http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2CMffJcHi58

Tina Fey visited with David Letterman last night and gave everyone a Tracy Morgan-approved nickname for Hugh Jackman: "Jack Human."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jgOeAofwq-w

Meanwhile, her one-time Weekend Update co-anchor, Jimmy Fallon, no doubt spurred on by Joe Biden's liberal use of the f-word, came up with a new take on the Schoolhouse Rock classic, "I'm Just a Bill."

And finally, Miley Cyrus is a major recording star, but after her performance on American Idol last night, there's a very good chance she might wind up in the bottom-three come next week. Yeesh.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4KAxb6FUqkQ

What to Watch Tonight

March Madness returns to CBS; The Office goes out for a night on the town; and Hot Tub Time Machine star--did we just say "Hot Tub Time Machine star"?--and all-around funny guy Rob Corddry sits down with Jimmy Fallon.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aiNeHwF4JBg

Worth watching tonight:

A sure-to-be scandalous new episode of Gossip Girl (Little J might lose her virginity!) (The CW, 9 p.m.); the season two premiere of The United States of Tara (Showtime, 10:30 p.m.); and Rogue Wave on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon (NBC, 12:37 a.m.). There's also a new season of Dancing with the Stars, with Shannen Doherty, Kate Gosselin, and Buzz Aldrin (ABC, 8 p.m.). Which provides a fine opportunity to resurface Mr. Aldrin's classic appearance on Da Ali G Show.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_xLN5-1QGRM

Mr. Stephanopoulos sized up his guests. Ms. Lauper was wearing a black floppy outfit with lacy sleeves. Lady Gaga wore a crown of safety pins. Or was it a nest? The two pop stars were holding hands. “You are all the glam Thelma and Louise,” said Mr. Stephanopoulos.

It was Mr. Stephanopoulos’ 49th birthday. What a crazy year it had been! Just last night, on the eve of the snowstorm, he had gone on Comedy Central’s The Colbert Report. Predictably, that joker had asked him a variation of the same thing he’d been getting repeatedly since December, when ABC News announced that he was leaving the Sunday-morning politics circuit to replace Diane Sawyer as the lead anchor on GMA. Why get yourself mixed up with morning television?

If past was precedent, GMA was a stepping stone to becoming the anchor of ABC World News, as Charles Gibson and now Ms. Sawyer had already proved. But there was more to it than that. In this long-tail world of modern media, who got to be a generalist anymore? Maybe there was a new prestige in generalism. He told Mr. Colbert that he now can do hard and soft news. He gets to interview the president and Lady Gaga. “It is fun to stretch,” he said.

Ever since Dec. 14, Mr. Stephanopoulos’ first morning on GMA, he’s been testing every muscle in his body to push beyond the political news. Along the way, he’s interviewed the 17-year-old star of The Wizards of Waverly Place, a jewelry thief, the author of Eat, Pray, Love, a cyber-bullying expert, Jackie Collins, a pregnant Amy Adams and an aerial performer who’d survived a scary fall. He’s discussed nail polish, floral arrangements, head lice, Oscar picks, pregnancy. He’s received a lesson from Emeril Lagasse on how to cook chicken with Dijon herb sauce. He’s tested out a touchless soap dispenser. He’s observed that it’s a “fine line between brave and stupid” when it comes to parachuting off skyscrapers. And he’s reported on a wild panda being lured off a cliff by Chinese villagers using a banana as bait.

On deck for his birthday show were the actresses Jennifer Garner and Jessica Biel and the designer Diane von Furstenberg, who was there to talk about female empowerment. The estrogen quotient was cranked up high.

Mr. Stephanopoulos introduced Lady Gaga, who along with Ms. Lauper was selling lipstick to raise awareness about the danger that AIDS poses for young women. As a child, Lady Gaga had loved watching her mom put on lipstick in the morning. Such moments, she said, gave mothers a great chance to talk to their daughters about love and sex and AIDS. Around the world, there are any numbers of journalists who would shiv their own best friend for the opportunity to curl up next to Lady Gaga and flesh out her sex life in front of the cameras. Mr. Stephanopoulos, however, proceeded cautiously. He didn’t pry. “Does your mom still take credit for your makeup?” he asked.

A few minutes later, the conversation circled back to sex. At that moment, the cameras caught Mr. Stephanopoulos looking over his shoulder, seemingly trying to get the attention of Robin Roberts, his GMA co-host, who was sitting on the other side of the studio. Lady Gaga  noted that using a condom in the heat of the moment was hard “especially for older women, who maybe for a while haven’t been with a man or a woman and act out of passion and excitement …”

“And starvation,” said Ms. Lauper, laughing.

Mr. Stephanopoulos looked around again and, this time, waved his folder in the air. Hello?!? Ms. Roberts jumped in with a question. “We appreciate what you just said,” Ms. Roberts observed. “It’s O.K. for morning television. People need to hear that.”

FROM THE GET-GO, various observers have questioned Mr. Stephanopoulos’ suitability for the GMA job. Call it the reverse Katie Couric syndrome. As in, isn’t he just a little too qualified for morning TV?

And yet let’s not forget it’s in the family. In 2001, Mr. Stephanopoulos married the actor Ali Wentworth, who among other things had impersonated Sharon Stone on In Living Color; played Jerry Seinfeld’s girlfriend “Schmoopie” on the Soup Nazi episode; and written The Wasp Cookbook. Beginning in September 2003, Ms. Wentworth had co-hosted a short-lived syndicated talk show, called Living It Up. Sex was a favorite topic. Oversharing was the norm. Her approach toward television was completely different from that of her husband. “He’s a very private guy,” she told The Observer at the time. “And I’ve always used whatever was going on in my life as material, where he has used everything in his life to make sure it doesn’t become material.”

