Madness in the Morning: Life and Death in TV's Early Morning Ratings War

Surprise! The men and women who inform and dazzle us each weekday morning are no better than we. Hack's gossipy account reveals the flaws in the glitz and glamour of the TV morning news biz, inviting us to watch network executives decide that America needs a chimp as well as an idiosyncratic host; to follow that early-era Today host Dave Garroway's slow decline into a "quagmire of mental confusion and emotional vulnerability"; to cringe as Bryant Gumbel asserts his massive ego and skewers the efforts of his co-hosts and staff,including the harmless Willard Scott; and to check out the self-indulgent antics of David Hartman, the seemingly genial Good Morning America host. As NBC was the boldest of the three original TV networks in developing morning programming, Hack gives its history the most scrutiny, while he portrays CBS as the perennial laggard, making one wonder why the network ever threw Captain Kangaroo off the air. Best of all, this book, which has a tone greasy enough to keep the pages turning but not so malicious as to induce guilt, portrays men and women like Barbara Walters, Kevin Newman, Joan Lunden and Katie Couric, who sacrifice their private lives to usher in the start of the day, and the network executives who sit in a veritable pressure-cooker backstage trying to get them-or someone waiting in the wings-to keep the act going for just one morning more.