USA Today
April 25, 2002
Peter Johnson
Meredith Vieira got a lot of buzz Wednesday after New York's Daily News reported that she'll stay on ABC's The View, add the syndicated version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire (news - web sites) to her duties and not replace Bryant Gumbel on CBS' The Early Show.
ABC's flagship station in New York, WABC, teased it heavily throughout the morning, but acknowledged on its noon newscast that talk about the former 60 Minutes correspondent not coming home to CBS was based on unconfirmed reports.
Neither ABC nor CBS had any comment. Vieira said nothing about it on The View, which aired after all the WABC teases and right before its noon broadcast.
While some insiders predict Vieira will ultimately stay at ABC, others were saying Wednesday that she's still weighing her options and that CBS is still very much in the game.
CBS News executives are keen on luring Vieira to jump-start The Early Show, which runs a distant third behind No. 1 NBC's Today and ABC's Good Morning America.
They like her mix of irreverence -- she did a funny report on baking a pie with her son on Wednesday -- and her hard-news experience, which they see as keys to any anchor working a morning show.
That's quite a turnaround from the early '90s, when Vieira left 60 Minutes after a falling-out with executive producer Don Hewitt and ended up as the newsreader on the old CBS Morning News before leaving the network without any protest from executives.
A Tylenol headache
ABC News medical correspondent Nancy Snyderman is facing punishment for narrating a Tylenol radio commercial in February, which violates network ethics rules. The network has said that it would not have approved her doing the commercial because of the conflict of interest, and Snyderman has said she ''didn't use the best judgment in this case.'' It's unclear what type of punishment she'll get, but insiders say a suspension is unlikely because she quickly acknowledged her mistake. Such breaches of company policies usually result in suspension.
Kroft on terrorism
Since Sept. 11, CBS 60 Minutes correspondent Steve Kroft has become the newsmagazine's leading reporter on terrorism -- seven stories in six months -- and every one of them has concerned problems within the USA, or close by. On Sunday's Minutes, Kroft reports on how porous the border is between the USA and Canada, and how loose immigration laws in Canada make it an ideal place for terrorist groups to lie low. Officials have acted on some of the issues raised in his reports -- from lax U.S. Customs policies and racial profiling, to security at airports and nuclear power plants.
But ''a lot of them have not been fixed, and it's business as usual,'' Kroft says.
'Today' in concert
NBC's Today announced its summer concert series Wednesday: May 3, Sheryl Crow and guest; May 10, Train; May 17, Celine Dion; May 24, Bryan Adams; May 31, Shakira; June 7, Goo Goo Dolls (news - web sites); June 14, David Bowie; June 21, Alicia Keys; June 28, Enrique Iglesias; July 5, Dolly Parton; July 12, Amy Grant with Vince Gill; July 19, One Hit Wonders; July 26, The B-52's; Aug. 2, Carole King; Aug 9, Mary J. Blige; Aug 16, James Taylor; Aug. 23, Dixie Chicks; Aug. 30, Elvis Costello; Sept. 6, Toni Braxton; Sept. 20, Santana and guest.
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