance? Marketwatch’s thrice-weekly columnist Jon Friedman has the answer!
“Since Couric generated more heat than Vieira in the past year, she’ll get the lion’s share of scrutiny from the usual suspects: critics, pundits, bloggers, journalism-school professors, retired network executives and former anchors.”
And, of course, from the self-proclaimed media critic whom CJR has pointedly nicknamed “The Man Who Knew Too Little And Wrote Too Much.”
One million dollars is what Paris Hilton is expected to pocket when she sits down with the Today show for her first post-prison interview. (What a difference the real thing makes.)
She’ll chat with Meredith Vieira almost as soon as she gets out, says the Post, spurning the good graces of ABC which has seen Barbara Walters spewing incessantly about the jailbird’s positive attributes.
Meanwhile, as Brian Montopoli notes, this was NBC News VP Bill Wheatley talking to the NYT in 2003: “We don’t want there to be confusion on this overall policy: that we don’t pay for interviews.”
And neither do the tabloids, natch.
• Shockingly, it turns out that publishing Princess Diana’s “death picture” is still rather taboo. On the other hand, we’ll always have this.
• Besides, what would Tina Brown think?
• Women who read fashion and beauty magazines have a lot of money. Or at least their husbands do!
• Page Six perpetuates rumors that Katie Couric and Meredith Vieira are being demoted. Cue the obligatory denials!
• Slate reports on the Battle of the Fonts: ‘Helvetica is for mediocre hacks,’ boast fanatical Courier devotees.
• Breaking: Celebrities sometimes model jewelry! Experts already calling this a brilliant foray into cross-promotional propaganda. WWD has the scoop!
Anyone up for a quick stroll down Memory Lane? Because the news of Rosie’s sudden impending departure from The View has us feeling all nostalgic, and inspired to take a look back at the show’s long, sordid history, and admire how much the program has evolved since it first launched sometime in the mid/late 1990’s.
And suddenly, we’re flashing back to 1997, a time when people were custom-building bomb shelters in preparation for Y2K, our high school boyfriend kept on pressuring us to “just do it already,” and bimbo/trailblazer Debbie Matenopoulos was paving the way for Elisabeth Hasselbeck to take her place as “the blond one who’s always wrong.”
A time when Barbara Walters was actually sort of in charge, Star Jones was all morbidly obese and “I’m a lawyer,” Katie Couric was still sitting pretty at the Today Show, no one had even heard of Meredith Vieira, and Joy Behar actually got some occasional air-time, which she generally wasted by shrilly reminding us how hilarious she’s not.
CONTINUED »
• Anna Nicole Smith under fire for exploiting pics of her baby daughter; a defiant TomKat and Brangelina replied, “Well, at least we never had sex with a really, really old guy.”
• Britney Spears reaffirmed her commitment to motherhood last weekend, shagging seaman Isaac Cohen in the “Hugh Hefner suite” of The Palms Vegas hotel.
• Donald Trump, evidently a Jossip reader, finds a reason to hate Condi Rice that has absolutely nothing to do with her unwillingness to reproduce.
• Someone other than Paris, Lindsay or Nicole has an eating disorder?? Send in your guesses for the “saccaharine L.A. starlet” so we don’t have to speculate for you.
• If Today Show viewers aren’t watching Meredith Vieira, and they’re not watching Katie Couric, then what are they doing? **shudders** Reading?
While Meredith Vieira hasn’t exactly brought a new audience to the Today show, we’ll agree that she has succeeding in staying the course — and keeping ratings steady at about 5.8 million viewers. While Rosie O’Donnell flips her shit on The View and Katie Couric watches her news broadcast’s ratings slide further than they were a year ago, Meredith is staying afloat. With a fruity umbrella drink in one hand and the SPF in the other.
“It has been too smooth,” said Jim Bell, “Today” executive producer. “It has been too good. As great a story as it has been for us, it has just been seamless and that may be why it hasn’t drawn as much attention.”
Also, Meredith Vieira doesn’t call Kelly Ripa a homophobe and out Clay Aiken.
Meredith Vieira loves her blog! Rosie O’Donnell has one, Ellen Degeneres has one, and now, well, she wants one too. The folks at Mediabistro have been following her blogging career closely — we learned of her venture through TV Newser, and are now being made aware of the reason for her Today show absence via FBNY.
Vieira was taking her son Ben on a college tour. And boy is Vieira proud of him for staying level headed and keeping his focus in perspective. Not like she did. See, before becoming the shining star of The View and Today, Vieira has faced a few broken dreams along the way. Like not getting into Harvard.
I say that as somebody who desperately wanted to go to Harvard University. Instead of Harvard, I went to Tufts University; certainly not shabby but it wasn???t my first choice. I wasted a lot of energy holding on to some Harvard fantasy– I even went so far as to hitch into Harvard Square every Saturday and ???pretend??? that I was really a Radcliffe gal.
Sniffle, sniffle. See, kids. That’s why you set your dreams a tad bit lower. Aim for say NYU or Northwestern … or Cornell. (Sarcastic joke cue: insert laugh). Any university that keeps telling the students “someday we’ll be a real Ivy” even though it’s never gonna’ happen. That way you won’t ever feel disappointed with your lame Tufts degree and crappy $10 million a year salary.
It’s not about the bumper sticker [Meredith Today]
NBC spent $3.5 million to makeover the set of the Today show, but, as Page Six reports, Meredith Vieira and Matt Lauer are not happy. Despite the chipper attitude they show on television, insider’s say the hosts, more or less, hate their toted “new diggs.”
