TVSquad

NBC is trying to save money everywhere.

Longtime Dateline host Stone Phillips is being let go by the network, for money reasons. Phillips' current co-host, Ann Curry, will continue to do the show. I guess NBC wants someone in there who is already under contract and does other stuff at the network. Curry is the newsreader on The Today Show too. She'll be joined by various NBC reporters as rotating co-hosts.

No word on what Phillips will do now. I wonder why they didn't just keep him on and have him do other things at the network and MSNBC? Maybe he didn't want to, who knows.

Sorry I'm a few days late reporting this news, but I took some time off to volunteer at my neighborhood's annual Soup Kitchen and Hobo Scrub. This year I was on "soap and hose" duty, so it would have been total disaster had I not been there.

At any rate, if you haven't heard yet, Jane Pauley is suing the New York Times because she claims she was duped into being interviewed for an ad supplement which she thought was an actual interview about her bout with bipolar disorder. The ad supplement was for pharmaceutical companies, and Pauley is suing both the Times and DeWitt Publications, saying she was tricked and that she has never appeared in an ad or endorsed any product before. A spokeswoman countered by saying Pauley's assistant was informed that the interview would be for an ad supplement in the New York Times Magazine.