Tom Brokaw will host NBC News’ “Meet the Press” through the election.
Tag: Meet the Press
Peter Boyer has a terrific profile of Keith Olbermann in the current issue of the New Yorker. The theme — the emergence of the opinion-news hybrid in television journalism, seen first on the right with Fox News, now on the left with MSNBC — is an important one following the death of the determinedly centrist Tim Russert.
Personally, I enjoy Olbermann’s “Countdown” quite a bit. His standards for accuracy are considerably higher than those of his nemesis, Bill O’Reilly. My fear is that craven network executives will take any sign of success and drive it right over the cliff. I hadn’t realized until I’d read Boyer’s piece that CBS News had courted Olbermann as its lead anchor before settling on Katie Couric — who, despite all the drama over her low ratings and rumors of her departure, does a perfectly respectable job of anchoring the evening newscast.
Olbermann’s name has also come up as a possible replacement for Russert on “Meet the Press.” Fortunately, the most plausible rumor of the moment is that Tom Brokaw will come out of retirement to helm the program through the election.
By all means, let Olbermann be Olbermann — hosting a news-and-opinion program, not pretending to be something he’s not.
Also work checking out: NPR’s “On the Media” recently did a piece on what it called “The Olbermann Effect.”
How thin is the NBC News bench? The Los Angeles Times reports that the top three contenders for Tim Russert’s “Meet the Press” perch are David Gregory, Chris Matthews and Joe Scarborough. Good grief. I’m adding “Face the Nation” to my podcast subscriptions right now. (Via Romenesko.)
Media Nation’s top two (and extremely unlikely) contenders: Gwen Ifill and Aaron Brown.
Tim Russert’s death does not bode well for the future of television news. Though he was sometimes criticized for being too much of an insider, and for being tougher on liberals than on conservatives, Russert was smart and serious. He had a rare talent for communicating his love and knowledge of politics. And he was, by all accounts, a thoroughly decent human being.
Will NBC executives take advantage of this tragedy to go younger, glitzier and cheaper? That is not the legacy Russert would want or deserves.
Bill Shields of WBZ-TV (Channel 4) interviews several of us from “Beat the Press” here. The actual “Beat the Press” discussion should go up here sometime over the weekend. I’ve also written a column on Russert for the Guardian, which should be available here in a little bit.
Saturday morning update: My Guardian piece is now online.
Photo (cc) by Joseph Hallett and republished here under a Creative Commons license. Some rights reserved.
I couldn’t believe it when John Harwood, on “Meet the Press,” defended that ridiculous Washington Post column about Hillary Clinton’s alleged cleavage on the grounds that she’s too “calculating” not to know what she was doing. So I’m glad that Media Matters was similarly appalled.