“In the space of 45 seconds, you ticked off a new rundown that required five or six new bookings and a meaty video package on Malala,” Molly said. She took her marching orders and was headed out the door when I apparently added, “Oh, and you know what would be good? Have someone like Christiane Amanpour come on and talk about Malala. She can narrate the package. You’ll write it, but she’ll narrate it. And she’ll do the top of the show too.” The producers had 48 hours to rebook, restack, and redo the entire thing.
Christiane had been at the Vatican; they reached her right as she was boarding a flight from Rome. Molly wrote the Malala package for Christiane to track an hour before air. Go, team! Go, me!
The episode tanked. Yet another serious topic the daytime audience didn’t care about.
Molly, thank you. And I’m sorry.
THE PRESSURE WAS on to right the ship, but frankly, my executive producer seemed a little at sea. Jeff’s gut, which had served him so well throughout his years at TODAY, was failing him. Furthermore, he found the prospect of reporting to anyone humiliating. On day one, when an excited Bob Iger dropped by to watch the first episode from the control room, Jeff promptly nixed that idea. He also hated getting feedback from the local GMs, who were fixated on the ratings in their respective markets. He’d put them on speakerphone and roll his eyes while they droned on about how newsy the show should or shouldn’t be. ABC’s confidence in him was flagging, and our relationship was fraying.
At the same time, speculation was growing about who would be the new president of CNN. Apparently there was a guy from ESPN they were seriously considering; Jeff told me he was a “total douche.” Shortly after, it popped up in the press that Jeff was being considered for the job （everyone knew he and Allison had Page Six on speed-dial）。
Jeff needed to be a big deal—his ego craved it. He clearly wanted out of a job that had become, for him, demeaning. I started to wonder if this had just been a way station all along, until he could land a bigger gig. While we should have been course-correcting, he was planning his exit strategy.
One day, I walked into his office and gave it to him straight: “Hey, this Page Six stuff isn’t helpful. All these rumors you’re planting isn’t good for morale. It’s distracting and creates uncertainty. Please cut it out.”
“I have nothing to do with it,” Jeff said unconvincingly. Reading his face, I was struck by how much he’d changed since we’d first met, 22 years earlier; that skinny guy with a tuft of mousy-brown hair in a gray sweatshirt and girls’ sneakers had thoroughly morphed into a master of the universe–type, with the cold stare and regulation shaved head. As much as I wanted to, I couldn’t say what I knew to be true: You’re lying.
THE DIVIDE BETWEEN the newspeople and the daytime-talk people was growing deeper. The daytime folks were super-focused on stunts. Once a producer ordered—at considerable expense—a life-size plexiglass horse on wheels that I was supposed to straddle for our “salute to country music” episode （I also recall bales of hay that had been shipped in from God knows where）。 My response was “Get rid of it. Put the horse down! I am not coming onstage on a rolling horse.” Although I did come out on a rolling piano once, wearing an evening gown, with Barry Manilow at the keys. I love Barry Manilow, but I wanted to crawl under the lid.
By this point, we were typically doing somewhere between a 1.6 and a 2—ratings anyone would kill for these days. But they weren’t high enough to justify our paychecks and how expensive the show was to produce.
Anne Sweeney had lost all confidence in Jeff. One afternoon after we finished taping, he poked his head into the makeup room.
“They fired me,” he said.
I was pissed—both at Anne for not giving me a heads-up, and at Jeff for having one foot out the door.
He called me a couple of weeks later. “Will you do me a favor?” he said, sounding uncharacteristically needy. “Will you call Jeff Bewkes”—then CEO of Time Warner—“and put in a good word for me at CNN? This is really my last chance to have a big job like this. And of course, if you want it, there will be a job for you too.”
In those eight seconds while he waited for my answer, our time together flashed before my eyes: the excitement and fun, the teamwork, the unstoppable ascent. Yes, he’d been a huge disappointment. But in spite of everything, we’d been through so much together. I also knew news had always been his sweet spot, and CNN would be a much better fit.