“They’re fuming that it’s too big. It just swallows them up, and it looks something like a hospital wing,” our insider continues. “Both Meredith and Matt Lauer have complained about it, so there are going to be changes. It’s going to evolve again over the next couple of months, and it’s going to cost them millions more to do it, even though they worked on the new set since April.”
Of course an NBC spokeswoman denies that the host’s of their morning show are nauseated by the site of their new set. But, uh, how could they not hate it? Has this spokeswoman even seen that set? It looks like a low-ceilinged florescent space ship.
We’re sure Ann Curry, however, is taking this opportunity to gush about how much she loves the new set. Y’know, in hopes that NBC won’t be using her salary to hire Nate Berkus.
READY, SET, GO AT ‘TODAY’ [Page Six]
• Entertainment Weekly associate publisher Tom Morrisey leaves for a top spot at OK! [Ad Age]
• And we can see why. That magazine is so freakin’ good, always getting stuff right and all. [Faded Youth]
• Is American Airlines threatening to pull ads from ABC? Well, we guess it’s better than threatening to let even more terrorists on planes if ABC doesn’t change their most controversial mini-series since Mel Gibson’s Holocaust production. [Mediaweek]
• Lizzie Grubman really is the perfect PR girl. Her daddy still pays for absolutely everything in her life. [NYO]
• Gene Shalit and Willard Scott outline for Merideth Vieira just why Katie Couric quit her job. [BWE]
It’s big day in television, folks. First we had Tucker Carlson’s debut on Dancing with the Stars last night, and this morning also marks Meredith Vieira’s first day on the Today show.
We don’t know who starts their first day at a job on a Wednesday, but, whatever. Matt Lauer already has frosting on his face and (thanks to Brian at TV Newser whose job it is to not miss the first five minutes of this blessed event) that brief moment in history has been captured.
In addition to Meredith, the crew is chilling in a new studio (which kind of looks like it has a real low ceiling) and talking to Hilary Swank. Meredith isn’t there for the celeb interview … we guess she didn’t want to throw up on her first day. We promise to keep you posted if anything interesting happens.
Meredith Debuts: Her First Five Minutes [TV Newser]
Ah, Rosie O’Donnell’s blog. We try to avoid it like the plague, but every now and then, Ro drops some deets. And since it’s all leading up to her taking Meredith Vieira’s place on The View (which was prompted by Meredith taking over for Katie Couric which was prompted by Katie Couric’s move to CBS which is the biggest deal ever. Next to Radar’s Sept. 5 launch) sometimes she spills some gossip.
But since she writes in this crazy faux Hiku prose and writes 2 instead of two or to and no instead of know, we never what the hell she’s talking about.
can we not/paint numbers/on runways/huge ones
i met with standards and practices 2 day/they told me all the stuff i know/still made me panic/a little
i only cursed once/in 6 years of live tv/i said/all this useless shit stuck in my head/to lucie arnaz/i believe/oops
Lucky for us, TMZ translates this garble. Rosie is taking Meredith Vieira’s dressing room and ABC is prepping her for what she can and cannot say on television.
And she can’t say “shit” or “Star Jones.”
Rosie Drops Some Pre-”View” Details [TMZ]
One More Week [Rosie.com]
Ouch. Looks like Meredith Vieira isn’t following in the sweet and perky steps of Katie Couric. After nine years wedged next to Star Jones and Joy Behar, we guess she couldn’t help but turn out a bit of a catty biyotch.
Which Vieira proves by majorly dissing her former digs in the press.
Vieira, who was The View moderator for nine years, said she was proud of her work at the popular daytime talk show and feels it has taken a turn for the worse.
”It’s hard to watch. It sort of became a joke,” she told the magazine.
Though she turned down a job on CBS’s Early Show in 2002, Vieira said, she couldn’t turn her back on the opportunity to co-host the Today show.
And Who Wants to Be a Millionaire was such a serious endeavour.
10 Questions for Meredith Vieira [Time]
Vieira No Longer Views ‘The View’ [New York Times, AP]
Poor Elizabeth Vargas. No matter what happens, she will always be the ABC anchor who got pregnant and blew her chance at having her name attached to the World News on ABC. Even conversations of what it’s like to be a chick on TV uses Vargas as a warning: get pregs and you might get the evening news boot.
Walters, the workplace warrior who had to be better than any man. Diane Sawyer, fierce but sexy, choosing career over children. Couric, the good girl, the single working mom. Vargas ??? did she lose the anchor chair because she was pregnant, or was pregnancy a graceful exit in the face of lousy ratings?
And then there???s Vieira. The rebel. The one who very publicly told Don Hewitt what he could do with his grueling ???60 Minutes??? job 15 years ago, because she was going back home to her kids.
Isn’t life so much easier when you can slap convenient labels on people? The only thing is, well, we thought Vargas’ label was “cold-hearted bitch.” We now realize it was “pregnant cold-hearted bitch.”
Her Morning Shift [Lisa Belken, New York Times]
Meredith Vieira’s new gig at the Today show doesn’t just require that she wake up at an hour Bijou Phillips only begins considering whether she’s going out, it also beckons endless press opportunities. Among them: the cover of Traditional Home magazine. And what could’ve been a forgettable fluff piece about how Vieira is spending her fatter paycheck on redecorating will instead be known as “that crap ass Photoshop job with Meredith’s dog Jasper that likely exists, but not at the time of the photoshoot.”