Friday, November 19, 2004

"Nightline" on the Ropes Again? The Wall Street Journal is reporting this morning that Leroy Sievers, exec producer of ABC's Nightline, is on the way out after the network proposed significant changes to the program's format. Speculation is now officially rife that the suits at Disney are trying again to kill one of the better mainstream news programs still on commercial TV. Ted Koppel's contract is due up next year too. The names of Jon Stewart and Jimmy Kimmel come up as possible replacements for the hard-news late night broadcast as well in this story (freely accessible for now, at least). So who's going to register SaveNightline.com? Thanks to MediaBistro's news feed for the heads-up. 11:17:04 AM    comment []

Tommy Thompson gossip and a quote you wouldn't want to take out of context It's a couple days old already, but I really love this quote. It needs some background, though. Tommy Thompson is a man of enormous ambition and ego who prefers to have the image of someone who would always prefer to be on the back porch of his father's old store in Elroy, Wisconsin. Odds are, if George W hadn't asked him to be Health & Human Services Secretary four years ago, he'd probably still be governor. Two years ago, he told everyone he was only going to be in DC for the first term, then come home. Now he's being coy about leaving the cabinet, prompting others to speculate on his future (which only makes him happier, because people are thinking about him). So the speculation is that he's angling for Tom Ridge's job at Homeland Security. This makes a certain amount of sense, since Thompson had this war room built at HHS that really belongs at Terror War  Central (you should have seen the tours he gave to the Wisconsin TV stations!). Anyway, so local  political gossipers Spivak & Bice sounded out the usual suspects to try to get the scoop. There wasn't much meat in the story, but one quote stands out above all. Talking about the Homeland Security job, one anonymous tipster said: "If he were to stay in government, what's a bigger nugget than that?" asked a second Thompson buddy. "He's thoroughly enjoyed the HHS stuff. But could you imagine how he'd feel putting the country on red alert? Geez, it'd be seventh heaven." You must feel safer already. 12:19:56 AM    comment []