8 June/July 2014 Book Review When you think of morning shows, you think of hosts that are perky (likeKatie Couric, formerly of NBC’s Today), brainy (like Charlie Rose of CBS This Morning) or even hunky (like Josh Elliott, formerly of ABC’s Good Morning America). You think of cooking segments, playful banter and short bits about overweight housecats. You think of news, sports and the weather. You don’t often think ruthless. But if we’re to believe Brian Stelter, author of Top of the Morning: Inside the Cutthroat World of Morning TV (Grand Central Publishing, 312 pages, $28), the morning show wars are almost as brutal as the battles that have been fought for God or country for centuries. A media correspondent for CNN (who wrote Top of the Morning while working for The New York Times), Stelter chronicles sordid tales of flagrant guest poaching by shameless bookers, internal brouhahas over whether news content or fluff should reign supreme and the little ways that sleep-deprivation makes practically everyone involved in morning television more than just a little bit kooky. It’s a compelling read — whether you’re a loyal longtime viewer or someone who only occasionally turns your TV on in the A.M. hoping for a quick rundown of the day’s headlines before you head off to work. Stelter begins with a brief history of the morning talk show. Todayhas been on the air the longest — debuting in January 1952 on NBC with original host Dave Garroway and a chimpanzee mascot named J. Fred Muggs. Gradually, the show morphed from its focus on light news (and chimp-related gimmickry) into the program we know today — one that features a healthy mix of hard news, lifestyle features and interviews with political figures and other newsmakers. NBC did so well with the show that copycats eventually followed. ABC premiered Good Morning America in November of 1975. CBS has aired 10 different shows in the morning slot, includingThe Early Show, which aired from 1999 to 2012, and CBS This Morning, which currently airs in the morning hours. At first it was just the Big Three TV networks that were playing the morning show game, but Stelter also devotes a decent-sized chunk of the book toMorning Joe, an MSNBC show that debuted in 2007 and features longer-than-average segments and hosts that are more apt to make fun of the lighthearted stories that are the bread and butter of the network shows. Despite all the impersonators that arrived on the scene, Today managed to remain on top for an absurdly long time, dominating the ratings for an unfathomable 852 weeks — that’s more than 16 years! — until Good Morning America finally took the top spot in April of 2012. What led to that longtime dominance, Stelter explains, wasn’t the fact that it was the first or the best. He writes: “Today had the upper hand in booking A-list celebrities. It had the clout to insist that a politician talk to [host Matt] Lauer before anyone else. It had the right to call itself ‘America’s first family.’” In other words, viewers saw the team at Today as members of their own family — albeit ones who were better looking, better dressed and better informed on current events than the relatives they dealt with each day. But nobody can stay on top forever, and in 2012, Today managed to alienate a large percentage of its audience with what many saw as the calculated ousting of its newest host, Ann Curry. If viewers tend to pick one morning show over another because the ensemble feels like family, they’re not going to like when a family member is humiliated — especially on such a public stage. The showhad previously shown someweakness with swapping hosts in 1989 when it chose to replace Jane Pauley with the less competent DeborahNorville, thereby losing the devotion of a large percentage of female viewers who believed that the seasoned Pauley had been traded in for a newer model. Norville went on maternity leave less than a year into her new hosting duties and never returned. This time, Curry, who had anchored the Today news desk for more than a decade, had only hosted for about a year when certain powers that be at the show decided that she was to blame for the show’s recent decline in ratings. Whether that’s true or not is up for debate. It also might have been a result of the extraordinarily good chemistry between Good Morning Americahosts George Stephanopoulos, Robin Roberts, Lara Spencer and Josh Elliott, who seemed to be having a lot more fun over on ABC. Stelter devotes nearly a third of the book to this embarrassing chapter in Today’s history — and frankly, it’s too much. While readers might start out feeling badly for Curry, by the end of the sordid tale, they’ll want to never ever read another word about her ever again. One hundred pages is simply too much space to dedicate to a single, unfortunate woman’s downfall. Top of the Morning also spends a lot of time on the many health crises faced by Good Morning America’s Robin Roberts. In 2007, Roberts was diagnosed with breast cancer and underwent surgery and a series of chemotherapy treatments. Then, in 2012, she was diagnosed with a bone marrowdisease calledmyelodysplastic syndrome (or MDS). While she took a leave from the show in order to get a bone marrow transplant, she was gone but not forgotten. Her co-workers mentioned her name frequently on air and kept viewers updated about her condition. She went on to beat MDS and returned triumphant (and healthy) to her post in early 2013. “How calculating the GMA producers were or weren’t about Roberts’s illness is hard to say,” writes Stelter. “Roberts remained more than slightly interested in the overnight ratings, and people at ABC said they took their cues from her about how to cover her illness. She was clearly happy to draw attention to the cause of bone marrow donation…No one could say that a lot of good hadn’t come from the network’s involvement, yet some people at NBC were whispering about the ways ABC was milking the situation for ratings. The smack-talking truly never stops between the Big Two.” At the moment, Good Morning America is up and Today is down. But that could all change in a nanosecond. As co-hosts move on for better opportunities and viewers get more of their news from their smartphones than any other source, will people continue tuning in to these oldschool morning shows? Stelter certainly doesn’t know for sure. But until these sorts of programs officially go the way of the dinosaur, one thing’s for certain — they’ll duke it out for ratings until their very last breath. LHR Perky and Anything But Peaceful: Inside the U.S. Morning ShowWars
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