In front of cameras, Mr. Stephanopoulos has always been emotionally opaque. Throughout The War Room, the 1993 documentary about the Clinton presidential campaign team, which contributed significantly to Mr. Stephanopoulos’ growing fame, the young director of communications is seen working alongside his friend and mentor, James Carville. Stylistically, the two men are a study in opposites. Mr. Carville is emotionally volcanic. Mr. Stephanopoulos is reserved. Toward the end of the campaign, Mr. Carville delivers a heartfelt speech to a roomful of staffers and breaks down in tears. Shortly thereafter, Mr. Stephanopoulos is seen on the phone delivering good news to Mr. Clinton. The moment seems ripe for Mr. Stephanopoulos’ own emotional catharsis. When he hangs up the phone, a fellow staffer presses him for a reaction. “How do you feel?” she asks. “Are you happy? Or scared ? Or are you nothing? Or do you just want to cry, or what?” Mr. Stephanopoulos pauses. “The crying is before, maybe later, too,” he replies. “Now, I’m just floating.”

Some 17 years later, the War Room documentarians say they’re not surprised at Mr. Stephanopoulos’ latest career move. “He’s much better suited to it than someone like, say, James Carville,” director Chris Hegedus told The Observer. “George has always had a wide curiosity in a lot of things. We once told George that we had done a film on John DeLorean, and George was like, ‘Wow—the gull-wing door car!’”

“He has such a winning, boyish quality,” she added. 

Some are less enthusiastic. “My line on George is that he is likable, but he’s not knowable,” said esteemed Newsday critic Verne Gay. “In those jobs, you’ve got to be both. He’s obviously a really smart guy. He’s got all the qualifications, times 10. He’s highly professional. When the guy smiles and laughs, you like him. But when he’s onscreen, you just don’t know who he is. He’s a real cipher.”

Perhaps intentionally so. “You know, George is very methodical when he says something, like he’s his own great spin doctor,” Ms. Wentworth said in 2004. “I don’t self-edit the way he does.”

Self-editing is great in politics. It’s fine for the host of a Sunday news show. And once upon a time, not so long ago in American life, in the epoch now known as pre-Snooki, public discretion was considered a moral virtue. But now we live in the heyday of indiscretion. Morning television is part of the game. The genre demands full exposure from its anchors. On-air colonoscopies are the gold standard. Anchors must create the illusion of openness. “With George, there’s a wall there,” said Mr. Gay. 

MANY YEARS AGO, before Mr. Stephanopoulos studied Christian ethics as a Rhodes Scholar at Cambridge, before he made his name in national politics, and before he left the White House for ABC News, he spent his early years preparing for life as a priest. His father was a priest in the Greek Orthodox Church. So too his grandfather. And even years after eschewing the priesthood for politics and media, a sense of emotional reserve befitting a man of the cloth still hangs about him.  

Early in his career, that sensibility served him well. In his early 30s, as the communications director for Bill Clinton’s 1992 presidential run, Mr. Stephanopoulos regularly fought to keep the skeletons in Mr. Clinton’s closet from derailing everything. One moment, it was Gennifer Flowers popping up on the cover of Star, alleging a long affair with Mr. Clinton. The next, it was Connie Hamzy, the Little Rock groupie. Again and again, Mr. Stephanopoulos deftly diffused the “bimbo eruptions,” steering countless reporters away from the temptations of the Clinton bedroom story. There has been a wall between public and private life in American politics, the fresh-faced son of a priest argued, and it should be respected.

But there are no altar boys in morning television, and no real walls. In the coming weeks and months, to succeed in his new job, Mr. Stephanopoulos must pull off the opposite trick. Instead of burying the messy, private details of American public figures (including his own), his task will be to coax those details to light.

How’s it going so far? Although to date, ABC News has taken a low-key approach toward promoting the new team of George, Robin,  Sam Champion and Juju Chang, they put on the full-court press for this article.

“I think he’s doing remarkably well,” said David Westin, the president of ABC News.

“It’s going spectacular,” said Jim Murphy, the executive producer of GMA. “What’s surprised me is his range. … He has no problem dealing with everything. He does his homework. And he cares to death. It all works out.”

“The entire chemistry of the new cast is very good,” said Bill Fine, the head of WCVB, the ABC affiliate in Boston.

“We’ve had a smooth start, and we’re having fun,” said Mr. Stephanopoulos.

Mr. Stephanopoulos, who called in to comment at the eleventh hour, said he talks about the show with his wife all the time. “Her real background is in improv. She’s terrific in teaching me …” He paused. “How to go with it.”

He went on. “When it feels right for the story and appropriate, I do it,” he added. “I think it’s important not to force it, but not to block it, either. So when I was doing a segment with Dr. Richard Besser about anti-depressants, I was happy to talk about that, and my experience. When he did a segment on head lice, and my family had just come out of a week of being de-loused, we talked about that. If it makes sense for the story, I’m open to it.”

Recently on GMA, Mr. Stephanopoulos asked Rosie O’Donnell for her opinion. “Well, I think you’re doing pretty well,” said Ms. O’Donnell. “You just have to relax.”

Easier said than done. Anchoring GMA has always been a high-pressure job. But it’s now more important for ABC News than ever. Whereas NBC News can lean on the large profits of CNBC and MSNBC, ABC News has no cable news channels to provide subscription fees and must rely heavily on GMA to generate revenue. As such, it is of dire importance to Mr. Stephanopoulos and all of his colleagues that GMA hold on to (if not increase) its viewers.

