NBC's
Meet the Press is flailing and sinking under David Gregory's leadership—and the network's response has been to
double down on the show's David Gregory-ness:
... the network appointed a new executive producer at “MTP,” Rob Yarin, a veteran media consultant. Yarin, who had worked with Gregory on an MSNBC show, “Race for the White House,” during the 2008 campaign, succeeded Betsy Fischer Martin, who reigned over “MTP” for 11 years. Fischer Martin had helped Russert soar to glory, but had disagreed with Gregory over matters of style and substance (she was promoted to oversee all of NBC’s political coverage).
In interviews, Yarin and Gregory say they are tinkering with the show to keep it abreast of a changing media environment. They’ve made the program’s pacing faster, with shorter interview segments.
Really, when David Gregory is bringing you down, what is there to do but bring in a new executive producer who agrees with him more and dumb down the content? Well, NBC did do one other thing:
Last year, the network undertook an unusual assessment of the 43-year-old journalist, commissioning a psychological consultant to interview his friends and even his wife. The idea, according to a network spokeswoman, Meghan Pianta, was “to get perspective and insight from people who know him best.”
A psychological consultant, to get perspective and insight from the people who know him best—except the problem is the television viewers who apparently don't like what they know. What are his wife and friends going to say? "Let Gregory be Gregory"? All the evidence suggests he already is being his hacktacular self. In any case, NBC is
now insisting the consultant wasn't psychological at all, but was a brand consultant, which is rather more a done thing in the television business. However, Paul Farhi, the author of the original story:
... said he checked with NBC twice on Sunday about the term "psychological" and that they had no objections at the time.
"I checked it twice with them yesterday. No objections then," he said in an email.
What a surprise that this is the same smooth-running operation that's overseen Gregory's ongoing failure at
Meet the Press.