While we are waiting and Fitzgerald is deciding whether to nail Rove and Libby and maybe Cheney, or one, or two , or none and while Miers is stuck in the nether land of confirmation--- here's something else to chew on.CBS let News President Andrew Heyward, who had been (in the famous Watergate phrase) twisting in the wind for all these months, CBS let him push himself off what was left of his cliff. So Heyward is out, and CBS, which had allowed rumors to float that it would appoint the head of MTV to the post, named Sean McManus instead. McManus, surely mostly anonymous as head of the Sports Division up to this moment, will now hold both jobs and turn things around.
McManus is the son of ABC sports anchor Jim McKay, who was completely professional and smart, cool and collected. Remember his reporting about the terrorists at the Olympics? Plus, the precedent for sliding someone from sports into news is not new, and is, in fact, a pretty heartening one. Roone Arledge did it at ABC and changed, for the better, the topography of news presentation and coverage as we know it.
But here's the bad part : it's CBS News, which moves like an exhausted runner trying to inch his way through sand. The last innovative concept in news over there was 60 Minutes, about 200 years ago.
CBS could use plenty of vision if it is going to ever salvage what is left of its reputation post-Rather, but, sad to say, can any of us think of a single smart or memorable change on screen that McManus has instituted during his time leading Sports? I'm talking production and packaging here, not purchasing and sales. If McManus has nothing big and new to bring to the presentation table then there is no future for CBS News.
