Nightline To NY — Eventually?

A “thoughtful insider” offers our cousin TVNewser a great deal of insight today about the potential future of (for now) Washington-based Nightline, which may or may not involve a trio of reporters/host/anchors: Terry Moran, Cynthia McFadden, and Martin Bashir.

At the moment, McFadden and Moran do appear to be the front runners, but this has been a moving target for some time. ABC News’s leadership is famously short-attention spanned, susceptible to falling for the “flavors of the month,” and transperantly insecure about its own judgements.

But the important fact is that James Goldston isn’t moving to DC. The key to this puzzle is 47 W. 66th Street — ABC HQ in NY….

NY is the key to this story. After decades of getting dissed by the Nightline clique in DC, particularly from the rather clumsy and self-righteously hardheaded former EP Leroy Sievers, the DC staff will no longer have Ted to protect them from the consequences. David Westin, Paul Mason and the rest are not going to allow another DC clique to form. Every sign is that this show will be based in NY eventually, decimating the somewhat bloated Washington bureau, which will now only have the ratings-challenged weekly This Week to broadcast from the studios in the basement….

It is too bad because for all of its faults, for all of its anachronistic sensibilities, Nightline truly is a fantastic show, and has some very bright folks who toil to bring the audience content they wouldn’t get anywhere else, not even on 60 Miinutes….

Not everything in the email jives with what we’ve heard, but there’s certainly some truth in it. Read it and judge for yourself.

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