Sunday, June 12, 2011

'Morning Jo' Denies Pitching CNN

UPDATE:

The NYPost story was addressed on Monday's Morning Joe and Scarborough provided about as strong a rebuke as one could imagine, claiming that the NY Post reporter Claire Atkinson “chose to lie.” Both Scarborough and Brzezinski were clearly perturbed by the NY Post report.



Report: MSNBC's Joe & Mika openly pitch CNN

MSNBC's morning duo of Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski wasted no time buttonholing Time Warner chief Jeff Bewkes at the Newhouse School journalism awards lunch early last week.

According to a posting by Clair Atkinson at nypost.com, the "Morning Joe" hosts, who just lost their executive producer, Chris Licht, to CBS News, made a tag-team pitch about moving their politically oriented coffee klatch to a morning slot on CNN. Scarborough and Brzezinski are rumored to want a bigger platform than the one MSNBC currently offers. They've also reportedly drafted super agent Ari Emmanuel to help them get one.

The two were hosting the June 7, Newhouse School's journalism awards lunch at the Plaza Hotel, where their current boss, Comcast's Brian Roberts, was given a special achievement award.

Roberts couldn't be there because he was picking up the $4.4 billion gold medal at the Olympics TV rights competition in Lausanne, Switzerland. Roberts' dad and Comcast founder, Ralph, stood in for son, quipping,
"Brian is proof that nepotism is a good thing. I have five kids and each one does their own thing."

Scarborough denied the pitch and said it was all just a joke.

"Mika and I had nice conversation with a CNN executive who joked that we should bring our show to CNN. We laughed, exchanged pleasantries and left the event. Mika and I plan to work at NBC for a long time."

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