Presidential contender Hillary Clinton speaks to voters in a town-hall-type setting on Monday's Good Morning America.... The New York Post "hears" that Lisa Rinna and hubby Harry Hamlin may join Broadway's Chicago. Gee, ya think?.... The John Waters-hosted 'Til Death Do Us Part drew 1.2 million viewers on Monday, giving Court TV a 27 percent improvement in that 10 pm hour versus a year ago.... Contestant auditions for National Bingo Night begin March 24 at the ABC affiliate in Denver, Colorado, and the Cadillac Ranch in Nashville.
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While four soldiers suffered minor injuries, ABC news anchor Chris Cuomo escaped unscathed on Tuesday after the convoy of military police he was riding with in Iraq was struck by a roadside bomb. "If these vehicles did not have the armor that they did, this situation could have turned out very differently," Cuomo reported to Good Morning America. According to the AP, the convoy of heavily armored Humvees was following up on a report of a burning vehicle in northwest Baghdad when booby-trapped bodies left by the side of the road exploded.
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Good Morning America's Diane Sawyer has landed the first televised interview with Mel Gibson since the actor-filmmaker's scandalous July DUI arrest, during which he let loose with an anti-Semitic rant. The sit-down, which has already been taped, will air over two days, Oct. 12 and 13, reports Variety.
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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 on
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Question: I just need to vent to someone who understands. As I watched you Thursday morning on Good Morning America, I was so glad they had an expert to analyze the noms. After they announced the names, and I stopped screaming at the TV (never more so than at Lost's omission), I was trying to read on your face all the things I was feeling. It seems like what was supposed to be an experiment for good (the new voting system) was a catastrophe. It was finally going to give the Lauren Grahams and Kristen Bells a real shot. In the end, not only did they not benefit, but Lost, James Gandolfini, Edie Falco, Hugh Laurie and a host of others that would surely have been nominated under the old system were excluded. It seems ridiculous that a show that won last year's Emmy for best drama, and was generally just as well-received by critics in its sophomore year, was totally snubbed. I was already nervous the night before when Tom O'Neill predicted that Lost would not be nominated because that ...
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Charles Gibson
After Charles Gibson was named anchor of ABC World News Tonight, he got a call from a colleague saying, "The tortoise has won the race." Indeed, after all the hype about traveling anchors, webcasts and updates for the West Coast, the network turned to its most experienced and least flashy veteran to head its flagship broadcast. Gibson takes over for Elizabeth Vargas, who has been flying solo since coanchor Bob Woodruff sustained
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CBS' The Early Show
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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Veteran newscaster Bill Beutel, the multiple Emmy winner and Peabody award winner who in 1975 hosted the show that became ABC's Good Morning America, died from undisclosed causes on Saturday at his home in Pinehurst, N.C. "[Bill] proved you could be a tough newsman and a gentleman at the same time," WABC president Dave Davis said in a statement. "He was never shrill, always measured and universally respected. The original class act." Beutel was 75.... Oleg Cassini, the fashion designer whose accomplishments included making Jacqueline Kennedy the most glam first lady in history, died on Friday at the age of 92. The cause of death was not immediately known.
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Lisa Rinna may have something better to show for her Dancing with the Stars run than that ugly trophy Drew Lachey had to lug home. Sources at the ABC show tell the New York Post that the Soap Talk sexpot is stepping in as Tom Bergeron's cohost for Season 3, replacing Samantha Harris (who herself is rumored to be bound for Good Morning America).
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Pregnant shmegnant. ABC News' Elizabeth Vargas has scored a sit-down interview with President Bush, to air on World News Tonight and Nightline on Tuesday, and on Good Morning America on Wednesday. The topics to be covered include W's imminent trip to India and Pakistan, the six-month anniversary of Hurricane Katrina and the war in Iraq.
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