So far this year, that hasn’t happened. During the first five weeks of 2010, GMA has averaged 1,948,000 viewers in the 25-54 demographic on which news divisions sell ads. In the first five weeks of 2009, with Diane Sawyer still at the helm, GMA averaged 2,172,000. That’s a year-to-year decline of 10.4 percent. A significant dip in eyeballs, when every last penny of advertising counts. ABC News executives point out that it’s still very early in the Stephanopoulos era and that, year-to-year, all the morning news shows are losing viewers. To wit: During the same time frame, CBS’s The Early Show is down 14.4 percent versus 2009; NBC’s top rated Today is down 3.7 percent.

Mr. Westin, the president of ABC News, said he is pleased so far with Mr. Stephanopoulos and has confidence in the new team. He said that in the wake of the departure of a star like Diane Sawyer, he fully expected that it would take time for GMA to make up any ground on NBC’s Today. “I’m hopeful that if you talk to me in six months or a year that the audience will have responded,” said Mr. Westin. “This is way early going. But the way I look at it, we are in better shape than I would have predicted at this point.”

Mr. Westin said he chose Mr. Stephanopoulos for the job, in part, to beef up the substance of the show. “George has the qualities which are essential to a successful morning anchor,” he said. “He’s very intelligent. He’s very curious. He has a wide range of interests. And he has a natural way about him.”

“I think people should also be careful of underestimating George,” he added.

Back in the studio on Wednesday morning, the GMA producers treated their new anchor to a birthday surprise. With Mr. Stephanopoulos looking on, the cameras zoomed in on Ali Wentworth, who had popped up in the studio, wearing a blond wig. She promptly launched into an impression of Diane Sawyer. A few seconds later, she tore off her wig and removed her jacket, revealing a leopard-print dress. “Oh, honey, George, I never, ever get to see you at home,” she said. “I love you.” Ms. Wentworth mounted the table and began crawling on her hands and knees toward the camera. “I shaved my legs and made you a steak.”

This was the job Mr. Stephanopoulos had signed up for. He blushed.

“Happy birthday, baby,” said Ms. Wentworth, gyrating her hips for the camera.

“Welcome to morning TV, George,” Ms. Roberts chimed in. “Welcome to morning TV.”

fgillette@observer.com

More from Felix Gillette:

D-Day at CBS News

Leno the Loner

OMB Chief's Broadcast Babe, Bianna, Will Keep Her Beat at ABC

Many of Ms. Couric’s viewers would return the following night. Much of Ms. Couric’s staff would not.

It had been a rough day at CBS News. Four and a half years earlier, CBS chief Les Moonves had joked in The New York Times Magazine about bombing the news division. And now, among the seasoned veterans of the newsroom, there was a sense that the detonation had finally gone off. Earlier that morning, CBS News executives and bureau chiefs, led by senior vice president Linda Mason, told their employees that 2009 had been a disastrous year in the ad market. They had no cable operation to buoy the sinking revenues. It’s not you, was the message, it’s us. Dozens of employees—including staff members in D.C., San Francisco, Miami, London, Los Angeles and Moscow—were being let go. The changes were effective immediately. There would be no buyouts. According to one longtime staff member, the network had long ago negotiated away most of the severance clauses in staff members’ contracts.

>>READ FELIX GILLETTE'S STORY ON BAD RATINGS AT CBS EVENING NEWS

Word of the layoffs had first surfaced the previous Friday afternoon in the L.A. Times. Over the weekend, CBS staffers vacillated between acceptance of the situation and cautious optimism. Maybe it wouldn’t be as bad as reported? After all, the company was already lean. Where would top brass find 100 or so people to let go? Perhaps there was some stash of employees hidden on the digital side, some long-forgotten deal between, say, 60 Minutes and Yahoo, that would provide some bodies to lessen the blow?

But in the end, the cuts were surprisingly deep. By Monday afternoon, staffers from Washington to L.A. were sputtering in disbelief as they heard of top producers on the chopping block—particularly Mark Katkov and Jill Rosenbaum in D.C. and Roberta Hollander and Barbara Pierce in L.A. These were seasoned veterans, part of the old school known back in the Dan Rather days as “the Hard Corps.” Over the years, they had somehow managed to outlive every big buzz saw to cut through the newsroom. They knew how to get more from less. Each thought of himself as worth five producers at ABC News. Their theme song was Merle Haggard’s “Holding Things Together.” It was hard to imagine what the already third-place morning and evening news operations would look like without them.

The most disturbing news of the day for many observers was that Larry Doyle would no longer be working for CBS News.

Mr. Doyle, according to CBS News legend, joined the organization some 40 years ago, when then D.C. bureau chief Bill Small found him working as a porter at a Washington hotel. Mr. Small promptly made Mr. Doyle the bureau’s go-to “dogrobber”—the guy you sent into nasty situations to stare down snarling subjects and get the job done. From there, Mr. Doyle gradually worked his way up the news ladder, eventually becoming the network’s top war producer, churning out great television from every hellhole on the planet—including Baghdad, where he served as the network’s bureau chief during the early years of the ongoing war.

Reached the afternoon of Tuesday, Feb. 2, Dan Rather recounted various stories of Mr. Doyle’s heroism in the field, including his impressive management of gun-toting teenagers in Somalia. “He’s one of the all-time greats,” said Mr. Rather. “He’s the soul of the place.”

“This is a guy,” he added, “whom Ed Murrow would have been glad to have as his producer.”

For the time being, no on-air reporters or anchors have been asked to leave. But according to multiple sources, the network did inform a handful of veteran correspondents, including Randall Pinkston in New York, Sandra Hughes in L.A. and Sheila MacVicar in London, that they were being reassigned from prominent network jobs to reporting for CBS Newspath.

