Piers Morgan: Update…
The New York Times’ Brian Stelter and Bill Carter have an updated version of their story from yesterday. Pertinent section…
CNN executives were clearly impressed by Mr. Morgan’s ITV interviews — and by his reputation for preparing scrupulously for them. For his part, Mr. Morgan has long told friends that Mr. King’s show was his dream job.
But NBC had full control over Mr. Morgan’s immediate future in television because his contract grants the network exclusive rights to all his work on American television. CNN had made its interest in Mr. Morgan clear, both to him and to NBC. In the usual course of contractual niceties in the entertainment industry, Mr. Morgan and his representative could listen to what CNN had to say, but had to steer clear of anything that might constitute a formal negotiation.
The main action has not directly involved CNN. It is taking place quietly between executives from NBC Universal and Turner Broadcasting, a unit of Time Warner. These talks centered on whether Turner had something to offer NBC Universal.
Did the MSM media writers fail to do due diligence in the previous reporting of the Piers Morgan CNN stories? To wit: Did anyone bother talking to NBC about its deal with Morgan and what control of Morgan’s appearances it had in the US? And a corollary question: If someone did contact NBC and they got “warned off” of pursuing this story further, did they sit on their hands rather than go public?
Hindsight is 20-20 of course but it now seems obvious that talking with NBC about whether it had full control of Morgan or not might have been a good idea…
July 14, 2010 at 6:52 am
Good points. Thru all the coverage, I also wondered why no beat reporter bothered to note how many such hybrid talent deals are now taking place between studios/networks and how it’s no longer either-or situations. Most obvious is Ellen DeGeneres where both Fox and Time Warner have publicly praised the crossover awareness and marketing ops they’re. Instead, we got reporting that was sloppy at best, naive at worst.
January 3, 2011 at 1:16 pm
[...] say it was talking to Morgan, even though it was (though maybe not in legal terms), until it had reached an agreement with NBC Universal. It wouldn’t say for sure that Piers was the one until it had hired him. [...]