Nikki Finke’s Deadline has a so-called “speculative” schedule for NBC’s fall season, in the run-up to the network’s upfront presentation on Monday. Included are 30 Rock, which is said to be moving to Wednesday night along with Parks and Recreation, and Smash, moving to Thursdays. Missing? Rock Center, the Brian Williams newsmagazine. This doesn’t Read More
On a recent post-NFL season Monday night, 7.3 million people watched a remake of Hawaii 5-0. Another 6.7 million watched Castle, a crime procedural that’s safely avoided buzz for four seasons. A crowd less than half that size, 3.2 million, watched an American furniture manufacturer tearfully repent for outsourcing the family business, met a real-life moon colonist, and saw a chimpanzee flip through a children’s book. “They like to look at the pictures,” the voiceover explained.
They had landed on the three-month-old newsmagazine Rock Center, NBC’s prime time bid to recapture an audience for TV news by offering a looser format in which to showcase Brian Williams’s formidable charisma. Mr. Williams’s sensibility is so deeply ingrained in the programming that Rock Center executive producer Rome Hartman likes to say that, when it’s working, it feels like “Brian’s playlist.” Read More
In a private email between Brian Williams, the NBC News anchor always eager to prove quite how with-it he is, and Nick Denton, Gawker honcho, Mr. Williams asked just why Lana Del Rey’s outing on Saturday Night Live hadn’t gotten coverage on the site. As reported by Gawker editor AJ Daulerio himself, Mr. Williams Read More
This afternoon, Time magazine held its annual lunch and panel for it’s prestigious person of the year issue. We went in with our money on Occupy Wall Street, but most of our other journo diners seemed to take it as a given that the honor would be bestowed on Steve Jobs.
It was an impressive panel led by Time‘s Rich Stengel: NBC’s Brian Williams, Anita Hill, Jesse Eisenberg, Mario Batali, Seth Meyers, and Grover Norquist, president of the advocacy group Americans for Tax Reform. Read More
It’s the decade of Brooklyn, and while The New York Times may have only recently discovered the borough—according to Brian Williams, at least—it has lately become the leading exporter of artisanal eateries to Manhattan.
Zak Pelaccio’s Williamsburg hotspot Fatty ‘Cue opened its West Village outpost last month, and, now, Bedford Cheese Shop—probably Brooklyn’s most noted cheese monger—has signed a 15-year lease at 67 Irving Place. Read More
NBC Nightly News anchor and regular cut-up Brian Williams is currently having lunch at the Gawker offices right now, when he’s not staring at their televisions (shout out to the early hominids). How’d he end up there? Read More
Another shift in the TV-news landscape today, as Harry Smith–the former anchor of CBS’s beleaguered Early Show–departs for NBC News, where he will work on Brian Williams’s as-yet untitled primetime newsmagazine. The glossy allure of new projects (a new prime-time show luring talent like Mr. Smith, a new talk show for Katie Couric) just Read More
Homeless men idled outside the Four Seasons restaurant as financial titans and celebrities shuttled in from the rain, assisted by burly bouncers. Upstairs, at Monday’s postpremiere party for HBO’s Too Big to Fail—based on the book by New York Times financial reporter wunderkind Andrew Ross Sorkin—sprawling platters of sushi and ceviche awaited consumption.
“Well,” Read More
In what must have been a fit of fanboy indiscretion, Brian Williams signed up to interview the famously cagey Robert De Niro on the actor’s home turf, the Tribeca Film Festival.
Some typical responses from Mr. De Niro: “I’m O.K.” “I am and I’m not.” “No.” “Yeah.” “What?”
Closing the conversation, Mr. Williams Read More
Live in Brooklyn?
Sick of faux-naif New York Times writers patting themselves on the back for taking a subway underwater, breathlessly describing what they see on the other side, and then blithely calling a car service?
Wish someone with a larger audience than your twenty-four Tumblr followers would notice how annoying it is?
Wish Read More
