{"id":15881,"date":"2008-06-15T12:05:25","date_gmt":"2008-06-15T16:05:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/15881.html"},"modified":"2008-06-15T12:05:25","modified_gmt":"2008-06-15T16:05:25","slug":"if-its-sunday","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/if-its-sunday\/","title":{"rendered":"If it’s Sunday…"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mike Allen highlighted<\/a> today’s episode of “Meet the Press,” coming less than 48 hours after the unexpected death of its host, Tim Russert.<\/p>\n

On a memorial edition of NBC’s “Meet the Press,” moderator Tim Russert was remembered in his studio as a friend of politicians who prepared rigorously for the powerful show and was “offended” when they didn’t do the same.<\/p>\n

The show, with just one commercial interruption, consisted of brief highlights of Russert’s tenure, interspersed with loving memories from friends and frequent guests.<\/p>\n

With the moderator’s chair and the famous table empty in tribute, the guests gathered around the famous Nebraska Avenue table with Tom Brokaw, the former “Nightly News” anchorman, who began the show by urging them not to cry.<\/p>\n

But the show was a largely joyful recollection of wild, loving times with Russert, who passed in his prime on Friday, at the age of 58.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And Michael Calderone reports on<\/a> the difficult task of finding someone to sit in Russert’s chair.<\/p>\n

…NBC is faced with the unenviable task of trying to replace someone who — judging from the heartfelt tributes from political and journalistic luminaries — appears irreplaceable. In addition to “Meet the Press” being the highest-rated Sunday public affairs show, Russert could also boast of being the longest-running host for television’s longest-running program.<\/p>\n

“I can’t imagine them going outside NBC,” said Andrew Tyndall, an independent television analyst, who added that he considers the network’s news operation the strongest in television.<\/p>\n

Tyndall said that if he were NBC News President Steve Capus, a short list for the position would include White House correspondent David Gregory, chief foreign affairs correspondent Andrea Mitchell — both of whom have guest-hosted “Meet the Press” — as well as political director Chuck Todd and “Hardball” host Chris Matthews. Two dark-horse candidates could be “Morning Joe” host Joe Scarborough or perhaps former “Nightly News” anchor Tom Brokaw — that is, if he had any interest in returning to such a prominent role.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Given Matthews’ work during the Democratic presidential race — I’d argue no one was quite as misogynistic and inane as he was — it’s hard to imagine him getting a promotion to one of the preeminent gigs in American broadcast journalism, but we’ll see what happens.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mike Allen highlighted today’s episode of “Meet the Press,” coming less than 48 hours after the unexpected death of its host, Tim Russert. On a memorial edition of NBC’s “Meet the Press,” moderator Tim Russert was remembered in his studio as a friend of politicians who prepared rigorously for the powerful show and was “offended” […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15881","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15881","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15881"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15881\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15881"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15881"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15881"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}