ON the air, CBS' Maggie Rodriguez radiates niceness in a generic, morning-show-host sort of way, so it was time for a latte spit-take when she got off a mean-girl joke Thursday on "The Early Show."
The "Early" gang stood outside its Manhattan studio, preparing to do a battery of push-ups under the tutelage of a fitness expert. Rodriguez ran down some fitness guidelines based on age and gender and suddenly paused. She turned to "The Early Show's" dorky 41-year-old weatherman, Dave Price, and chirped: "A 60-year-old woman? That's you, Dave!"
These days, you can't blame the folks at CBS if their a.m. happy talk contains a few more zingers than usual. "The Early Show" has been stuck in third place ever since the program debuted in 1999, stubbornly defying the brass' attempts to fix it. A revolving door of on-air talent and behind-the-scenes producers has tried fiddling with the show, with little or no payoff in viewership.
Earlier this month, CBS News boss Sean McManus was so eager to wash his hands of "The Early Show" executive producer Shelley Ross that his memo announcing her departure didn't even bother with a pro-forma expression of appreciation for her efforts or make up a reason for her exit.
Ross, in a business filled with overachieving egomaniacs -- a true exemplar being the TV news version of Meryl Streep in "The Devil Wears Prada" -- had lasted in the job all of six months.
Her replacement, Rick Kaplan, is also the designated overseer for "CBS Evening News With Katie Couric," the storied news division's other high-profile disappointment. CBS boss Les Moonves last week publicly admitted (again) he wasn't thrilled with Couric's ratings, though he raved that the anchor herself is "spectacular." That gives Kaplan the unenviable task of trying to fix two problem programs at once. Which might explain why he, as well as McManus, declined through PR folk this column's request for a chat last week.
All of this begs the question of why CBS, the onetime House of Murrow, now the venerable stamping ground for the still popular "60 Minutes," can't get its two national daily news shows in order. "The Early Show," in particular, is near Moonves' heart: His wife, Julie Chen, is a co-host on the program, along with Rodriguez and the ever-amiable Harry Smith.