Historically, the Newspath—a news-gathering service that provides coverage for local CBS stations—was a stepping stone for young correspondents on their way from regional station jobs to the big time at the network. Going from network to Newspath is generally seen as a major demotion. Some sources speculated that the move was made as a passive-aggressive attempt to chase off salary-heavy talent. It had the appearance, as one source put it, of “a slower form of death.”

On Tuesday, CBS staffers were still on guard. Word had it that executives from the news division were still on the move, meeting with staffers at bureaus around the country, bringing more bad tidings.

Reporting on the death of CBS News is an age-old discipline among TV writers. Books have been written on the subject. (See, Boyer, Peter; 1988; Who Killed CBS?) But as the names of the laid-off began to circulate, it looked less like the end of days and more like the end of an era. The final vestiges of the pre–Katie Couric regime were finally leaving the network. “It’s like we’re Lehman Brothers,” said one longtime staff member, “and the JPMorgan guys are finishing moving in.”

fgillette@observer.com

More from Felix Gillette:

What Is Going on With the Ratings at CBS Evening News?

ABC's Broadcast Operations and Engineering Division Makes Significant Cuts in New York

Appeals Court Rules in Favor of CBS--Tosses Out Dan Rather's $70 Million Suit in Its Entirety

"This week, the video game publisher Electronic Arts announced they are continuing their relationship with Tiger Woods," said Mr. Leno. "The good news for Tiger: They're going to name their joystick after him."

The audience chuckled. Who's having fun? Mr. Leno turned up his palms, and shrugged. It was Friday, Jan. 8., and the lame-duck comic was taping the Jay Leno Show at his studio in Burbank. Outside, the world was buzzing over the news of NBC's counter-reformation. The 10 p.m. thing was over, the bosses had told him. After the Olympics, Mr. Leno would be restored to 11:30 p.m. What would happen to Conan O'Brien, who since June had occupied the slot? The Internet was mad with speculation. 

It was like 1991 all over again. One desirable time slot. Two ambitious comedians. One capricious network. And another late-night clusterfuck in the making. What does NBC stand for, Mr. Leno liked to joke? Never believe your contract. He gazed at the crowd and kept riffing. He joked about the stupidity of the underwear bomber. Gay marriage in New Jersey. Lady Gaga's partnership with Polaroid. Americans' disinterest in soccer. A man selling a potato in the shape of a cross on eBay. Maury Povich.

Again and again, Mr. Leno bemoaned his own predicament. Along the way, he took a jab at his old rival-pal, David Letterman. "I'm sure you heard these rumors that NBC is talking about canceling our show," he said. "You know what that means? I didn't sleep with any of my staff, for nothing.

"To be fair," he added, "NBC is working on a solution, they say, in which all parties will be screwed equally. It's that certain NBC touch."

In the days that have followed, seemingly everyone with a media column or a Twitter account has taken a turn marveling at the network's hamfisted management of its talent. Most of the sympathy seemed to bypass Mr. Leno in favor of Mr. O'Brien:

"He did all the right things," wrote TV critic Aaron Barnhart, "and NBC is punishing him anyway."

"I've felt strongly that Conan was getting shafted," Chevy Chase said at the TCA tour.

"If Conan doesn't leave NBC by the end of the day," wrote comedian Rob Corddry on Twitter, "I will eat Burbank."

(Mr. Corddry nearly got his wish on Tuesday, when Mr. O'Brien released a letter to the people of Earth making it clear that he would not accept a move to 12:05, but stopped short of leaving the network.)

But largely lost in the furor over the apparent undermining of Mr. O'Brien and his crew was the potentially laudable shift in strategy signaled by the move. On the heels of December's purchase of NBC by Comcast, NBC managers had wasted little time in listening to upset affiliates and scrapping The Jay Leno Show-and perhaps with it the much-bemoaned strategy of managing shows for margins (i.e., low costs) instead of high ratings, which Mr. Leno's misadventure in prime time had come to symbolize. In a largely dispiriting age of crumbling media, NBC's reversal of course at 10 p.m. might just be one of those rare sunny moments when a media company sets the unusual precedent of failing by aiming too low. For once, cynicism about our tastes got routed.

ROUGHLY 40 YEARS before NBC Universal chief Jeff Zucker gave up on his network's legacy of high-quality scripted dramas at 10 p.m. in favor of a cheapo five-nights-a-week variety show starring Mr. Leno, Mel Brooks wrote a comedy about a similarly dispirited producer. Like Mr. Zucker, Max Bialystock had seen his once-great programming fall out of favor with the public. Years of successes had been followed by years of failures. His audience was aging. Creating another beloved hit seemed like a Herculean task. "I am being sunk by a society that demands success," says Mr. Bialystock at the start of The Producers, "when all I can offer is failure."

Yet shortly thereafter, Mr. Bialystock and his accountant, Leo Bloom, stumble upon the kind of solution that might appeal to, say, a struggling broadcast network long mired in fourth place-that is, a way of creating a money-gushing production without having to win over an audience. "It's absolutely amazing," says Mr. Bloom during his epiphany. "But under the right circumstances, a producer could make more money with a flop than he could with a hit."

Sometime around the year 2008, Mr. Zucker and his then entertainment deputy, Ben Silverman, happened upon a similar solution. They could win the 10 p.m. prime-time hour, which had for years bedeviled the network brass, not by beating the competition but by losing to them. Let everybody else try their hand at the frustrating, expensive and incredibly difficult process of creating the next great scripted drama. Those days were over. A mediocre variety show, on the other hand, was not only imminently achievable but also so cheap as to be guaranteed to be profitable. In The Producers, the winning-while-losing strategy inspired Mr. Bialystock and Mr. Bloom to create Springtime for Hitler. At NBC, it inspired Mr. Zucker and Mr. Silverman to create The Jay Leno Show. Now, four months after its debut, NBC managers appear to be saying goodbye to all that. The question remains: How far will the purge go?

