Maybe Hillary will do her debut show.
Posted on 06/12/2003 11:12:10 AM PDT by lainie
NEW YORK - Jane Pauley's life away from television didn't last long. Less than a month after leaving as host of "Dateline NBC," Pauley agreed Thursday to launch a daytime talk show for NBC Enterprises. She has also signed a contract with Random House to write two books.
The talk show, set to begin in fall 2004, will likely put Pauley in direct competition with daytime queen Oprah Winfrey (news) in many markets.
"All I can say is, if I can tape her, everyone else can," Pauley said.
The 52-year-old Pauley, who spent 14 years as "Today" show co-host, was careful not to use the word "retirement" when she announced last winter that she was leaving NBC News. She said she had entrepreneurial instincts and several ideas.
Pauley agreed to a meeting in April with NBC's syndication arm as a courtesy, saying she had "not a glimmer of interest" in a talk show. But she realized many of the ideas she had been thinking about would work in that setting.
"I didn't need to have a piecemeal future if I accepted an offer to do something bigger than I expected," she said.
She anticipates covering traditional daytime TV topics, things that would interest women around her own age. The show will be taped before a live audience at NBC's Rockefeller Center studios in midtown Manhattan.
Broadcasters across the country should have a strong interest in "The Jane Pauley Show," said Bill Carroll, an expert in the syndication market for Katz Television Group, a media buying firm.
"It's someone of credibility, someone who is a known name for them," Carroll said. "It's not someone where they have to say, `establish Jane who?'"
But NBC Enterprises is giving itself a challenge by pitching her show for late afternoon — the time of day ruled by Winfrey and, to a lesser extent, Winfrey's protege, Dr. Phil McGraw, Carroll said. It might be better to establish Pauley's new show in the less competitive late-morning hours, he said.
At least in the short term, Pauley's show could hurt Ellen DeGeneres, who has a talk show starting this fall signed to NBC-owned and operated stations, he said. By next year, the two women might compete for time slots, he said.
Pauley said the new show "is a bigger challenge than I expected and frankly I'm surprised at how ready I am to take it on. But I'm glad it's a year from now so I can get readier."
Random House announced Thursday that Pauley is writing a memoir, currently untitled, that is expected to be published next year.
She will then co-author an advice book with her sister, Ann Pauley. Titled, "Now, Begin," it will be "about helping people to know themselves in order to find, at midlife, what it was they were meant to do now that they are grown up," Random House editor Kate Medina said.
Yeah, and Hillary didn't have the slightest interest in being a Senator, just as she doesn't have the slightest interest in being president. Quit insulting our intelligence.
Maybe Hillary will do her debut show.
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