WNBC

In an apparent effort to cash in on the highly lucrative wedding-industrial complex, NBC Local Media is teaming up with the ubiquitous wedding brand, The Knot, to create a ten-episode weekly series titled I Do!, which will air this summer on WNBC.

According to today's press release, the show will focus, in part, on "the reality and drama of planning and throwing a wedding in the New York City area."

Scary!

The news comes amid reports that NBC Universal CEO Jeff Zucker is scrambling, as the New York Post recently put it, "to grow the media giant despite being given the financial equivalent of the cold shoulder by parent company General Electric."  read more »

Veteran local news anchor Rob Morrison is leaving WNBC, as first reported today by Fishbowl NY. For the past several years Mr. Morrison has anchored "Today in New York," the lead-in to NBC's lucrative Today.

Sources confirmed to the Media Mob that in recent days Mr. Morrison cleared out his office and left 30 Rockefeller Center for good.  read more »

Who is Rivka Galchen, M.D.? The author of Atmospheric Disturbances, which according to Leon Neyfakh is, "a winding, psychological quest story involving weather control, quantum theory, and an intricately calibrated, radically counterintuitive conception of space and time..." She also may be the new Thomas Pynchon. PLUS: The return of Mark Leyner.

Choire Sicha bravely asks, "Why can’t men write anymore?" According to Mr. Sicha, "A little penis, it turns out, can be a dangerous thing. But it’s not crazy at all to feel bad for the young male writers of our time, despite all they have done to us with their books. There are these legends that loom; all women, all terrifying."  read more »

On Thursday morning, ESPN broke the news that Roger Clemens and Andy Pettitte would be among the players named in George Mitchell's forthcoming report on steroid use in major league baseball.

Shortly thereafter, a link on the Drudge Report -- "complete steroid list" -- directed browsers to the Web site of WNBC, the New-York-based flagship station of the NBC network. There, justice reporter Jonathan Dienst had posted a roster of player names, "expected" to be included later in the afternoon in the official Mitchell Report, which included stars like Albert Pujols, Nomar Garciaparra, Johnny Damon, and Jason Varitek.

But soon after posting that list, Mr. Dienst received a phone call from an official at Major League Baseball questioning the accuracy of his reporting.  read more »

Here’s a bit of Bill Thompson’s interview with Jay DeDapper of WNBC in which he discusses Eliot Spitzer’s still-unfolding Joe Bruno problem.

Thompson said that if a circumstance arose in which his own chief of staff failed to inform him that he was doing the kinds of things Spitzer’s top aide, Rich Baum, admitted to doing, Thompson would fire him.

From the interview:

JD: If your chief of staff didn't tell you about something like this that was going on and was actively involved, would he still be working for you?

BT: My chief of staff would not be working for me. I'm not going to commenton what Eliot should do with his staff, at the same point, the one thingthat has to occur, his two staff people, it has come out today that they have not spoken to the Attorney General's office. They have to come forward.

Later in the interview, Thompson says he's open the idea of another inquiry into the whole matter, as long as it's carried out by both houses of the state legislature, not just by the Republican-controlled Senate.

From Spitzer's point of view, it's not exactly clear that getting the Democratic-controlled Assembly involved in this matter would be an entirely good thing.

A longer excerpt of the interview is after the jump.  read more »