Top of the Morning: Inside the Cutthroat World of Morning TV (38 page)

These agreements were reached before my other employer,
The New York Times
, forbade the practice of “quote approval.” ABC scrubbed a few curse words from producers’ mouths but allowed virtually every other quote. NBC was more heavy-handed: every one of Jim Bell’s quotes from my control room visits were kept “off the record.” So were descriptions of Bell’s body language and his demeanor, descriptions of other staffers reacting to Bell, and some quotes from Ann Curry. NBC approved most of the rest of the control room material.

Once in a while, on particularly sensitive days when the PR apparatuses of NBC and ABC denied access to their studios, I simply peered into their street-level windows like a tourist.

Links to the works cited in the book and recommendations for further reading can be found at
http://brianstelter.com/morning/
.

Acknowledgments

In June 2011 I walked into Ben Greenberg’s office at Grand Central Publishing with a bad idea for a book about television news. I walked out with
Top of the Morning
.

During the meeting—arranged by my agent Kate Lee, who believed in my ability to write a book a full four years before I believed in it myself—Ben, Kate, and I brainstormed better ideas. Ben asked, “What about the mornings?” The mornings! Ann Curry had just taken over
Today
, and Josh Elliott and Lara Spencer had just joined
GMA
. Surely, I said,
something
interesting would happen in the next eighteen months. “The mornings—why didn’t I think of that?” I wondered as I walked out of the meeting. But that’s what editors are for.

Among the other things I didn’t think: that
GMA
would seize first place, that Curry would be demoted, or that Lauer would be blamed. So thanks are in order to ABC and NBC, for giving me a story worth telling!

Thanks also to Kate, for guiding me through the foreign terrain of book publishing. Thanks, Ben, for seeing a book where I just saw a time slot, for giving me the time and space to tell the story, and for tolerating my inevitable and surely irritating deadline-bending. Every author should hope to be as fortunate as I’ve been.

When Kate departed ICM agency in 2012, Kristine Dahl adopted the book as her own and matched me with Charles Leerhsen, who worked tirelessly with me to transform my lumpy chapters into a real live book. Not only did Charles know what I was trying to say better than I did, he knew what I
didn’t
need to say. (Readers, you were spared sixty thousand words of tangents.) Together, we conceived the zippy three-act structure that opened and closed with
Today
, with
GMA
in between. Charles, thank you.

My greatest thanks of all go to Jamie Shupak, whom I’m lucky to call my girlfriend (and roommate and pen pal, among many other titles). Jamie cured my spasms of self-doubt, red-lined my rough drafts, and asked the questions she knew readers were going to ask, making the book better in a hundred different ways. Jamie, I simply could not have written this without you by my side. Thank you.

Thanks as well to Bruce Headlam, Craig Hunter, and Bill Brink, my editors at
The New York Times
, who never wavered in their support of this second job. They made a hard thing much easier. So did
The Times
’ media columnist David Carr, who had my back the whole time, especially when the going got tough. I’m honored to call him a friend. Bill Carter, Jodi Kantor, and Andrew Ross Sorkin helped me figure out how to structure the book and convince skeptical sources to cooperate. Alex Weprin and Scott Kidder kept me sane.

Carolyn Wilder provided invaluable research help. The media monitoring service TVEyes, a virtual DVR for television, was indispensable.

Corporate communications professionals at the networks were enormously helpful when they could be, and apologetic when they couldn’t. At NBC they included Adam Miller, Kathy Kelly-Brown, Lauren Kapp, Amy Lynn, Monica Lee, Marie Wicht, and most of all Megan Kopf. At ABC, Zenia Mucha, Kevin Brockman, Jeffrey Schneider, Julie Townsend, Alison Bridgman, Alyssa Apple, and Heather Riley. At CBS, Sonya McNair and Kelli Halyard. At MSNBC, Jeremy Gaines and Lauren Skowronski. At CNN, Christa Robinson and Barbara Levin. Thank you.

Hundreds of sources, many of whom can’t be named here, taught me more about morning television than I ever dreamed I’d know. You know who you are. Thank you all.

And finally: Mom, whatever writing talent I have, I have thanks to you. You nurtured my youthful curiosity about the Web at great cost (I still cringe thinking about those domain hosting and long-distance phone bills) and you encouraged me to write, write, write. After Dad died it was your refusal to give up, your determination to give me and Jason and Kevin a normal life—bluntly, your determination to keep living—that got me to this final paragraph. Thank you.

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Contents

Title Page
Welcome
Dedication
Act 1: Operation Bambi
Chapter 1: Operation Bambi
Chapter 2: America’s First Family
Chapter 3: Hands Are Tied
Chapter 4: “Here Comes the Storm!”
Chapter 5: Denial
Act 2: Good Morning
Chapter 6: Try Harder
Chapter 7: A Hole Dug Deep
Chapter 8: Unfinished Business
Chapter 9: Hacky Sack
Chapter 10: Morning Joe
Chapter 11: May the Best Booker Win
Chapter 12: Invincible
Chapter 13: Inevitable
Chapter 14: The Call from the White House
Chapter 15: “I Am Going to Beat This”
Act 3: (Almost) Instant Karma
Chapter 16: The New Girl
Chapter 17: Total Victory
Chapter 18: The Empty Chair
Afterword
A Note About Sourcing
Acknowledgments
Newsletters
Copyright

Copyright © 2013 by Brian Stelter

Photo credits: Meredith Vieira © Brendan McDermid/Reuters/Corbis, Charlie Rose © Lynn Goldsmith/Corbis, George Stephanopoulos © Dziekan/Retna Ltd./Corbis, Katie Couric © Leon/Retna Ltd./Corbis, Matt Lauer © Sgalambro /Retna Ltd./Corbis, Natalie Morales © Dennis Van Tine/Retna Ltd./Corbis, Al Roker © Brock Miller /Splash News/Corbis, Ann Curry © Joe Stevens/Retna Ltd./Corbis, Josh Elliott and Lara Spencer © Splash News/Corbis, Savannah Guthrie, Natalie Morales, and Willie Geist © Splash News/Corbis, Robin Roberts © Splash News/Corbis, Sam Champion © Nancy Kaszerman/ZUMA Press/Corbis, Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski MICHAEL NAGLE/The New York Times/Redux
Cover © Hachette Book Group

All rights reserved. In accordance with the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book without the permission of the publisher is unlawful piracy and theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), prior written permission must be obtained by contacting the publisher at [email protected]. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.

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First ebook edition: April 2013

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ISBN: 978-1-4555-1289-8