WHILE THE LENO experiment was the most visible manifestation of NBC's managing-for-margins strategy, the same approach was applied elsewhere in the network-most notably to NBC's local news divisions. For years, WNBC-4, like NBC's "must-see" prime-time lineup, had dominated the competition. But in recent years, WNBC-4 had slipped and was struggling to reverse the slide.

Rather than trying to beef up the newsroom in an effort to restore WNBC-4 to ratings and editorial prominence, in the spring of 2008 Mr. Zucker decided (à la Leno) that creating a better local news broadcast was a lost cause. WNBC-4's ratings struggle was seen as evidence that viewers no longer wanted polished local newscasts, and as justification to blow the whole thing up. The traditional newsroom was soon scrapped for a so-called content center. Dozens of experienced (read: expensive) beat reporters were let go and replaced by a new breed of young, inexpensive content producers. The same blueprint was drawn up for stations around the country.

In Washington, D.C., NBC executives rolled out an experimental soft news show, Daily Connection, that was largely made up of repurposed news packages from a hodgepodge of NBC divisions, such as NBC Sports, Bravo and the Weather Channel. The product may never bring in big ratings, went the theory, but it would be virtually free for NBC and its stations to produce. Some longtime Peacock observers saw the show as yet another creeping manifestation of the managing-for-margins strategy-sacrificing quality local news programming in favor of the reliable profits that come from lower costs.

At the same time, back in New York, WNBC-4 scrapped its 5 p.m. newscast and replaced it with a live lifestyle show called LX New York, catering to the supposed interests of female viewers. (Shopping! Cooking! Lessons in love!) Like Leno, the show was inexpensive to produce relative to the programming it was replacing. Like Leno, it has predictably struggled to find an audience.

In recent days, many of the local NBC newshounds who were collateral damage of the winning-while-losing strategy have been watching the Leno do-over with added interest. With NBC now scrapping the managing-for-margins strategy in prime time, is it possible they'll do the same on the local level? Could the end of prime-time Leno hold the promise of the end of LX New York, repurposed news shows and content centers?

"Everybody is dealing with the same reality, which is that the revenue has changed dramatically in broadcast TV," said Jay DeDapper, WNBC's former political ace, who was let go in the station overhaul. "Jeff Zucker and Jeff Immelt's strategy was to cut the cost no matter how badly they did in the ratings so that they could make money regardless. Other companies have had different strategies. CBS in particular. They have decided that they want higher revenues through higher ratings."

Whether the reversal will eventually trickle down to the local level remains to be seen. But Mr. DeDapper, for once, seemed hopeful about the new precedent. "It's the first significant sign that there's a new sheriff in town, and that Comcast has a different way of looking at this," said Mr. DeDapper. "I don't think they are necessarily going to come in and throw money at everything. But it's the first signal that they also aren't a company that believes you win by losing."

fgillette@observer.com

"Elephants communicate in a complicated, sophisticated language that scientists are trying to decipher and compile into the world's first elephant dictionary," reported Ms. Simon. "When we heard that this is all happening in one of the most magical places on earth ... we simply had to go."

For Mr. Simon, elephants are no fleeting interest. Over the years, he has reported a total of five magazine stories about elephants, including dispatches on elephants who paint and elephants who live in an orphanage in Kenya. ("At dawn, the elephants are taken from their dorms out to the bush. They hang out for a while, play some games. Soccer is a favorite.")

"I used to consider myself a Vietnam correspondent," Mr. Simon told The Observer recently. "Then I became a Middle East correspondent. Recently, I seem to have become an elephant correspondent. I don't know exactly why. It's not like I had any profound childhood experience with an elephant. But I've come to love the animals."

The sight of a legendary war correspondent reporting multiple in-depth stories about elephants might be somewhat peculiar if Mr. Simon worked at, say, NBC or ABC. Not so at CBS, which in recent years has arguably distinguished itself as the No. 1 news network in terms of pachyderm coverage. At CBS, elephants matter.

A Lexis-Nexis search reveals that over the past year, The Early Show, The Evening News and CBS Sunday Morning have collectively reported on the rising popularity of elephant polo; the throwing of a "baby" shower for a 2-month-old elephant named Daisy; self-awareness in elephants as a sign of animal intelligence; the opening of a must-see elephant exhibit at the San Diego Zoo; allegations of elephant abuse at the circus; the rescue of a baby elephant from a manhole in Thailand; and on and on. In December, The Early Show staged an experiment in which a 45-year-old elephant named Panya tested out the durability of various luggage brands.

Back in January 2009, CBS correspondent Steve Hartman reported an amazing tale about an elephant named Tarra and a dog named Bela who had become soul mates at a sanctuary outside of Nashville. To date, "The Animal Odd Couple" has been viewed on YouTube some 3,409,873 times. "I knew the story of Bela and Tarra would be big," said Mr. Hartman in a follow-up piece. "I just had no idea how big."

Nearly a year later, elephants continue to be a crowd-pleaser for CBS. On Sunday, Mr. Simon's most recent elephant dispatch (when paired with a story about a Swiss banking whistle-blower and an investigation of the Department of Veteran Affairs) helped 60 Minutes draw 14.84 million viewers, the fourth-highest-rated show on TV for the week.

"This broadcast last Sunday, there were two very serious pieces, and then a piece about elephants," said Mr. Simon. "I think that's a good mix."

fgillette@observer.com

Ms. O’Hara, who field-produced Bowling for Columbine and Fahrenheit 9/11, is in the early stages of getting the project off the ground. According to a source with knowledge of the situation, Ms. O’Hara’s New York–based production company, HonestEngineTV, does not yet have a venue for the documentary and is still seeking funding.

