NYMag.com’s Daily Intelligencer has a short Q&A with former CNN and current PBS anchor Aaron Brown. He says he still watches his former network, but adds, “CNN’s political stuff has been good, but once the campaign’s over, Anna Nicole Smith returns. I don’t judge it. I just don’t want to do it.”
He is also asked about whether he has any “psychic scars from CNN,” and describes leaving the network. “Mostly I laugh about it,” he says. “In my time there, they paid me to go away, they paid Connie Chung probably a lot to go away, they paid Paula Zahn to go away.”
Writing on her Foxnews.com blog this morning, Fox News anchor (and former CNN anchor) Greta Van Susteren describes her experience. “I had entirely different departure…It is as though I paid CNN to let me go because when I first went to Fox in 2001/2002, I went for less money than CNN was then offering me to stay and had to do some behind the scenes.”
She goes on to explain why she thinks CNN “throws money away,” and cites when she saw the “network President,” (Jon Klein) last fall. “I teased him about all the money they were spending on promo/publicity and still not number one — ok, maybe it was a bit of a jab — and do you know what he said? ‘I don’t care, it’s not my money,” she writes.
Later she writes how FNC wins on a much smaller staff then her former employer’s: “Our 12 staff beats their 57 staff in total viewers…and I would hate to make that payroll!!”
• Earlier: TVNewser’s Gail Shister profiles Brown.