Had a pleasant chat last with Chuck Scarborough - the dean of New York anchors and a master in the art of survival, TV-style - and he told me the following: He's staying.
Let me rephrase that: He's not going. Let me be even more clear: Chuck. Stays. At. Ch.4.
As you know, the NBC-owned station system has been in an uproar this week, even more so than usual. LA KNBC vet, Paul Moyer, was shown the door yesterday, while Len Berman - an institution in this town going back a quarter century - opted to leave within a couple months. According to the reports filed by our own Neil Best, the parting is amicable. Moyer, too, insisted to the LA Times that he was "retiring" which is a word that certainly implies he's going of his own volition.
But here's the simple fact: NBC is in a state of great anxiety - panic seems too strong a word, but maybe it isn't. They're now throwing the furniture out the window over at the Plaza and if a body happens to be sitting in that over-stuffed comfy chair, he or she goes too. In mid-winter, at least fifty people - many of their first-raters, including top newsroom editors like Peter Facini (long ago the station's Long Island producer) and Phil O'Brien - were fired or found the door on their own. Any one deemed "expensive" is thus deemed "expendable."
Thus the fear. A report in Gawker earlier this week had both Chuck and Moyer out the door, per "rumors," because they're exclusive members of the $3 Million club. So far, half right.
Here's what Chuck told me:
"No, I think I got lumped in with others somehow, but there's nothing to that. Nary a word has been said and quite the opposite - they've [management] assured me there is not a discussion going on. I've got three years and change as of July left on my contract, and so far as I know, I'll be working [to the end of it] if not beyond. There's nothing in the wind that I'm aware of."
"Do I feel confident? I'd tell you I'd feel a hundred percent confident [but] because the business changes all the time, this is a snapshot of this day. Those reports are completely erroneous and I've been assured by management that they are. They have shed some high-priced talent around the system, and whether they've finished doing that, I don't know. We've cut an awful lot here [as] the business model keeps changing. We're all caught up in this sort of perfect storm of ...a collapsing economy that [affects] your newspaper and my television station."
Yeah, we talked about Sue too.
"I hear nothing about Sue either," and he said they're gonna continue to be a team. "I think it'd be very difficult for them" to drop both.
Then, he got wistful: "If it ended tomorrow, I would be blessed to have been here that long [35 years!] and I have zero regrets, and I certainly wouldn't walk out of here angry. But I have hopes that I'll be at the helm here through the end of my contract."
Do I believe Chuck? Sure. Of course. The real question is this: Should he believe management?
Notwithstanding the obvious reason why he shouldn't - if they could hire a Latvian monk with purple hair and a Cyclops eye to anchor and who would cost nothing but still draw viewers, then...so long, Chuck! But I doubt if they can.
Three reasons why Chuck/Sue stay, and I could be wrong...I can be that way sometimes:
1.) It'd cost 'em around $10 million to cut bait. That's a golden exit ramp, and maybe a prohibitively expensive one.
2.) There really isn't anyone to replace this team; they ARE Ch. 4, and lose them and you become a bowl of oatmeal, indistinguishable from the other bowls of oatmeal out there. Also, Scarborough's a very good anchor - not some blow-dried twinkie - with a vast store of institutional knowledge and "marketplace equity."
3.) Chuck's also anchoring the new 7 p.m. telecast on the digital channel; this is a critical venture and so far, the 7 p.m. hour is pretty much the only reason to tune in; more on this in Monday's Newsday.
Again, I could be very wrong. The ineradicable truth: If Ch. 4 can find a cheaper way to do this, Chuck'll be spending a lot more time out in the Hamptons this summer. A source tells me, "this has gotta be his last contract. And then what..."