Viewers learned this week that they were going to have to say goodbye to two different anchors who had come to represent the public face of major television brands, albeit under starkly different circumstances.

Jon Stewart told viewers Tuesday night that he would end his more than 15 year run at Comedy Central’s The Daily Show later this year.

Stewart’s announcement shocked fans and industry observers, since the host is riding high in ratings and buzz, and is widely regarded to be leaving at the top of his game.

Brian Williams, on the other hand, is being unceremoniously shown the door—at least temporarily—thanks largely to a crisis of his own creation. Following his acknowledgement that he had embellished a story from his reporting in war-torn Iraq, the NBC Nightly News anchor is technically suspended from his anchor chair for six months without pay—though many question whether he will ever return.

NBC has already stripped his name from the show’s branding, and the network is investigating both Williams’ on-air reporting and his expense accounts. Lester Holt, the host of the weekend edition of Nightly News and Today is serving as the broadcast’s interim anchor.

While the circumstances differ, the two departures pose tricky problems for the networks, where both Williams and Stewart had become so publicly associated with the respective brands.

At Comedy Central, the focus is now shifting to an appropriate send-off for a man who is widely seen as having “put Comedy Central on the pop culture map,” as The Hollywood Reporter put it Wednesday.

With Stewart as a tentpole, the network’s late-night block has come to be seen as a barometer of the zeitgeist, an enviable position for any brand, and one that makes the job of replacing Stewart somewhat difficult for Comedy Central and parent company Viacom.

It’s also the second time in the span of a year that Comedy Central has found itself with a major face heading for the exit. Stephen Colbert is set to replace David Letterman at CBS this September; Larry Wilmore took up that time slot in February with the debut of The Nightly Show.

The obvious names to replace Stewart are already out of the running, with John Oliver at HBO and Wilmore now occupying Colbert’s old spot.

Comedy Central could promote from within the Daily Show’s bench of correspondents, which includes Samantha Bee, Jason Jones, Aasif Mandvi and Jessica Williams. Or they could look to a new voice to helm a broadcast that drives much of the ratings and advertising success at Comedy Central, whose Nielsen numbers are second only to MTV in the Viacom portfolio.

Over at NBC, the network’s branding and image issues are bit more urgent, with the Williams saga just the latest in a string of bad headlines that have also included ratings and personnel woes at Today, Meet the Press, and MSNBC.

Williams may have caused permanent damage to his own reputation, but he also called into question the credibility of the news division responsible for America’s highest rated broadcast news program.

NBCUniversal CEO Steve Burke acknowledged as much when he said in a statement Tuesday that “by his actions, Brian has jeopardized the trust millions of Americans place in NBC News.”

Although conventional wisdom has already relegated the broadcast news programs to the category of barely relevant relics, the truth is that Williams and his counterparts at ABC and CBS still played a major role in shaping public perception of their respective network brands.

NBC is also still dealing with the lingering melodrama in the mornings, where Today has never seemed to recover from the bungled departure of Ann Curry in 2012. The hiring of a high-flying ESPN vet to helm Today in late 2014 also turned out to be a misfire, with NBC dumping him three months after they announced the move.

Meet the Press, the once unbeatable king of the Sunday political talk shows, now jostles for second place with ABC’s This Week.

Then there are the cratering ratings at cable sibling MSNBC, which do nothing to help NBC’s brand, even if the two are technically separate entities within the NBCUniversal corporate structure. In the public’s mind, they’re all connected.

How does NBC fix its Nightly News problem?

Some critics are saying it’s time to just throw in the towel altogether and acknowledge that an evening newscast with a Voice Of Authority anchor has no place in today’s evolving media landscape.

NBC could also choose to pivot to a new generation of news talent in an effort to freshen up the Nightly brand, much as ABC News did when it tapped David Muir to replace Diane Sawyer on its own evening broadcast.

Among the names now being floated around: Holt, Today host Savannah Guthrie, Willie Geist, Carl Quintanilla,

Read More: The Hollywood Reporter, The New York Times

Tags:


  Save as PDF