In America: CBS may seek new anchor sooner Rather than later
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Your support makes all the difference.* The only thing the big news organisations in America take more seriously than themselves is their mistakes.
* The only thing the big news organisations in America take more seriously than themselves is their mistakes.
The New York Times earlier this summer explained how it had failed in its journalistic duties in reporting the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, code for saying it too willingly bought the Bush propaganda. Then on Friday, it introduced a new and improved daily corrections column, which divides bloopers into two categories: the not terribly serious and the inexcusable.
Also punishing itself is CBS, following revelations that memos used by its flagship current affairs programme, 60 Minutes, to support a report about George Bush ducking his National Guard duties as a young man were fakes.
The network has created a panel to investigate the affair. Leading it is the former US Attorney General, Dick Thornburgh. He and his colleagues have been grilling all involved, including Dan Rather, the CBS Evening News anchor who presented the offending segment.
Before this, it was assumed Mr Rather, who is 72, was close to relinquishing his primetime seat for someone younger. Now, speculation is rife that CBS may be obliged to speed up his departure. Of course, the opposite could apply. Mr Rather can't gracefully step down now, because it would look less like retirement and more like disgrace.
* NO NEED to speculate about the longevity of the American TV star, Jay Leno.
Leno is the big-jawed guy who took over the Tonight Show from Johnny Carson. It has been a week since NBC said that Leno is himself to step aside - in 2009. Why tell us now?
We should be much more concerned for John McEnroe whose own late-night talk show, McEnroe , on the CNBC cable channel seems to have self-destructed.
Audience figures from last Monday revealed that of all the 834 shows available on cable, McEnroe came in at 833rd.
What other programme did worse? How to Boil Water on the Food Network. We are being serious, John, it looks like you will be out the exit door well before Jay and perhaps Dan, too.
* JAY LENO and his rival at CBS, David Letterman, specialise in political satire, so this is their season.
But don't count out Comedy Central, home to The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, left. Stewart and his bosses are feeling especially cocky after surveys showed last week that his viewers know more about political and current affairs than the fans of Leno and Letterman. And surely more than followers of the Fox News Channel.
The big Fox star is Bill O'Reilly who recently scoffed that Stewart attracted only "stoned slackers" and "dopey kids".
Armed with its new audience research, Comedy Central rushed to highlight O'Reilly's error in a press release. To which Fox cried, "Sense of Humour Failure".
* SO YOU think we get all the good movies first? Not so. Only on Friday night, thanks to the opening of the New York Film Festival, were we finally allowed to glimpse Pedro Almodovar's Bad Education , which came and went in Europe months ago.
In fact, this weekend, the Apple was in culture overload. Friday night also saw the kick-off of this year's sold-out New Yorker Festival, swiftly followed by the two-day literary explosion in Washington Square Park on Saturday and Sunday that was this year's New York is Book Country fair.
An opportunity for book sellers to show of their latest titles, it also drew big crowds. If the New Yorker shindig was elitist, not so Book Country that appealed to kids too, thanks, in part, to readings on the outdoor stage by Julie Andrews.
* Sick of shows and movies showing the sensitive side of Mafia mobsters? You know, Tony in The Sopranos and the De Niro don in Analyse This.
Even the poorly-reviewed new Dreamworks animation, A Shark's Tale, follows the same Mafia-goon-goes-sissy theme. (And also stars De Niro.) But it's all true. We hear that John Gotti Jr, son of the late Dapper Don, has been trying to earn good parole points in prison by writing a children's book.
Who knows, his happy tale, The Children of Shaolin Forest, might earn the former hard man a spot at next year's New Yorker Festival.
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