Dan Rather is suing his former network over the aftermath of his flawed report on President Bush's National Guard service.The September 2004 story produced for the newsmagazine 60 Minutes II led to Rather’s departure from the CBS Evening News anchor chair in March 2005. Now working at the cable outlet HDNet, Rather has filed a $70 million lawsuit, which names CBS Corp. president and CEO Leslie Moonves, Viacom chairman Sumner Redstone and former CBS News president Andrew Heyward as plaintiffs. The suit claims the network violated his contract by not giving him a more prominent role on 60 Minutes.Rather’s last deal with CBS News stipulated that when he left the Evening News anchor chair he would be the lead correspondent for 60 Minutes II. Once that program was canceled, Rather joined the signature edition of the newsmagazine on Sunday, where he was to be a regular correspondent. The lawsuit says he was used far less than the other correspondents on the broadcast.The suit al...
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There probably isn't anyone on Earth who has produced more hours of morning television than Steve Friedman. In two stints and 10 years of producing NBC's Today, he worked with Tom Brokaw, Jane Pauley, Bryant Gumbel, Katie Couric and Matt Lauer. He devised the show's street-level studio in Rockefeller Plaza, which has become a major Manhattan attraction. He led CBS' effort to become a serious player in morning TV when he launched The Early Show with Gumbel and Jane Clayson in 1999. The show has never challenged Today or ABC's Good Morning America in the ratings, but it has become a significant profit center for CBS News. Friedman followed pal Gumbel out of CBS in 2002, but the network's current news president Sean McManus has brought him back — as vice president in charge of morning broadcasts — in the hopes that Friedman can take The Early Show to the next level. The Biz talked with him about how
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