Now that Katie Couric is leaving the unwatched CBS Evening News before her contract expires, CBS CEO Les Moonves has little reason to keep pumping money into its putrefying corpse. Moonves "isn't a news guy, he's a showbiz guy," notes Huffington Post power-blogger Rachel Sklar. And Couric is hardly the first person to fail at anchoring the crappy program.
The Wall Street Journal broke a terribly large piece of media news this week—CBS Evening News anchor Katie Couric is leaving the network after the elections, before her contract is up. That they had this story and not, say, the Times—who generally handle the TV media beat pretty well and on their own, thank you—is a nice coup for Murdoch's newest acquisition. It took a little while for the Times to catch up, but they came out last night with their own story on the meeting that ended Couric's career. (Amusingly, they credit "press reports in The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal and elsewhere on Thursday" for breaking the Journal's exclusive scoop. Petty!) While some speculate as to what Katie will do next, or when she'll leave, Henry Blodget wonders who killed her. We're inclined to believe she killed herself.
Boy, ABC News president David Westin must have really been moved by the story of Randy Pausch, a 47 year-old professor and father who has terminal cancer. It's not every day an exec as high up as Westin takes the time to email the entire ABCTV staff just to talk about an uplifting story! Westin is truly touched by how Pausch has altered our lives. That's one interpretation. Another, more accurate interpretation, which is completely validated by the contents of Westin's email [via Jossip], is that the exec saw a good chance to use this ill man's story as an example of the badass corporate interactivity going on under the Disney umbrella. Westin's totally excited about Pausch's TV segment, sister company Hyperion is publishing the book, and the guy once wanted to be an "Imagineer" for another Disney unit... When he still had his life before him, of course. The full email, after the jump.
OMG! Where will former Gawker employees and their mothers express themselves? Twitter?!
Fantastic news! CNN Anchor Don Lemon was finally given permission by his new boss to wear a vest! Everyone at CNN is so excited about this that they spent like 20 minutes talking about how great vests are, and Lemon also showed off his reading glasses. Then he said an amazing aphorism that we are having embroidered on the dress shirt we've just torn the sleeves off of.
New York reports that "two separate public identification records reveal that the only Ashley Youmans (the real name of "Kristen," a.k.a Ashley Alexandra Dupré) from the Jersey Shore (or anywhere in New Jersey) is actually 32." As we briefly mentioned earlier, we got an email yesterday that said, without supporting evidence, that "Ashley is 32 not 22." One of the reasons we didn't alert everyone to this fact was that all her old high school classmates quoted in the Daily News and the Post were between 22 and 23. Was she held back ten years or does everyone in Jersey lie about their age? Also, her mom made a point of saying Dupre wasn't 32 (or 42). Is that suspicious? It is a mystery! [NYM]
Gusts near 50 MPH sent a loose chain crashing into the side of the Trump SoHo tower on Saturday night, cracking windows and showering the street with glass, officials and neighborhood residents said.
