But when Fager watched it during the screening, he said, “Enough of that. Take it out.”
Fager seemed dead set against letting my personality emerge in any piece I did. Probably because he didn’t like my personality.
Staring at my untouched, greasy, over-easy egg, I said, “Okay, well, thanks!”—and pretended I had an errand to run in the opposite direction. Anything to keep from having to spend another second with the guy.
I’VE OFTEN IMAGINED what I could have done differently at CBS. I think about the advice I’ve shared with fresh-faced （aka hungover） college graduates in the many commencement speeches I’ve given over the years: “Sometimes you have to leap before you look!” “Take a risk, try new things!” “Get out of your comfort zone…even if it’s uncomfortable!” I dusted off the message on a notecard a producer had written me when I left TODAY: “A boat is always safe in the harbor, but that’s not what boats are built for.”
Maybe I should have kept my boat tied to the dock; maybe I should have looked before I leapt. When someone said the stains on the carpet at NBC were coffee while the stains at CBS were blood, instead of chuckling, maybe I should have listened. I know I should have spent more time getting advice from people who had my best interests at heart. I was so hell-bent on taking a stand for women, I didn’t consider the woman who’d be at the center of the storm…me.
74
Take This Job and Shove It
AS I OPENED my mind to the syndication idea, one thing seemed clear: If I was really going to enter this alien fray, I’d need a partner—a really capable, trustworthy executive producer. My first thought was Jeff Zucker. The problem was, he’d become a controversial, embattled figure, having been pushed out at NBC as soon as Comcast bought the network.
He’d had a mixed track record, to put it mildly. NBC was known for its unparalleled tradition of hit scripted programming since the days of Brandon Tartikoff—responsible for ’80s juggernauts like Miami Vice, Cheers, L.A. Law, and The Golden Girls （remember “Must-See TV”？ It really started with Brandon）。 Instead of honoring that legacy, Jeff focused on the bottom line, leaning into cheap-to-produce reality TV like Fear Factor. （And let us not forget he spearheaded The Apprentice, making Donald Trump a small-screen star and positioning him for a successful presidential run. Thanks, Jeff!） And he got lambasted for bungling the Tonight Show transition from Jay Leno to Conan O’Brien and back again, publicly demoting and humiliating Conan. On Jeff’s watch, NBC fell from number one to number four in a single season.
Jeff wasn’t everyone’s cup of tea. His know-it-all confidence could be really off-putting. When he moved to California to oversee the entertainment division, plenty of Hollywood heavyweights were incensed by the dismissive way he treated them during business meetings, never tearing his gaze from the minimum three monitors he had on at all times in his office. Tom Werner was one of those incensed heavyweights, once saying to me, “It’s almost as if my dating you has hurt me.” （I could practically hear the wheels in his head turning as he considered which relationship would be more advantageous.）
And yet, Jeff and I were sympatico. Our partnership at TODAY had been the envy of morning TV; who wouldn’t want to replicate that? If we teamed up again, I thought the chances were good we could create something special and that, together, we could navigate the rapidly changing television landscape.
“Hey, I’ve got a great idea,” I told him.
I went on to describe not only the talk show but the business we could create, where our show gives birth to other syndicated shows that we would basically own.
“That could be fun,” Jeff said noncommittally. I told him we’d be 50/50 partners—both executive producers with equal influence and decision-making power. I’d give him half my salary, and our back-end stake would be 50/50 as well: whatever the profits, we’d split them evenly.
And yes, it might look like a step back—he’d been the BMOC at NBC, hobnobbing with big cheeses in the executive suites at 30 Rock, deciding the fates of EPs like the one I was now asking him to become—the one he’d been two decades earlier at TODAY. But the truth was, he needed a gig.
About two weeks later, he asked Alan and me to come see him at his apartment off Park Avenue.
We sat down at the white kitchen table. Caryn said a quick hello and headed out the door. The high-end stainless-steel appliances gleamed in the background—I wondered how the place could look so clean with a couple of little ones, a tween, and a teen running around.