Since when has The New York Times become as sensationalist as The New Yor
k Post? Or better yet, why is there more engaging drama infused in the description of battling evening anchors than there was in last night's entire episode of "Lost"? (Do I care that the fat guy's dad ran out on him, but redeemed himself before he hopped a plane to Australia? Well, kind of. But not nearly as much as the Sawyer, Jack, Kate storyline.)
Here's a brief excerpt from today's paper regarding "Nightly News" Executive Producer John Reiss' imminent canning and the train of events that led to the current state of our evening news coverage.
Mr. Williams succeeded Tom Brokaw in December 2004. After that, Dan Rather resigned as anchor at CBS in the midst of a reporting scandal, and was soon succeeded by Katie Couric. Peter Jennings died of lung cancer while still the lead anchor at ABC, and one of Mr. Jennings’s designated successors, Bob Woodruff, nearly died in a roadside bomb explosion in Iraq, setting off a sequence of events that ultimately led to Mr. Gibson’s move to the anchor desk at “World News.”
Only six months before Mr. Gibson got the evening news job, he was effectively passed over for it, in favor of two much younger journalists, making his current run at Mr. Williams’s broadcast all the more remarkable.
Is your head spinning yet? Call me slow, but I'm still emotionally digesting ABC's Bob Woodruff special from Tuesday night.