Deciphering NBC Newsdude Steve Capus' Ann Cuury statement.

"So morning television is HDTV and Ann Curry should have been comfortable doing fluff pieces. And, believe me, our highly-paid consultants tell us that fluff holds onto more eyeballs than serious news in the morning. It's not the first time we've stooped to conquer viewers over six decades of TODAY. Remember the chimpanzee J. Fred Muggs and Willard Scott dressing in drag as Carmen Miranda? We just do that shtick more frequently these days. And besides, Ann--like Meredith--just didn't have the Katie Couric zip. That's why we're rolling dice that Savannah Guthrie can turn the world on with her smile, just like Mary Tyler Moore. Seriously, are you naive enough to think we'd pin the blame for our ratings decline on Matt Lauer?"

Blog commenter with post-mortem on Ann Curry's demotion from TODAY host to NBC correspondent.

Yielding the floor to commenter "Bird" from the HOLLYWOOD-ELSEWHERE site:
Sure, Ann never quite had the snappy easy banter with Matt that Katie or Meredith had, but ultimately she's taking the fall for the scattershot gosspy mess Today has become of late. You can't follow a report on an upcoming Supreme Court ruling with the latest on a reality "star". I mean, unless she was the victim of a terrorist attack there is no reason any [Kardashian] should be mentioned in the top half of the 7am hour.
Good luck to Ann, and my condolences to her replacement.

A question Piers Morgan didn't ask Deborah Norville.

Since Larry King's endgame on CNN, it's no longer considered a good idea for ratings' sake to (gasp!) do an entire segment on a topic/guest.  So Piers Morgan had Deborah Norville on for about ten minutes tonight to answer questions about morning shows, Ann Curry and deal with the subtext of what it's like to follow a popular co-host and be unaccepted.

Here's a question Piers didn't ask Deborah:
You've hosted INSIDE EDITION--a tabloid show.  Used to be that shows like INSIDE EDITION, HARD COPY and A CURRENT AFFAIR had a place in early-evening access--and actual news was still covered on morning and evening news shows.  How do you feel about the TODAY show's continuing efforts to emulate and imitate INSIDE EDITION?

More random comments about Andrew Sarris, Ann Curry, Matt Lauer, Joy Behar and Al Gore.

1. RIP film critic and auteurist Andrew Sarris--read his reviews in THE VILLAGE VOICE and THE NEW YORK OBSERVER and consider his books THE AMERICAN CINEMA and THE JOHN FORD MOVIE MYSTERY essential reading for those interested in film studies. 2. As Keith Olbermann mentioned on Twitter, it's sad that Ann Curry is enduring public humiliation by NBC/Comcast (news leaks) regarding her forced departure from the TODAY show. Yes, Savannah Guthrie might evoke (to Matt Lauer at least) the Lost Era of Katie, but Lauer and NBC News majordomo Steve Capus should have the sense (they're being paid enough)to realize that any alleged "chemistry" between anchors doesn't necessarily raise ratings or paper over the essential problem of TODAY doing too much wading in the shallow end of the news pool. 3. Al Gore and his partners at Current TV are now focusing on the Hail Mary pass of getting mild-to-moderate progressive comics to join the channel. John Fugelsang (who can be pithy on Twitter) is subbing for "rock star" Jennifer Granholm on THE WAR ROOM and Joy Behar is getting a five-night tryout before officially debuting this fall. If you see the Joy Behar ads, the impression is given that she'll be Politically Direct and free of any restrictions on content she had on her HLN series or may still have on THE VIEW. So last night, amid the horse race election-coverage stuff, Ms. Behar felt compelled to do a tabloid crap story about Kim Kardashian, Oprah Winfrey and Kris Jenner. Fine for ABC and HLN, but it was woefully stupid for Current TV--even considering them having Cenk Uygur do an on-bended-knee interview of Hugh Hefner, which the channel probably justified due to Hef having some progressive views.

Joe Eszterhas and Mel Gibson.

Bad Timing :: Hollywood Elsewhere

The link above references this morning's Eszterhas appearance on TODAY--interviewed by Ann Curry.

Guessing that a lot of Eszterhas' comments alleging what Gibson said are true.

But at the same time, it does seem that Eszterhas is repeating the same kind of generating-publicity-for-me tactic he engaged in around 1990--when Eszterhas (two years before his greatest hit as a screenwriter--BASIC INSTINCT--and five years before his ubercampy bellyflop SHOWGIRLS) and then CAA-agency-head Michael Ovitz had a war of words where Ovitz apparently mentioned something about having "foot soldiers" on Wilshire Boulevard.

[Here's a link to David Plotz's 1998 profile of Eszterhas for Slate.com:
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/assessment/1998/03/joe_eszterhas.single.html]

A big difference between the two incidents is that in 1990, Eszterhas at least dared to pick a fight with someone who had greater power (Ovitz).

Whereas in 2012, Joe Eszterhas is kicking around a former superstar who, through his anti-Semitism and misogyny, has managed to lower his Hollywood profile to, at best, the likelihood of only having a viable career as a director (safe to say that Mel talked/raged himself out of aging-star leading-and-supporting roles; his latest film GET THE GRINGO aka HOW I SPENT MY SUMMER VACATION slated for satellite TV premiere then DVD release).