We could make the typical cutesy gay jokes about this clip of Anderson Cooper watching clips of streakers getting taken down, but we're more bemused by his use of phrases like "tally ho" and "sticky wicket." And his bizarre insistence on calling genitals "bits and pieces." Watch along with Anderson as nude men are violently tackled! [CNN]
An Improvised Explosive Device went off in Times Square at 3:43 this morning, according to a statement released just a few minutes ago by the NYPD. In other, less sensationalistic words, a small homemade bomb went off just in front of the Army recruiting station. No injuries. The Mayor is expected to give a press conference a half-hour ago, "but he's running late." We'll update if he says anything interesting. (Update: He didn't.) The cops are looking into whether this bomb was anything like the ones that went off outside the Mexican and British Consulates in 2007 and 2005, respectively. Those crude devices were toy grenades filled with gunpowder, making the term I.E.D. sound even more generous. But hey, terror. Update: Cops say a witness saw a guy on a bike, with a backpack, and a hood. Which matches the description of the mysterious guy spotted outside the consulate attacks. This madman must be stopped before he inexplicably blows up a tiny bomb well outside another building at an hour when it will hurt no one. (CNN clip, regarding this mad bombing suspect, after the jump.) [NYT]
Welcome to the Gawker Locker Room: where maturity goes to die! Here your host and toastmaster Furious George will present a topic of discussion for open commentary, vigorous debate, and potential masturbatory purposes. Our topics will be diverse, random, juvenile, and vitally important. Last week I stated my intention to make the Gawker Locker Room is a safe place for womyn and geighs. And to that end, I thought about asking a nice and cheeky question. Something along the lines of: "Which male Gawker personality is the most fuckable?" But then I realized that everyone would pick me, and furthermore, that they'd be correct. So that question was out the window. And then I got to skimmin' every damned comment in the previous Locker Room thread, hoping to stumble across some juicy subject matter. One topic came up more consistently than most: Anderson Cooper. But once again, I think he's far too easy a subject. "Would you fuck Anderson Cooper?" has only one correct answer, and even I'm not ashamed to admit it. Besides, ol' Andy gets too much attention these days. Surely there are dozens, if not baker's dozens, of up-and-coming hunks and hotties lurking in Anderson's shadow. Why do we never discuss them? Why do we leave them of our greeting cards, our love letters, our interpretive watercolors, our one-act plays, our slash fiction, our self-administered tattoos, and our court orders? Do not they - the slavishly hard-working, the impressively credentialed, the hopelessly credible - deserve to be objectified? And so I ask you all: Which cable news hottie (male or female) is the most underrated, and why? Update: Commenter fiveinchtaint's Allison Williams link is totally NSFW.
Marketwatch media person (and frequent target of Gawker ridicule) Jon Friedman actually wrote a thought that is sorta original and correct and interesting! According to him, MSNBC's ratings may suck, but they "stand out in one underappreciated category: embarrassing, mealy-mouthed apologies." He refers to David Shuster's suspension for his remarks about Chelsea Clinton (ably dissected down to the very last gruesome detail by Rachel Sklar here), which, along with Chris Matthews' half-hearted and partially reversed apology for being insane about Hillary, has MSNBC holding the early lead in the "apologizing to the Clintons" race. Of course, in the overall apology race, Fox did force anchor John Gibson to apologize for laughing it up at the death of Heath Ledger. But he didn't really mean it so that doesn't count. [Marketwatch]
If only MoveOn.org knew that all it took to push Karl Rove around was a bunch of pissed-off tony prep-schoolers. After student protests (and a Drudge link) the Bush advisor has backed out of his commitment as this year's graduation speaker at Connecticut boarding school Choate Rosemary Hall. You know, where Ivanka went? Aww, whassamatter, Karl? Can't take a little high-class heckling? [AP]
The Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation has announced the nominees for their 19th annual GLAAD Media Awards. Our beloved Anderson Cooper is nominated for his story on gay homeless teens (and for being so dreamy). Odds on America's Favorite Mostly Closeted Anchor attending the ceremony slightly better than odds on Matt Cassel starting for the Patriots in the Super Bowl. [GLAAD]
Damsel Dowd in distress! President Bush to the rescue! During Bush's eight-day trip to the Middle East, the titian-topped Times columnist caught a doozy of a stomach bug and was rescued by the White House, who gave Dowd access to Dubya's doctor and a ride home on Air Force One. Awww. Frankly, we're surprised the administration let MoDo anywhere near a Bush itinerary, let alone an invitation to come along. Interesting little side note? The Washington Post reports that news organizations could pay more than $20,000 per journalist along on the journey. [WP]
Apparently part of the Trump Tower building in Soho just collapsed after being hit by a crane. One person may have been killed, according to reports. An eyewitness says it was a top corner, another says two floors have caved in. "I was eating lunch in the conference room of my office on Hudson Street and we watched as one entire side of a building under construction collapsed," an onlooker told us. "There are ambulances and fire trucks everywhere." Curbed has more.
Today's puzzler: 24-hour cable news nets are more interested in missing white lady hiker and successful black guy candidate than crazy hospitalized pop starlet. ALSO it could snow at any second in California!
