A Morning Person GMA's new exec producer has a plan to get to No. 1
Robin Roberts and Diane Sawyer, Good Morning America
Jim Murphy has returned to the morning-TV wars. On July 19 he was named the new executive producer of ABC's
Good Morning America, which has been entrenched in second place behind NBC's
Today for over a decade. But Murphy knows it could be worse: In the 1990s he helmed
CBS This Morning, which struggled to get attention because the network still disdained morning TV's breezy blend of newsmaker interviews, cooking segments and pop concerts. That's no longer the case. As Murphy told the Biz, morning shows are now the main profit engines of all news divisions and are getting more attention than ever. We talked to Murphy about the new gig he's taking on after a six-year stint at
CBS Evening News.
TVGuide.com: You left morning TV in 1998. How has it changed since then?
Jim Murphy: It's become more competitive, for all the obvious reasons. It's the only part of the news daypart in broadcasting that has shown audience growth. Bigger than the audience growth has been the revenue growth. It's really important that our company and that all the networks do as well as we can in the morning. So the competition is so much more intense than it was a dozen years ago. It also goes on around the clock in a much more intense fashion than it used to. These shows in the old days went to bed in the evening and didn't change much overnight. We have a 24-hour operation here now, where the show is getting changed all the time up until airtime because you keep fighting for better and better stuff.
TVGuide.com: Last year, Good Morning America nearly ended Today's 10-year run as the No. 1 morning show in the ratings. Why couldn't they close the deal?
Murphy: My opinion at the time was GMA was really confident and doing extremely well.... They got a boost from some of the stuff on the network, and ABC's coming back to life helped a bit. It's not something that helps you forever. But the Today show fought back in a way that I've never seen anybody fight back. They threw everything they had at it, and they fought it off. Part of that, too, was because people were talking a lot about how this was the end of the Matt Lauer-Katie Couric team. I think people wanted to catch the end of it.
TVGuide.com: How are you going to distinguish GMA from the competition?
Murphy: It's very difficult to make a difference in any news forum on broadcast television. We do much of the same work in magazines, on evening newscasts and in the morning. So what are the differences? The differences are who you have on the air, and some programming gimmicks. Everybody is looking for those special series or trips and events that you can get some people to move with. And you're looking for the best possible team. We're trying something new by being the first people to go with two women [Diane Sawyer and Robin Roberts] anchoring the broadcast.... They are exceptional broadcasters, and we have to build the rest of the team around them. Is it guaranteed to work? No. But we're going to try, and if it works, we'll make a difference and be considered very special people.
TVGuide.com: So the plan is to keep Diane and Robin, and the males will be added in the news and weather roles?
Murphy: Well, we're not sure about news and weather. We have people here whom we're watching closely and thinking about. Hopefully we'll make those decisions soon.
TVGuide.com: You'll have them in place by the fall?
Murphy: By September, yes.
TVGuide.com: How do you feel about all the attention CBS Evening News is getting now that you're no longer the executive producer?
Murphy: It got plenty of attention while I was there, too, but not all of it positive. Look, do I like being part of big shows getting loads of money poured into them? Absolutely. I just wasn't there at the time for that. I had a wonderful time at CBS Evening News. I worked with one of the greatest anchors of all time [Dan Rather]. We saw the world together. We did incredible things. We accomplished great things. I have no regrets about that or about leaving. I wound up having an opportunity that I consider even more special. The morning shows have changed a lot. They're a lot more interesting; a lot more is put into them. The production level has increased dramatically in the last dozen years. I also discovered I missed the editorial mix. I love feature work. I like entertainment. I like music. I'm glad some of that is in my working life again.
TVGuide.com: Were you surprised that Bob Schieffer worked out so well at the CBS Evening News?
Murphy: Not at all. I knew on the first day. With the broadcast we created together we brought his personality to the forefront and tried to do something people haven't tried — let people be themselves instead of doing scripted questions and scripted answers and overly produced chats. Plus, we were going to try to highlight the good young people that CBS News has. Those are two things we thought could make a difference, and we knew in the first couple of days that we were doing a good show.
TVGuide.com: How do you think Katie is going to do?
Murphy: I have no idea. I actually think that she is a lot like Bob. She's a great chatter. She's a great broadcaster. She's really smart. She has a wide range of interests. She's got leadership skills. I think they're in a good position. She will fit right into what's been going on there. She'll get even more support and resources with which to do the job, so I think they have a good chance. The only downside I see is that CBS still has some of the institutional issues that always held back the Evening News. They have a lead-in issue — most of the local news in most of the big markets is barely watched or unwatched because [CBS has] an afternoon programming deficiency. It's been that way for 20 years, ever since Oprah came on the scene.
TVGuide.com: Do you think people who watched Katie in the morning will follow her to the evening?
Murphy: I don't know how devoted her fan base is. I would think there are quite a few people who are going to watch just because it's Katie. If that's 500,000 or 700,000, well, then they're back in competition. If it's a million or 1.5 million, then they're going to be No. 1. But that's really hard to make happen in that part of the day.
TVGuide.com: Have you talked to Dan Rather? How is he doing?
Murphy: He's doing well. He's incredibly excited about his new project, [a news program for HDNet], and I mean that genuinely. He's really excited. He's getting the opportunity with some serious backing to go work with a new format — high definition — and try to do the kind of stories he really loves. Hard news, real investigative stuff. Some good people are going to work with him. They're talking to a lot of good people in the industry. Hopefully it's going to be a great ride.
