What’s Hot/What’s Not: 07/04/10

What’s Hot:

Larry King gives up 9pm ET – It had to happen so that wasn’t so newsy. How it happened is very newsy and I don’t think we’ve heard the last on this…

Piers Morgan – Like a boomerang, no matter how hard CNN tries to make this go away it keeps coming back…

What’s Not:

Damage Control please report to the Damage Control Department for repairs – In what’s quickly shaping up to be the #2 most bungled handling of a transition in TV this year behind NBC’s howler of an attempt at a smooth transition with Jay Leno and Conan O’Brien, CNN’s mishandling of Larry King’s departure and the persistent stories swirling around Piers Morgan has been appallingly bad from the start. How many times has CNN tried to shoot the Piers Morgan story down now? Three times? More? Each time some new nugget of information comes out sending the network back into scramble mode yet again. I’m trying to come up with scenarios where CNN could wind up looking more feckless than it already does in its handling of this story but I’m hard pressed to think of any.

What’s ironic about all this is the conventional wisdom is King’s day was done years ago and there were any number of media writers out there, myself included, who wouldn’t have bat an eye if CNN had publicly sent King packing. We would have very likely said, “It had to be done. CNN made the right call.” Instead, by trying to go for the “graceful exit” strategy just for appearances sake, which nobody really buys (and those recurring Piers Morgan stories don’t help any), those very media writers who would have been on CNN’s side are now privately throwing darts at the network for its “air ball” of a response on what was essentially a layup. CNN could have had the writers publicly on its side if it had been up front with its intentions. Instead it has the writers privately chortling at its ineptitude. Chaos News Network indeed.