July 2012 : David Gregory rumored to fired from this NBC job: Wash.Post

from LISA DeMoraes -- Washingtonpost TV Column (Friday July 6, 2012)

David Gregory is on his way out as host of the network’s Sunday Beltway show, “Meet the Press.”

This week, the iPad news service The Daily ran a report that Gregory was right behind Curry in the NBC News Tumbril.

The report about Gregory is not new — it surfaced a couple of months ago (at that time, Joe Scarborough was said to be his replacement). But stone-cold denials were issued by “Meet the Press” exec producer Betsy Fischer and NBC News President Steve Capus.

Another stone-cold denial was issued this week: “The rumors recklessly reported by The Daily are categorically untrue,” NBC News said in a statement. That, even though this time, The Daily reported that “Meet the Press” anchor Tim Russert was spinning in his grave over the show’s numbers. Russert ruled the Sunday Beltway show ratings until his sudden death in June of 2008.

Last month, “Meet the Press’s” weekly rating hit a 20-year low among viewers between the ages of 25 and 54 — the currency of news programming.

On the first Sunday of June, the public-affairs show averaged 2.46 million total viewers of all ages — but just 687,000 viewers in that key age bracket — which was its smallest 25-to-54 demographic performance for a regular broadcast since July of ’92. “Meet the Press” got beat in the demographic by ABC News’s “This Week” that week — the first time it bested both Gregory’s show and CBS’s “Face the Nation” in two years.

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he is "fiddling while Rome burns" -- he is bleeding the viewership that Tim Russert built over years of solid interviewing and aggressive questioning

He and Ann Curry can join a "talking heads" show on Current TV (Al Gore)