The veteran producer (who has a long list of screen credits, including directing a 1998 HBO-Cinemax documentary, Roe vs. Roe: Baptism by Fire and producing Mr. Moore’s Sicko) has already shot enough preliminary footage to complete work on a trailer for the film. HonestEngineTV, we’re told, is currently shopping it to potential partners, including HBO and the Weinstein Company.

The former president was originally admitted into the Texas Air National Guard more than 40 years ago, in 1968, with the American military already deeply engaged in the war in Vietnam. In 1973, Mr. Bush officially departed the Guard, without having seen any combat, to attend Harvard Business School. What, exactly, transpired in between has since become the subject of much heated debate.

Questions about Mr. Bush’s service in the Guard—did his family use its political connections to help him avoid combat in Vietnam? Did he eventually skirt the requirements of his service?—first began to surface during his successful 1994 run for the governorship in Texas.

Several years later, in the fall of 2004, with Mr. Bush locked in a heated presidential reelection campaign against U.S. Senator John Kerry, the topic exploded into a four-alarm national controversy, thanks to a flawed story on the subject by CBS News’ 60 Minutes II. The story, produced by Mary Mapes and reported by Dan Rather, featured the first on-camera interview with Ben Barnes, the former Texas lieutenant governor, explaining his role in helping Mr. Bush leapfrog a long waiting list to land a coveted spot in the Texas Air National Guard. The story also featured a number of documents ostensibly detailing Mr. Bush’s failure to live up to the requirements of his military duty.

Afterward, reporters and bloggers challenged the veracity of the documents, and CBS News was unable to fully verify the origin or legitimacy of the documents in question, resulting in the so-called Memo-gate scandal and the eventual dismissal of several top CBS News producers, including Ms. Mapes.

Since then, questions about Mr. Bush’s military service have largely dropped out of the national conversation. That said, intense interest in the topic continues to smolder in certain corners of American military and journalistic life.

In 2005, Ms. Mapes wrote a book about Mr. Bush’s military service and the controversy surrounding her reporting on it, called Truth and Duty: The Press, the President, and the Privilege of Power.

In July of 2008, The Observer reported that Hollywood producer Mikkel Bondesen (Burn Notice) and screenwriter James Vanderbilt (Zodiac, Spider Man 4) had optioned the book and were working on a screen adaptation of it for a feature film.

To this day, CBS News’ handling of the story remains a kind of shorthand for conservative critics alleging a liberal bias in the American media. Bernard Goldberg, the author of Bias: A CBS Insider Exposes How the Media Distort the News, has taken a renewed interest in the Bush–CBS–military-duty story, discussing the particulars of the controversy on Fox News’ The O’Reilly Factor as recently as August.

At the same time, Dan Rather, who left CBS in 2005, continues to do his part to keep interest in the story alive. In the fall of 2007, he launched a $70 million civil lawsuit against his former employers, alleging in part that the network had caved to Republican interests in Washington during the aftermath of the controversial story. Since then, Mr. Rather has spent millions of dollars of his own money to try to clear up a number of mysteries surrounding President Bush’s Texas Air National Guard service and the media’s coverage of it. (Recently, an appeals court in New York tossed out the lawsuit—a decision Mr. Rather is currently appealing.)

If successfully funded, Ms. O’Hara’s project would be the first major, in-depth documentary to dig into the murky subject. Reached on Monday morning, Ms. O’Hara declined to comment.

fgillette@observer.com

More from Felix Gillette: 

Appeals Court Rules in Favor of CBS--Tosses Out Dan Rather's $70 Million Suit in Its Entirety

Watch Your Backs, MSNBC! Imus Can See You!

In Recession, Money Honeys Get Company from Grumpy Old Dudes

Mr. Scarborough put down the newspaper and looked over at Jon Meacham, the editor of Newsweek, who was sitting across the table in the Morning Joe studio. “It’s a very positive article, congratulations,” said Mr. Scarborough. “I know it’s a rough time for everyone in print right now.”

Mr. Meacham nodded. The Times article, said Mr. Meacham, was a vote of confidence for everyone in the news business, like Newsweek and Morning Joe, who was fighting the good fight and producing serious journalism. Mr. Scarborough agreed. He was committed to the mission. Hard news, politics, intellectual rigor. MSNBC had made a bet, said Mr. Scarborough, that audiences would reward them for steering clear of tabloid fodder. “We don’t dumb down here,” said Mr. Scarborough.

On Monday’s program, one similarity between Newsweek and Morning Joe was left unspoken—namely, that both are catering to significantly diminishing audiences. Newsweek has lowered its rate base twice in the past two years and will do so again in January. Likewise, Morning Joe is struggling to hang on to viewers. So far this fall, from Sept. 1 through Nov. 13, according to The Observer’s analysis of Nielsen numbers, Morning Joe has averaged 357,000 total viewers and 124,000 in the 25- to 54-year-old demographic—down 35 percent and 43 percent, respectively, from the same time period last year.

Of course, Morning Joe is hardly the only cable news show to suffer a steep decline from last year’s election high. But over the past eight months, Morning Joe has been slipping not only in overall ratings, but also relative to its competition. Not long ago, Morning Joe—like MSNBC’s prime-time lineup—was seemingly well poised to push past CNN into the No. 2 position in cable news (Fox News’ Fox & Friends maintains the top position by a wide margin). To wit: In March of 2009, MSNBC executives announced that Morning Joe had topped CNN’s American Morning in the demographic for the entire month—the first such victory for the network’s morning programming in more than seven years. At the time, MSNBC press releases regularly referred to Morning Joe as “the fastest growing cable news morning show.”

