Word: pauley
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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CHANGES: CONVERSATIONS WITH JANE PAULEY (NBC, March 13, 10 p.m. EST). Jane Pauley interviews people who have gone through major personal or professional transitions in her first prime-time special since she left the Today show after 13 years...
Lately, though, the networks' morning-show managers have committed some major miscues. Last fall the Today show turned what should have been an orderly transfer of power -- from Jane Pauley to Deborah Norville -- into a public-relations Chernobyl. Norville, cast as the usurper of Pauley's job, took over in January with viewers already against her. And they don't seem to have changed their minds: after nearly four years as the top-rated morning show, Today has slipped in the past six weeks to No. 2, behind ABC's Good Morning America. CBS, in the meantime, has dumped...
...cannot ignore the whiff of a double standard here. After all, it was Bryant Gumbel who wrote the nasty memo about his co-workers at Today, but it was Pauley who had to watch her heir apparent being groomed on the couch next to her. Norville too was probably treated unfairly in the press. Would a man in the same position have been so rudely characterized as a conniving climber? And why, some may wonder, does Harry Smith, the competent but colorless male half of the CBS This Morning team, get to stay on while Sullivan is forced to dust...
...worse, TV's women of the morning have a tough responsibility. To succeed in this league, they must not only be bright, attractive and versatile enough to talk comfortably with Hollywood celebrities, South African leaders and weathermen wearing Indian headdresses. They must also project a warm, cozy, familial glow. Pauley, with her big-sister perkiness, had it. So does Good Morning America's Joan Lunden, who is no newswoman but goes down as easy in the morning as mom's Cream of Wheat. Is it just a coincidence that both of them are also very public mothers...
...these skeptical times, polls may be the one remaining authority that the press customarily accepts without question. The subject may be the Panama invasion (the public supported it), the arrest of Mayor Marion Barry (Washingtonians thought he should resign), or Jane Pauley's treatment by NBC (PEOPLE readers who answered a call-in survey found it unfair), but editors rarely meet a poll they don't like. Polls have even been published reporting the number of California drivers with paraphernalia hanging from their rearview mirrors (8%), and Iowans with ornaments on their lawns...