Blooper King Len Berman Leaving WNBC a Rich Man
It's good to be a local news anchor in NYC in the sense that you very well might make a multimillion-dollar salary. But it's bad because you would be getting laid off. Adios, Len Berman.
Monday we heard that WNBC's Chuck Scarborough and KNBC's Paul Moyer, the Kent Brockman and Ron Burgundy of New York, were both potential buyout targets. And now loooooooongtime WNBC sports guy Len Berman—the guy who shows the bloopers!—is getting bought out:
Len Berman, a New York television sports fixture since 1979, including for the past nearly quarter century at WNBC-TV, will leave the station sometime in the next 30 to 60 days.
The station and Berman, 61, had been discussing for months a settlement of his contract - believed to be the most lucrative among his anchor peers with an annual salary one TV industry source estimated at $1 million.
He says he's ready for the "next phase" in his career or something, which presumably involves sitting in a rocking chair counting the staggering pile of money that he was paid over the course of his career, for some reason. You were good at what you did, Len, but it's a new era now. The only media people who deserve that kind of money these days are bloggers. [Newsday]