I might never recover. This is so sad.
I want you all to pray or meditate or think about your families -- whatever you need to do to find some strength. Because I know this news will be very upsetting to you. Very disorientating. How can the world be so cruel?
This sad story begins at the Paris Olympics, and CBS "News" personnel pretending to be Happy Regime Parrots.
In fact, they were sad, fretful Regime Parrots.
Because CBS "News" had just told the low-rated Norah O'Donnell that they would no longer be paying her millions for failure and would have to take a pay cut or exit the network.
O'Donnell had brokered a soft landing, of course--a long-term sinecure focusing on major cross-platform interview specials--but the veterans in Paris were savvy enough to understand the true implications: Norah's bosses had determined they could no longer justify her high-seven-figure salary while their audience was declining by double-digit percentages each quarter. Instead, CBS News would install a rotating cast of less expensive anchors--a forfeiture that, as I noted at the time, would make CBS the first broadcast network to abandon the paradigm of a talent-led programming strategy.
Sure, CBS News was the perennial third-place network and on the cusp of new corporate ownership, and Norah wasn't exactly a high-impact ratings driver, but it still seemed like a harbinger of a broader, long-projected belt-tightening. And, indeed, the very next month, the bean counters came for Hoda. Earlier this year, the Today star learned that her NBC bosses could no longer sustain her $20 million-plus annual salary, and that they wanted her to take a pay cut. Instead, she announced last week that she'd reached "the top of the wave"--true in multiple ways, it turns out--and had decided that it was time to give her children "a bigger piece of my time pie."
Inevitably, many television news talents will make similar announcements in the year ahead. As one veteran media executive put it: "Same drill, different cover story."
The great resetting of TV news contracts is now firmly underway, it seems, and most talent will be affected--at best by a smaller-than-anticipated cost-of-living raise, often by a pay cut, and, at worst, by a delicately choreographed defenestration. There may be a few exceptions to the rule--Savannah, the multitalented NBC headliner, who will become even more valuable to the brand in Hoda's absence; David Muir, whose nightly broadcast is often the most watched show on television, etcetera--but pretty much everyone else is vulnerable.
"In this stage of the deconstruction of linear television and network news, no one is safe," the media executive said.
In recent weeks, I've reported that Lester Holt, Wolf Blitzer, and other aging marquee talents are likely to exit soon. I can also report that ABC News star George Stephanopoulos is currently in negotiations over his own $25 million-plus contract, which is up early next year. All told, ABC News pays him and his Good Morning America co-hosts, Robin Roberts and Michael Strahan, more than $75 million a year, an expense that represents nearly half of the roughly $200 million in annual advertising revenue that GMA brings in. (By way of contrast, the 75 employees that ABC News just laid off probably saved them around $15 million.) Stephanopoulos may soon determine he's reached the top of the wave, too...
Of course, the coming cuts are not limited to megawatt, multimillion-dollar talent. In many cases, the most life-altering hits will be felt by those in the middle.
LOL. First I hear that "Savannah" is a "multitalented headliner," now I hear that George Stephanopolous is a "megawatt... talent."
Okay sure.
..
It's exactly these kinds of diminished expectations that have talent and their agents in such a funk. And it may also explain why there's been so much curiosity from broadcast and network insiders around Amazon's decision to test the waters of live news event programming with its forthcoming Brian Williams-helmed election special.
That's an amazing story in its own right -- the repeatedly-fired fabulist has been chosen by Amazon to "cover" election night.
Another multitalented megawatt talent. But aren't all the media swells multitalented megawatt talents?
Former MSNBC host Brian Williams is in the final stages of discussing the possibility of hosting a live election night special on Amazon Prime Video, Variety reported on Saturday.
This article is from September 28. They've since signed the serial fabulist.
...
With less than six weeks to go until Election Day, the aim of the special, according to the five people familiar with the matter, is to have a "non-partisan discussion"
F***kin' LOL
of the events of the night. Variety reported a source said that the show would focus mostly on explaining the news rather than "breaking individual pieces of it."
According to Variety, the sources said that Williams would be mostly relying on The Associated Press to determine how candidates are doing in each state in the election special.
Oh, so he's an on-air blogger. Wonderful. What a multitalented, megawatt talent.