THE GREAT MORNING DEBATE
PALIN OR COURIC?
If you want to know how seriously the networks take any ratings war, just look at the size of the guns they use.
The big ones were out in force Tuesday. Determined to finally overtake NBC’S Today in the morning race, ABC installed its rival’s former host, Katie Couric, as Good Morning America’s guest host for the week. Upping the ante, NBC countered with a high-profile host of its own, Sarah Palin — who has her own reasons to blast Couric.
In case you’ve forgotten why Palin might be unhappy with Couric, she opened her Today stint with a goodsport sight gag: She was sitting on a couch leafing through a pile of newspapers, a reference to her image-damaging interview with Couric during the 2008 presidential campaign.
For her part, Couric made no mention of Palin. She did have a rival--
themed joke, a picture of her posing with a wax figure of Today’s Matt Lauer. Not that she or GMA had much time to think about Palin, being far more interested in promoting the latest shirtless wonder on Dancing With the Stars.
So how did Palin do in Couric’s old seat? As anyone should have expected, fine. While this is clearly not her day job, she’s a magnetic, telegenic politician who has faltered on television only when pushed or confronted. And no network morning show would invite someone on as a co-host and then push or confront her. Palin could not have been more cosseted had she been performing for a Tea Party convention.
Her first main role as putative co-host came in the 8 a.m. ET hour, as part of a panel talking (somewhat awkwardly) about OWN, Oprah Winfrey, Jessica Simpson, Facebook and Ashton Kutcher being cast as Steve Jobs in a proposed bio-flick. It wasn’t really her sort of forum or her strength, and she had to be led along and invited to contribute by Lauer as the other panelists talked over her. But the Jobs bio-flick segment did give her a chance to get in another jab at HBO’S Game Change movie about her, so she can count that as a win.
She was better, oddly, in a segment with a pregnant Tori Spelling. For one brief moment, she dropped the political talking points and just spoke to Spelling as one mother to another. It also was the only time on the show she performed something akin to a hosting function; she was otherwise closer to a recurring guest.
For those up early enough, Palin was first seen on Today as Lauer’s interview subject. Pressing but always polite, Lauer opened with a current campaign question, asking Palin whether she’ll be happy if Mitt Romney is the GOP nominee. “Anything is still possible,” she said, insisting that the nomination isn’t settled yet — and when Lauer pointed out she hadn’t actually answered the question, she sidestepped it again with “anybody but Obama.”
In a veiled reference to Palin’s in- terview with Couric, among other media missteps, Lauer asked if she’d advise the eventual nominee to pick a vice president who had more national exposure than she did. She said the nominee should ignore the Republican establishment and “go rogue,” insisting that media exposure won’t matter because no matter what, “they’re going to get clobbered by the lame-stream media that doesn’t like that conservative message.”
Lauer replied by reminding her she was about to serve as the show’s co-host, “which technically makes you part of the lame-stream media.”
We’ll have to wait for the ratings result, but as a hosting contest, call it a draw: a celebrity win for Palin and a professional win for Couric, who ranks with Jane Pauley as the best female host morning TV has ever seen. If there’s a loser in all this, it’s Today’s current co-host, the unctuous, floundering Ann Curry, who suffers in comparison to both.
If you’ve heard some people are gunning for Curry’s job, that should tell you why.