TUBE TALK Now that Bryant Gumbel's leaving, one idea for making ''The Early Show'' stand out among the morning competitors is to hire a woman to replace him. The leading candidate is ''The View'''s Meredith Vieira, who worked at CBS a decade ago -- she was a correspondent for ''60 Minutes,'' then host of a morning program that was an ancestor to ''The Early Show.'' Her agent has said that she has no plans to leave ''The View,'' but her ABC contract reportedly expires in August, and she has not yet re-upped. Plus, even if she didn't get an offer in the range of Gumbel's $5 million per year, her new salary would almost certainly be higher than the $500,000 she reportedly earns at ABC.
There's also talk that ''Early'' producer Steve Friedman might follow Gumbel out the door. Friedman has served as Gumbel's producer off and on for three decades, but he tells the Philadelphia Inquirer that Gumbel's announcement of his departure last Thursday came as a surprise to him. ''When it came to the end, I thought he'd make the deal [to stay]. I always feel these jobs are so great and these shows are so hard to do, both sides make a deal in the end, like David Letterman and CBS. I'm sure Bryant and I will meet again, down the road.'' As for whether Friedman will stay with the program, he Says, ''Right now I'm here, I'm fine, I'm ready to go.'' However, he adds, ''Things change all the time. I never envisioned the show without Bryant.''...
Speaking of the Letterman deal, now that he's staying in place and not taking over the ''Nightline'' spot at ABC, that network has finally made a commitment to keep Ted Koppel's news show on the air. ''We want to renew and reaffirm our support for 'Nightline,''' said ABC exec Robert Iger in a statement yesterday. ''We look forward to working with ABC News to make a strong program even stronger in the coming years.'' The statement didn't specify how many coming years, but several reports say the show is safe for at least two more seasons. Koppel, who had all but threatened to walk after ABC dissed him and the rest of the ABC News staff by negotiating with Letterman behind their backs, issued a response, saying, ''It is especially gratifying for me and everyone at 'Nightline' to have questions about the future of the broadcast so warmly and enthusiastically resolved at the highest levels of the corporation.'' Koppel added that the staff would renew its commitment to making ''Nightline'' as good as it could be, though he didn't say if that meant he would start appearing on the show more than three times a week. ABC News chief David Westin told The New York Times, ''We have the time period and we need to perform well in the time period and keep making whatever changes will make the program stronger. The important thing now, he said, is that ''there's not a sword hanging over our necks.''...
Meanwhile, over at Dave's place, they're talking about ''repurposing'' his show -- airing fresh reruns from the previous night on a cable channel the next day, as is increasingly common for networks looking to defray production costs. The leading contenders for Letterman's are VH1 and Comedy Central. Like CBS, both are Viacom companies, though Comedy Central is half-owned by AOL Time Warner. Comedy Central recently signed a deal to repurpose Letterman's NBC successor, ''Late Night With Conan O'Brien,'' so you may yet get to see Dave and Conan on the same channel....
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