Folks at ABC are “doing a happy dance” over word that CBS is about to remake The Early Show into a Morning Joe-like ensemble gabfest with Charlie Rose and Gayle King joining current co-hosts Erica Hill and Jeff Glor, The New York Times says. The plan indicates that the network is abandoning any hope of overtaking ABC’s Good Morning America or NBC’s Today in the ratings, and are settling instead for the cachet of being a hard-news alternative — which appeals to CBS’ older demo. CBS hasn’t decided whether to stick with the Early Show name, and it seems there’s no role for another co-host, Chris Wragge. The revamped show would have a regular group of contributors with Rose guiding things at 7 AM, and King taking charge at 8. CBS execs can’t be pleased with the way The Times framed their plans: The paper says that the industry’s view ranges “from skeptical to downright dismissive” and describes Rose as “a mainstay on the Manhattan cocktail party circuit.”


Honestly, this sounds way better than ABC or NBC. Perhaps Charlie Rose and Gayle King will let their interview subjects answer a question without interrupting them, as Ann Curry at TODAY and Robin Roberts at GMA seem to be unable to do.
CBS is making a BIG mistake at least in one choice. Gayle King is as poor an interviewer as I have ever seen. I tried watching her show on the OWN network and had to give it up. She doesn’t allow her guests much time to talk. She does most of the talking and that gets old. Viewers want the host to ask questions and hear the guests expound on the subject.Unless she takes a hint from her best friend who was a good interviewer, she will contine to be boring.
I totally agree! I can no longer watch her show or listen to it on the radio.
Oh God, I’m back in bed already.
Like the idea, but Gayle King doesn’t equal hard news. I would not even tune in expecting hard news knowing she was a host in order to avoid what I assume would be Hoda-and-Kathie Lee lite. They should replace her.
Did Oprah Winfrey grease the wheels to get her husband, Gayle King, signed to co-host the CBS Morning Show? Just wondering.
I wish I could just Tivo the hour Rose will be on.
Bill Hemmer and Megyn Kelly would give the dumb-fests on NBC and ABC a run for their money. Lucky for Fox News they are part of the family.
Fox news shows don’t get one-quarter of the ratings the Today Show does.
Have to feel for CBS, they have had nothing but middling success with their morning show. What would work for CBS?
Far more interesting then the crap airing on the current network morning shows. Seems like their trying to mix it up a little which is a great thing!
I can’t help but think King is only a part of this to draw a few appearances from her BFF Oprah to boost ratings.
wha??!! rose is a martini sipping night lifer-and Gayle King? they could have gotten Michelle Bachman and Newt Gingrich for peanuts-that would have been a hoot.
I love the smell of Boomers in the morning.
It smells like…like Efferdent.
I’m surprising Oprah is allowing Gayle to do this quite frankly. And how many hours does Gayle have in a day? She has her own talk show, a radio show, and runs a magazine. I can’t see how someone can give 100% to a job if they’re doing all these other things. Plus isn’t Gayle based in Chicago? Where is this CBS show going to be filmed?
In regard to Charlie Rose, he’s one of the worst (and most pretentious) interviewers out there. Boring too. For some reason, he invites people onto his show then tries to prove how much smarter he is than them no matter what the topic is. I really can’t see him in a group setting. He’s interviewed groups on his show before and the results were always terrible.
Charlie’s risking his intellectual cred on perky morning news. Love him on PBS. Please don’t sell out, Charlie. As for Oprah’s BFF (yeah, right, more like life partner) Gayle, haven’t we had enough.
I think it will work. I would like to see some hard news in the morning. Charlie Rose seems perfect for this role; he is a class act interviewer. Don’t know about Gayle King; maybe they’ll “fix” her. Other than that, I will watch.
The balance here is going to be tricky. Rose and King are polar opposites in terms of personality and delivery. I have a great deal of respect for Rose, but for this to work, he can’t be condescending to King because she’s not “old school” journalism. On the flip side, she can’t be too trite either….this isn’t OWN.
CBS has got a lot of “team building” exercises to do on this one.
I don’t understand the east coast/new york media fixation with Charlie Rose. He’s on PBS, he’s on Bloomberg, now he’s going to be on CBS in the morning.
He’s been on TV since the year 1; everyone who’s interested in him has sampled the show, and decided whether or not to watch. (Judging from Bloomberg, he didn’t move the people meter at all.)
In short, there’s nothing new here; he’s not going to bring in new eyeballs; his numbers on PBS and Bloomberg are so slight that even adding those viewers isn’t going to change – or help – CBS in the morning.
It’s beyond me why the New York media crowd doesn’t understand this; or why they can’t grasp that Charlie’s fawning interviews of the likes of Barry Diller aren’t all that interesting or relevant to the rest of the country. (They work for the small sliver of echo-chamber media types who watch – and underwrite – him on PBS. But beyond that…)
Love Charlie Rose, he is one of the best ever. He doesn’t just ask questions that someone else has written down on cards for him. He has an actual understanding of the topic and/or person and not only asks questions but engages in a conversation. I feel bad about them shoving out Chris Wragge,(like ABC sending Chris Cuomo to the Siberia of 20/20) he was a great anchor on CBS’s local NY aternoon news broadcasts if he’s out of TES hope he’s back to where he was before.
The one person they should have considered, but they blew it again would be Betty Nguyen. Her fans, just love her and she is so polished.
Maybe in a few few months they’ll smarten up.
Mike