These days, it looks more like the fastest shrinking.

The first two weeks in November have been particularly rough. Morning Joe, during this stretch, has averaged just 315,000 total viewers and 102,000 in the 25- to 54-year-old demographic—and while the show remains competitive in total viewers, it is now regularly finishing in fourth place in the demo, not only behind American Morning (397,000 total viewers; 149,000 in the demo) but also behind Headline News’ Morning Express with Robin Meade (303,000 total viewers; 190,000 in the demo).

“We want higher ratings, and we’re going to get them,” MSNBC’s president, Phil Griffin, told The Observer on Tuesday morning. “It ebbs and flows with what’s going on in the world. But I think 2010 is going to be great for us.”

In late September, The Observer speculated that the imminent debut of an Imus in the Morning simulcast on the Fox Business Network would pose a problem to Morning Joe.

But for the time being, MSNBC executives continue to discount Mr. Imus’ potential impact on Morning Joe. “Imus is not even a blip on the radar,” said a MSNBC spokesperson. (Nielsen does not currently provide ratings data for shows on FBN.) Mr. Griffin called Mr. Imus a “non-player.”

The Morning Joe dip comes at a particularly anxious time at 30 Rockefeller Plaza. Currently, teams of bankers are combing over every detail of the company’s books in preparation for Comcast’s imminent purchase of NBC Universal. Morning Joe’s struggles will not go unnoticed. Perhaps as a result, rumors have been swirling through the building in recent days that a shake-up is about to hit the show, as some insiders question whether MSNBC can maintain the current staff levels despite having already lost a hefty chuck of its bankable audience.

On Tuesday morning, Mr. Griffin shot down the rumors. There was no shake-up in the works, he said. The show’s unique marketing partnership with Starbucks, he explained, was still flourishing and evidence of the show’s continued desirability to advertisers. The state of Morning Joe was strong. “The numbers are down, and they’re probably down for everybody,” he said. “It’s basically a three-way tie for second place in the real scheme of things. I’ll take the quality of Morning Joe’s audience.”

“You can’t find anything like it in the morning,” he added. “CNN, the other day, when we’re showing the president, is doing a story on balloon boy. Or they’re doing Michael Jackson. We’ve got a smart, strong audience. Morning Joe gets more buzz, and that’s because we actually talk about what’s going on in the world that’s important. I believe in the show.”

fgillette@observer.com

More from Felix Gillette:

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The blog sort of blew up.

Last month, Mr. Morrison received a phone call from Bruno Del Granado, the CEO of a large European production company called Zodiak Entertainment. Mr. Del Granado said he’d been reading Mr. Morrison’s blog, and would like to turn it into a documentary. Mr. Morrison liked the idea and started writing a treatment.

But then earlier this month, a funny thing happened to Mr. Morrison on his way to becoming the standard-bearer for unemployed dads around the planet. He found a job. In late September, station managers from WCBS called Mr. Morrison and told him they were looking for a weekend anchor. It didn’t take long for Mr. Morrison to sign on. 

In recent weeks, Mr. Morrison has returned to the anchor chair, going head-to-head with the station that not so long ago got rid of him. “I’m not trying to beat up Channel 4,” said Mr. Morrison. “But thank goodness that Channel 2 is being true to a local news mission. It would be a shame if everyone just gave up on local news.”

As for the Daddy Diaries documentary, Mr. Del Granado recently told The Observer that he’s putting together a budget and a timeline for the project. Mr. Morrison’s sudden onset of employment has not jeopardized the project. “At first we were thinking this should be about Rob and his life,” said Mr. Del Granado. “But at the same time there are so many other examples of men who are going through the same thing. Whether Rob’s involvement is from the narrative perspective or the script perspective, that’s all to be determined.”

Happy endings are a rarity in the media profession these days. But in an added bonus, WCBS hired not only Mr. Morrison but also, shortly thereafter, his wife, Ashley, a TV journalist, who had been laid off from Bloomberg News back in February. 

“We’re both happy that we stuck with journalism and showed some faith,” said Mr. Morrison. “There were times when we didn’t know if either of us would be able to get back into the business. That we’ve both been able to do it at the same time at the same place is beyond fortunate.”

fgillette@observer.com

“In about 15 minutes, we’ve got the big earnings coming out from Goldman Sachs,” said Ms. Smith. “Some say that they’re gonna knock the ball off the cover, and it’s going to be a blow-away earnings report.”

Mr. Imus corrected Ms. Smith’s language. The proper idiom, he noted, firmly and paternally, was to knock the cover off the ball. As for the excitement over Goldman Sachs’ record earnings, Mr. Imus sounded skeptical. He said he’d been reading Matt Taibbi, author of “Inside the Great American Bubble Machine,” the piece in Rolling Stone that famously groin-kicked Goldman Sachs. And, besides, unemployment remained disgustingly high. “The only guys who are making any money are the wise guys on Wall Street, right?” said Mr. Imus.

The Fox Business Network turned two years old this month. And there is arguably no better way to get a distilled vision of where the channel has been, and where it might be headed, than by watching the daily back-and-forth banter between Ms. Smith and Mr. Imus.

On the one hand there is Ms. Smith, who joined the network for its launch in October 2007. She is sunny, blond, blue-eyed, manicured, glossy, optimistic, self-assured, radiant.

On the other, there is Mr. Imus, who joined the network earlier this month. He is 69 years old, dark, dour, stormy, self-destructive, gruff, weathered.

It’s an arranged marriage between a vivacious market enthusiast and a grouchy, market skeptic, between a money honey and a curmudgeonly dad. They make an odd couple. But such a union is perfectly in keeping with the uncertain hot-and-cold, giddy-and-despairing state of the U.S. economy.

