NBC Universal might want to consider quitting the business of moderating presidential debates this season. They gave it their best shot (twice!) but it’s just not working out.
Unfortunately for viewers, it’s not over. NBC Nightly News anchor Lester Holt was recently announced as the moderator for the first presidential debate between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump on September 26.
What fresh hell will the once celebrated news network visit upon the American public this time?
NBCU’s bad run began when CNBC tried to host a Republican primary debate in October 2015. It did not go well.
Media critics assailed CNBC moderators John Harwood, Carl Quintanilla, and Becky Quick for their handling of the debate. Some complained that the moderators talked too much, while others took issue with the “condescending, snide, hostile and borderline insulting” questions.
The debate was panned on both sides of the political spectrum. RNC chairman Reince Priebus called it “extremely disappointing.” Think Progress called it a “total trainwreck.”
Following the debate, NBC executives devolved into sniping and backstabbing, with NBC News brass anonymously pointing their fingers at CNBC for not asking for their help in debate preparations.
In fact, the CNBC debate was such a debacle that the RNC pulled out of another debate that was supposed to be on NBC. It aired on CNN instead.
Then on Wednesday, the two major party candidates took part in a presidential forum moderated by Today host and Clinton Foundation associate Matt Lauer. That did not go well, either.
The New York Times, among others, was not impressed with Lauer’s performance:
In an event aboard the decommissioned aircraft carrier Intrepid, the “Today” host was lost at sea. Seemingly unprepared on military and foreign policy specifics, he performed like a soldier sent on a mission without ammunition, beginning with a disorganized offensive, ending in a humiliating retreat.
The Times ended up printing a masthead editorial, a TV column and a news article all denouncing Lauer’s poor preparation and suggesting that the morning anchor should stick to lighter fare.
Even Stephen King didn’t think Lauer did a good job.
Neither did Rosemary Woodhouse.
In fact, only one person in the entire country was defending Lauer’s performance.
Well, maybe two people. Late Friday, NBC News’ geriatric chairman Andy Lack put on a brave face, probably after being ordered to do so by Lauer.
But all is not well at NBC behind the scenes, with one anonymous network executive describing Lauer’s forum as a “disaster,” echoing the language used by Donald Trump to describe John Harwood during the CNBC primary debate.
As Lack’s too-little, too-late Friday afternoon e-mail to his staff suggests, NBC is now in free-fall following Lauer’s national humiliation. In the last few years, the once-mighty network has become little more than a series of co-centric circles of sycophancy and flattery around Lauer, their biggest and only remaining star (with Lack himself in the innermost circle). One can only imagine what’s going on now at 30 Rock as executives double down in fealty to their anchor-master, sending him syrupy e-mails praising his debate performance and poo poo-ing the sewer of social media.
As for Lauer, he’s probably getting the last laugh. He got it far worse from the public after he bullied Ann Curry off Today in 2012, and he’s recovered handily. After all, he’s making a reported $20 million a year to work four days a week, and gets his helicopter rides paid for to and from New York’s elite Hamptons, where he just purchased fellow liberal Richard Gere’s sprawling estate for $36.5 million.
All eyes now turn to Lauer’s far-less-compensated colleague Lester Holt, whose improbable promotion to anchor of NBC Nightly News came as the result of another NBC debacle, when Brian Williams got outed as a preening, fabulist fake. 30 Rock must be buzzing with quavering producers putting together bulging binders of briefing books, trying to help Holt head off the avalanche of criticism to come.
Can Holt, “the hardest working man in television“, turn things around in time for the much-anticipated Clinton-Trump debate later this month? Probably not, if he’s getting prepped by the same servile “brain trust” who left Matt Lauer twisting in the wind. But if there’s one good thing Holt has going for him, it’s that it will be hard to outdo Lauer and John Harwood in the douchebaggery department.
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