An excerpt from Tom Shales‘s column in the latest TV Week:
| “…The recent firing of GMA’s executive producer had to have something to do with [Diane] Sawyer‘s unhappiness over being abandoned when Charlie Gibson left to anchor ABC’s World News Tonight (a position that insiders say, despite her fondness for Gibson, Sawyer wanted for herself). Whoever the new GMA executive producer will be has got to have Sawyer’s complete trust and approval. (Tammy Haddad of MSNBC is reportedly high on the candidate list, though neither she nor anyone else would confirm that last week). Sawyer’s current co-star, Robin Roberts, is too butch — though producers and even cosmeticians are apparently trying to warm her up as much as possible — and Sawyer works better with a male co-anchor than another female anyway. She and Charlie were so deft and graceful about staying out of each other’s way. Now Sawyer is going to have to be a more fastidious guardian of her own well-being, what with the world all topsy-turvy-and her being mistreated after all these months of being the good team player to get GMA back off its butt…” |
Here’s the rest…
> Update: 12:25pm: “Shales is seriously off the rails and it’s a shame that you give his increasingly bitchy ramblings any play at all,” an ABC e-mailer says. “It is a fact that Sherwood was NOT fired – he resigned and will move home to be with a family member who has been ill. The news division offered Ben an open invitation to return ‘anytime’ and the network wants to employ his talents in LA which gives lie to Shale’s construction that Diane ‘had to have something’ to do with it. Shales believes Robin Roberts is being ‘warmed up by producers and cosmeticians’ because she is ‘too butch.’ Two things: Robin Roberts — one of the warmest and sweetest human beings on planet earth — needs no warming up. Which begs the obvious question: what would Tom Shales know about being butch anyway? Answer: precious, precious little.”