New Chapter In The Morning Wars

(From The New York Times -- By Jacques Steinberg)

GOOD MORNING AMERICA had been on the air for 13 minutes on the East Coast on Thursday when an embarrassing technical breakdown occurred -- for nearly 30 seconds,
a recorded interview with HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON went silent, and viewers could hear the increasingly agitated voices of producers in the show's TIMES SQUARE control room as they tried to solve the problem.

Amid the clatter of this impromptu, behind-the-scenes audio tour of the nation's second-highest-rated morning show, viewers heard one male voice ask, firmly and evenly, "What is going on?"

It was JIM MURPHY, who was then beginning his third official day as senior executive producer of the program and who,
at that particular moment, was leaning against a control room wall sipping an iced latte from STARBUCKS.

Though ultimately responsible for that day's program -- which would include another patch of silence just four minutes later -- Mr. Murphy, 46, mostly hung back as his charges furiously worked to diagnose what exactly was happening while ensuring that no four-letter words, however innocently uttered, had somehow seeped onto the air. (They hadn't.)

"What can you do?" Mr. Murphy said, when asked later by a visitor who had witnessed the scene how he had remained in an almost Zen-like state, at least outwardly, while obviously concerned. "If there's no sound going out, there's no sound going out. You have to stay calm and let the people who can fix it fix it."

Mr. Murphy -- a veteran television executive whose varied production credits include SISKEL AND EBERT (in the 1980s and 1990s) and THE CBS EVENING NEWS (for six years, ending in January) -- will need to summon all his powers of serenity, to say nothing of the skills he has acquired during a nearly three-decade career, to undertake a crucial assignment that begins in earnest on Wednesday -- catch ratings leader, NBC's TODAY show with new co-host MEREDITH VIEIRA.

New Chapter In The Morning Wars