TVSquad

A lot of people only know Andy Rooney from the "A Few Minutes with Andy Rooney" segments that he's done on 60 Minutes since the late 70s. That's a shame. Not that those segments aren't great (I still make a point of making sure I watch Rooney every Sunday night), it's just that there's a lot more to Rooney than what viewers see on TV. His new book will show you that.

Actually, the title 60 Years of Wisdom and Wit is inaccurate, since the book also has a few pieces from the early 1940s, when Rooney was a reporter in the Army. Rooney will be 91 in January, and he really has lived a great life. We should all be working and still lively when we're near that age.

Newsman and producer Don Hewitt has died at the age of 86.

Hewitt is probably best known for creating 60 Minutes and ushering in the genre of the TV news magazine show. He also produced The CBS Television News in the late 40s and later The CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite. He also directed various TV shows and specials, including See It Now (Grant Heslov played Hewitt in the 2005 movie Good Night, and Good Luck), Presidential Timber, and One Plane, One Bomb, and even produced the first Presidential debate on TV, Nixon vs. Kennedy.

Look at this cast list!

President Obama
Katie Couric
Bill Clinton
Tom Brokaw
Les Moonves
Andy Rooney
Nick Clooney
Jimmy Buffett
Mickey Hart
Buzz Aldrin
Bob Schieffer
Wynton Marsalis

What do they all have in common?

Today is Memorial Day (formerly Decoration Day), and between the burgers, beaches, and the day off from work, there are probably some people who aren't quite sure what the day means. Andy Rooney talked about it last night (actually a repeat from last year) on 60 Minutes. His book My War is a really interesting take on World War II.

Andy Rooney is 90 years old, and has spent the greater half of the twentieth century (and well into the twenty-first) providing political and cultural insight to the masses through op-eds in both print and on CBS newsmagazine staple 60 Minutes. Despite remaining America's favorite most recognizable curmudgeon, Rooney's weekly diatribes have grown increasingly stale, and significantly more bizarre with each episode.

Any semblance of lucidity Rooney may have employed in ... I guess (?) what was once considered clever or funny or - at the very least - entertaining material has most assuredly fallen to the wayside. The scraps with which we've been left are, indeed, entertaining, but not for the reasons Rooney (or the producers of 60 Minutes) probably intended.

After Johnny Carson, David Letterman is my favorite late night talk show host of all-time. But last night he made a joke that made me cringe (and I'm pretty cringe-resistant).

He was giving the weekly "Fun Facts" list (doing it on Wednesday this week because he's in repeats tonight and Friday due to of March Madness basketball), and the last joke in the pile was one about Andy Rooney. I don't remember it verbatim, but it was something along the lines of, "Andy Rooney's wife tells him, 'yeah, a--hole, I've noticed," a joke about how Rooney always says the phrase "you ever notice...," which, in all fairness to Rooney, I think has been said more by his impersonators (like Joe Piscopo) than by Rooney himself.

I'm sure we'll all be giving some of our favorite TV quotes of the year at some point this week or next. Over at TV Newser, Brian is collecting some of the best quotes from the world of network and cable news.

"You're either Edward R. Murrow or you're Pat O'Brien from The Insider. Pick one." - Tucker Carlson, to Anderson Cooper.

Tucker, Tucker, Tucker. This same exact quote could be said about you.

After the jump, some more of my of my favorites.

Odd headline over at the Asbury Park Press. It says ""60 Minutes Has No Plans To Replace Bradley," but then in the article there's a quote from the show's executive producer, Jeff Fager, where he says "It's a long-term project to find the next full-time person who can show the abilities that are expected of a 60 Minutes correspondent."

Sounds to me like they do have plans to replace Bradley, but not until next season.

But what's the big deal here? Did we really expect that 60 Minutes can just lose a top reporter and not replace him? And I hate the word "replace" anyway, like he just kept a spot warm and now they're throwing another person in there to take up the spot. Bradley himself won't (and can't) be replaced, he was unique. It's his duties that will be done by someone else.

[via TV Newser]

Like a lot of people, I'll be out there today spending cash and gift cards I got yesterday. There are a lot of TV-oriented books released every year, and many of them are quite good. Some of them are downright terrible (*cough* TWOP *cough*), but let's focus on the good ones. Below is a list of 10 great TV books to give the TV addict in your family.

1. Hello, Lied The Agent, by Ian Gurvitz: Excellent behind-the-scenes look at how the TV industry works, from a writer/producer of such shows as Wings, Becker, and Get A Life. He talks about the dos and don'ts for Hollywood writers, pitch meetings, cancellations, shows the journal he kept a few years ago, and even talks about the new shows that have debuted in the past couple of years. Very informative and just really, really funny.

Katie Couric just broke into CBS programming with the shocking news that longtime 60 Minutes journalist Ed Bradley died this morning of leukemia. He was 65.

I use the word shocking because I don't think there was any public indication that Bradley was sick from leukemia.

At the time of his death, Bradley was still working on 60 Minutes, and stories that he was working on still remain to be aired at a later date. He had been with 60 Minutes for 26 years and won several awards, including an Emmy, a Polk, a Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award, and a duPont citation.

Bradley was married to artist Patricia Blanchet.

Possibly. Sources say that the veteran newsman isn't happy with the way CBS execs are handling his contract negotiations, and he has told people he's "on strike." Not literally on strike, just not happy with the way things are going. Then again, he told the New York Daily News that he's honoring his contract, there has been no work slowdown, and he even taped a new opening for an old piece (the show is in summer reruns right now).

My guess? There are contract negotiations going on, but I'm sure Bradley is working the same way he always has, and the press is just trying to find juicy stuff to tease with about a longtime TV personality (shocking the press would do that, I know). The NYDN even tries to get him to talk about his contract, and he says he doesn't discuss his contract with anyone. I think that's the right response to that question no matter what the situation. I really doubt Bradley is walking around the CBS offices with a donut, talking to people in their cubicles, not doing any work, going back to his office to pout and play solitaire on his computer until producers give him more money.

Sure, he's slowed down a bit (he turns 88 tomorrow!), but Wallace says he has no intention of packing up his awards and leaving his CBS office. NBC even wanted him, but he decided to stay at CBS:

"I'm going to stay here ... there's an understanding that I'm not going to be getting on airplanes and flying all over the world, but there are going to be certain important interviews I will do for 60 Minutes."

The one interview he really wants? President George Bush, who has never agreed to talk to him. Wallace has interviewed every President since JFK, and has written a note to new White House Press Secretary Tony Snow in hopes of getting one with Bush.

This afternoon, NBC will officially announce the news that everybody already knows: Meredith Vieira is the next co-host of Today. Katie Couric will leave NBC in May to anchor the CBS Evening News (something that doesn't have Andy Rooney all that thrilled). Vieira has long been rumored to be in talks with NBC for the position. Although most of us know Meredith Vieira as the least annoying co-host of The View and as host of Who Wants to be a Millionaire, she also has an extensive news background. I imagine that NBC considers her the perfect replacement since she's already a television 'personality' but she actually has experience as a journalist.

I wonder how Anne Curry feels about all this. She has filled in a lot for Katie and has gained a much larger role than just a news reader on Today. For a while there, she almost looked like the 'heir apparent'.

Sound off, readers! What do you think about Meredith Vieira??