Word: weaver
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...format of the morning show is almost as old as television itself. Like many another of the medium's innovations, it was laid out by NBC's Wunderkind president Sylvester ("Pat") Weaver in the early '50s. "We want America to shave, to eat, to dress, to get to work on time," he wrote in a memo outlining what he had in mind. "But we also want America to be well informed, to be amused, to be lightened in spirit and in heart, and to be reinforced in inner resolution through knowledge...
Tentatively titled Rise and Shine, the show was meant to be a potpourri of news, weather, entertainment, helpful hints and the time. In a burst of enthusiasm Weaver later added: "Seven to 9 a.m. will be the Sun Valley, Palm Springs and Miami Beach of TV." With Weaver's memos fluttering like banners before it, the show, renamed the Today show, went...
...landed with a thump. Critics were hostile, advertisers were wary, and audiences were slow to build. Though Host Dave Garroway gave viewers exactly what Weaver wanted them to have, NBC was ready to kill the show after the first year. Salvation came in the furry form of J. Fred Muggs, a baby chimpanzee. His owners, two former NBC pages, brought him to visit the set, and a producer decided to put him before the cameras. As Darwin discovered long ago, man's primitive cousins are endlessly fascinating, and soon just about everyone in the country-or so it seemed...
During Garroway's nine-year tenure, Today was relaxed and inviting. But some time during the '60s it began to take itself seriously, and boredom settled over Weaver's sunny video resort like a thick...
...league network in the mid-'70s, wanted the prestige of a morning show and assigned producer Bob Shanks to come up with a formula. Shanks' solution: copy the original Today of the '50s. When Good Morning began in 1975, it was more like Today, as Weaver had envisioned it, than Today. There was news, of course, but not much. Catering to its largely female audience (66%, vs. 55% for Today and 47% for Morning), the show set out to provide women with advice and information they need to run a household-a kind of Family Circle...