Perhaps I really have been watching too much Good Day New York, because it makes total sense that all the on-camera people on Good Morning America are rather detached and not firing on a million cylinders. In fact, the only person I could describe as perky is Sam Champion--who really does belong there more than the evening local news. (Not because he's that great per se, it's more that he is really upbeat.)
Diane Sawyer is undeniably the ruler of this roost, and I always wonder if on some level she's thinking "What Have I Done To Deserve This?" She's very poised, clipped, and relatively serious--albeit without coming across as above it all. It's just that it strikes me as odd that someone who has done many high-profile, indepth interviews is giving her comments on surfers over the tune from Hawaii 5-0.
Then there's Robin Roberts, who today is in New Orleans to celebrate the return of the Saints. I'm a bit hesitant to judge her since she's outside of her normal position as co-anchor, but she just seems like a total non-entity. Apparently the fact that she's from the Gulf Coast is the only real remarkable aspect about her.
Taking, I guess, the "Ann Curry" role is Chris Cuomo, of that Cuomo political family which you are thinking about. Granted, he's very good-looking, but this man just looks like a deer caught in the headlights. I don't know if it's the fact that HD makes his blue eyes very blue, but I can't help but wonder if he's running around offcamera thinking "where's my copy? where's my copy?"
Finally there's Sam Champion. I don't know what to really make out of Sam Champion. I've always thought that he was a LA weatherman who took a wrong turn and wound up in New York. He's too waxed, buffed, sunshine for New York local television. (Or for CNN for that matter.) He is, however; perfect for morning television on a national level. He's like Al Roker without the excessive jollyness. You just get the impression that Sam is like "yeah, whatever, get me a soy burger" when the camera is off.
I grew up in a Today household, so the few times I watched Good Morning America were during the Charlie (now Charles) Gibson-Joan Lunden era. My impression of it at that time was that it was extremely saccharine and low on substance. Of course, since it was run by ABC Entertainment at the time, that sort of mood made sense. Well, it's undeniably run by ABC News now because it is serious, serious, serious. This is not a bad thing, as I said above. See, at 7 in the morning, I am not upbeat and I do not want people to force me to be upbeat. I just want information and that's just what they seem to do--at least during the first hour.
Come 8, Diane's pageant show background kicks in. She starts slopping the sugar left, right, and centre. It's kind of unsettling for me. Oddly enough, Chris Cuomo starts getting more serious (even Ann Curry starts giving the news in a more relaxed tone during the 2nd hour and she's got another hour after that). The man even delivers a story about a Target being held up--over an Elmo doll--with the gravitas normally applied for world summits. He still looks like a deer caught in the headlights.
If there is a segment that seemed to define the second hour of GMA, it would be the next segment where Diane interviewed Oprah Winfrey and her friend Gayle King. Major media figures talking to each other as if it's a coffee klatsch. I will cut them some minor slack since the second hour of any morning show is frothy, but this is just weird. Diane Sawyer is interviewing Oprah Winfrey and there are thousands of probing questions to be asked, but they aren't. Now, it's likely that Oprah wouldn't answer them, but again, just on a symbolic level: Diane Sawyer, Oprah Winfrey; this shouldn't be a disposable interview.
This is followed up by Robin Roberts interviewing The Edge & Billy Joe Armstrong about a charity in New Orleans that helps give musicians their lost instruments. Probing, this is not. Informative? Maybe. By the way, Robin Roberts is still a non-entity, strange since her background is in sports where personality is everything.
I'm starting to wonder why GMA is coming across as less grating than Today, and finally it dawned upon me, they aren't constantly cutting away to the tourist audience with thousands of daft signs for "Granma," nor are they omnipresent in every single segment as they are in Today. Thank god for that. Peculiarly, the show seems to run shorter than its NBC rival. The 8-8:25 segment consisted of a very quick news segment, Diane talks to Oprah & Gayle, and Robin's interview. Next thing I know, Lori Stokes is doing local news. (By the way, Lori Stokes should have Robin Roberts job.)
The last half-hour begins with another possible probing interview that will likely fall into the coffee foam: Marcia Cross. You know you want that question to be asked. I know I do, but if Oprah didn't get challenged, you know they won't play hardball with an ABC celebrity on a top-rated show. Interestingly after Chris Cuomo's stunned delivery of the news (news at 8:30? I like you people), they cut to Sam Champion talking about a blood drive, which he can't participate in. Nor can I, nor can most people that I know. This is an exaggeration, but I get the impression that this is like Larry Kramer talking to Anita Bryant about Florida orange juice.
So Diane talks to Marcia Cross and manages to play along without giving away the subtext of this interview, which is "let's not admit that we know a fair amount of closeting is going on." What they do talk about is the logistics of Cross's pregnancy and Desperate Housewives this season, and again, it's a coffee klatsch. It's rather funny for me to see all these bigger name celebrities getting these softball interviews by people who should know better (well, person who should know better, because I have not seen Robin Roberts at work before GMA).
Chris Cuomo is given a rather appropriate interview for someone of a prominent family: Bill Moyers's son talking about his drug addiction. Cuomo sounds engaged in the interview, but he looks like he's thinking "fluffy pink clouds, gum drops, Brooks Brothers suits." Depressingly, he's more probing than anything we've seen Diane do this morning, but I wonder if that has more to do with Diane being hamstrung by a dictum not to irritate the celebrities. I don't think the producers would give a toss if Bill Moyers's son was pissed off.
The feminist in me rather likes the dynamic of the show, where men are relegated to second string work while the women are given high-profile, albeit puffy pieces. (I was rather shocked that Diane let Bill O'Reilly off so easily during the first hour.)
What does GMA boil down to for me? Big names, little depth. On one hand, the show seems to be mercifully free of the asinine cooking and fashion segments which are the staple of Today and Good Day New York, but it also has so many opportunities to go in deeper with the subjects they interview and they drop the ball.
Memo to the producers: You can be vicious in the morning.
On deck: The Early Show, or "Who Are You People from Channel Z?"
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