WHEN MS. SMITH started at FBN two years ago, she was part of a crowded class of up-and-coming go-getters (Alexis Glick, Jenna Lee, Cody Willard, Nicole Petallides, Connell McShane and on and on) who were all of a type. This crowd, predominantly female, was full of fresh-faced, forward-looking optimism, and seemingly engineered by FBN chief Roger Ailes to ride effortlessly from one market high to the next and look damn good doing it. None of which was surprising, given Mr. Ailes’ professional history. In 1991, he helped NBC Universal launch its financial news network, CNBC. Shortly thereafter, Mr. Ailes took a smart, attractive, young producer named Maria Bartiromo and put her in front of the camera. It was the early ’90s. The economy was coming out of a deep freeze. And as the markets heated up, Ms. Bartiromo shone, quickly turning into the brightest star in financial journalism.

As Mr. Ailes prepared to launch FBN on behalf of Rupert Murdoch in 2007, the markets were going wild again. A few weeks after the Dow closed at its all-time high of 14,164, the network celebrated its debut with a roaring party at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The hormonal buzz of rapidly expanding net worth hung in the air. Celebrities mingled, here and there, while the next generation of money honeys—all surely inspired by Ms. Bartiromo—strutted among them. Cody Willard, a handsome, 35-year-old hipster ex–hedge fund manager, who had just been made co-anchor of the network’s 5 p.m. hour, gazed at the Temple of Dendur and spoke of FBN’s ambition. “We’re trying to take over the world,” he said.

But before FBN could achieve world domination (or the lesser ambition of putting up ratings anywhere close to those of rival CNBC), the real estate bubble burst. The economy crashed. And suddenly FBN executives found themselves holding a long position on young, sunny TV talent amid a tanking economy. What is a financial news network to do in a bear market for money honeys?

HISTORICALLY, BUSINESS REPORTING tends to be somewhat bipolar, with the mood swinging wildly depending on the state of the economy. Josh Quittner, the Time columnist and managing editor of On magazine, recently told The Observer that business news always travels between two extreme poles—celebrity making (during boom times) and hard-core service journalism (during busts). Throughout the dot-com era, said Mr. Quittner, you could slap the face of any young tech entrepreneur on the cover of your magazine, and people would scoop it up. Everyone is a genius until everyone goes broke.

“It’s understandable that when Fox launched two years ago in a more optimistic time with a little bit more sizzle in the economy, they were willing to take more chances and put attractive young faces on TV,” said Mr. Quittner. “That’s not what works during downtimes. Then, the opposite works.”

In recessions, business consumers want sage knowledge, advice, expertise and experience. Grizzled wisdom becomes more attractive than tenderfooted exuberance. “People are looking for a way out,” said Mr. Quittner. “They’re not buying, say, business magazines for the crossword puzzles or the pictures of pretty girls. They buy it because they want to make money. It’s very straightforward. What works is the opposite of sexy.”

In recent months, in a series of high-profile moves, Fox Business executives have seemingly embraced that concept: the opposite of sexy.

First, they added Don Imus, the resurrected radio host with no real expertise in business but with a loyal following of fans. Then, last month, they hired John Stossel, the 62-year-old investigative correspondent with a libertarian bent, away from his longtime home at ABC News. And recently, according to The New York Times, Lou Dobbs, the 64-year-old CNN anchor, was seen dining with Mr. Ailes, feeding speculation that he also will eventually join FBN. (The last opinionated anchor from the Time Warner Center who was reported to be seen dining with Mr. Ailes was Glenn Beck—who, shortly thereafter, joined Fox News.)

If Ms. Smith, Connell McShane, and Jenna Lee are a type, so too are Mr. Imus, Mr. Stossel and Mr. Dobbs. To their fans, they are lovable grouches who covey a reassuring sense of hard-earned insight. If life has made them a touch cranky, it has also made them skeptical of snake-oil hustlers, tough on government scoundrels and unafraid of picking fights. They are 60-somethings, with independent streaks, who have seen bad times and fought their way through.

Still, the advent of the high-profile, elder libertarian statesman at FBN provides a supplement to the money honeys, not a replacement. When Mr. Imus’ show debuted in October, two of the partially displaced anchors, Ms. Lee and Mr. McShane (both young, talented and easy on the eyes), didn’t disappear. They, along with Ms. Smith, began providing business updates on Imus in the Morning. And when in November of 2008, in the wake of the imploding economy, FBN tweaked its 5 p.m. after-market bar-side chatfest, Happy Hour, they didn’t get rid of the young, attractive co-hosts, Rebecca Diamond and Cody Willard. They simply added a seasoned chaperon: Eric Bolling, an older Wall Street veteran, nicknamed “the Admiral.”

In other words, even in a crap economy, the bulk of financial reporting on TV is destined to remain in the hands of beautiful people. “There are still going to be plenty of young guys at Fox and CNBC who are running around saying the bulls are running loose, and everything is going right, and the Dow is above 10,000, and don’t get pissed at Goldman Sachs, those guys rule!” former CNN producer and TV critic Chez Pazienza recently told The Observer. “But no matter how hard you push that, there are also going to be people who are watching who are out of work. You have to balance that out.”

Call it a market correction—and one that is still in progress, as both sides of the equation get to know one another. At one point on Thursday morning, Mr. Imus said that he had been watching FBN the previous day at the very moment when the Dow topped 10,000. “Who is the woman who’s down there on the floor for us?” said Mr. Imus.

“Our very fine reporter Nicole Petallides,” answered Ms. Smith.

“She is good,” said Mr. Imus. “Well, I was watching all of them. I forget who was on. Liz or somebody was on. It was all very exciting.”

fgillette@observer.com