CourtTV/truTV

The NYPost has chosen truTV anchor Ashleigh Banfield as part of its “Five faces with something to look forward to” list.

Ashleigh Banfield was supposed to be the new (bespectacled) face of NBC way back in 2000 when – pretty much overnight – she went from afternoon anchor on MSNBC to the hottest pistol in TV news.

But it all fell apart as quickly as it had come together for her. There were reports she was difficult to work with and sulky.

She wandered in the desert (like Luke Skywalker) for a few years, married, had a couple of kids.

This year, the former MSNBC anchor is back on cable – where she started. Banfield kept the glasses and found new confidence. She joined TruTV (the old Court TV) as the only anchor without a law background – reinventing herself as a legal eagle.

Banfield is the only tvnewser on the list. Others include “Oprah’s health nut”, Dr. Mehmet Oz and new American Idol judge Kara DioGuardi.

From a TVNewser tipster: “I understand that there is a move afoot to develop a legal television network in place of CourtTV.”

Anybody know anything?

• Earlier: CourtTV Adjourns…

> More from an emailer: “I’ve heard it’s more than ‘afoot’…that it’s a web based gavel-to-gavel network claiming to program multiple trials at the same time; consumer info; caught on tape segments, etc. Former CourtTV people are involved (there are lots of them) and it sounds like the launch is late 3rd quarter early 4th quarter this year…OJ?”

More changes to TruTV’s daytime lineup. Sources tell TVNewser yesterday was anchor Vinnie Politan‘s last day at the former CourtTV. Insiders tell us, newsroom staffers had been wearing red, white, and green bracelets with ‘Vin Strong’ printed on them to show their support for Politan.

After just five months on the air, Star Jones‘ self-titled program is going off the air. TVNewser has obtained an internal memo announcing the cancelation of the daytime show which airs at 3pmET on truTV. “Due to the rebranding and programming refocus of the network,” writes EVP & GM Marc Juris, “truTV and Star Jones Reynolds have mutually agreed to cease production of the Star Jones show.”

The show premiered August 20, 2007. The final program airs tomorrow. It will be replaced by Arrest & Trial. Jones will stay on as a contributing legal expert on the weekday In Session trial coverage.

Click continued to read the email from Juris…

Read more

PageSix Magazine profiled truTV’s Ashleigh Banfield for this week’s issue. (sorry no link)

Titled “The Comeback Kid,” the story delves into the highs and lows of Banfield’s TV career: from local TV in her native Canada, to her move to the U.S. and a station in Dallas, to the often controversial time she spent at MSNBC & NBC News, which came to a head after she gave a speech in Kansas on the eve of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.

Looking around her office, she points out a framed poster that Kansas State had used to announce her now infamous speaking engagement. “I look at this as one of my proudest moments,” Ashleigh says. “I don’t regret the speech at all. It cost me enormously
professionally, but four years later I’m proud of it.”

Banfield also talks about being criticized by her colleagues at NBC and how Tom Brokaw came to defend her:

“For whatever reason, people will always be critical of their peers in this business. I rose very, very quickly, and I
think there were headlines [about me]…Thank God people like Brokaw exist and will stand up for the little guy. I applaud him to this day as my savior.”

• Related: The mediabistro.com interview with Ashleigh Banfield…

The AP’s David Bauder writes, “…with the new year, Court TV (1991-2007) adjourns.” Tomorrow the channel “that burst into public consciousness with the O.J. Simpson trial and other big-name courtroom dramas in the 1990s becomes part of television history.”

The network, which is being renamed truTV, will maintain six hours of “legal-oriented material during the day” to be called “In Session.” Bauder writes that network execs consulted outside experts to find a new name, even holding an in-house contest for ideas. Some 5,000 suggestions came in.

Frank TV (now a sketch show on TBS) was one popular suggestion as was True Nation, “but truTV tested better with focus groups,” Bauder writes.

With the re-branding of CourtTV to truTV less than two weeks away, some changes are already underway. The editor-in-chief of CourtTVNews.com posted a letter to readers about the fate of the site. It is going away.

Now CourtTVnews.com will sit in cyberspace, frozen and unchanging. The fact that the site will not continue does not diminish its accomplishments. Perhaps some day, years from now, someone will do a search on some trial or another, and up will pop a page from CourtTVnews.com. “What is this?” they’ll wonder. Then they’ll start reading, and think, “Jeez, this is pretty good. Who did this?” We know who did it. That is reward enough.

CourtTV’s Ashleigh Banfield talks with mediabistro.com for our So What Do You Do? series. Part of it is excerpted below. TVNewser contributor Diane Clehane asked the former MSNBC anchor and NBC News correspondent about her undoing at the network:

In the months following 9/11 you were being touted as one of NBC’s rising stars. The New York Post even mentioned you as possible successor to Katie Couric. Then, just as quickly, it seemed as if you dropped out of sight. What happened?

The Iraq war started to develop and I gave a very controversial speech at Kansas State [University] about the press’s responsibility in covering international affairs. I sent out a cautionary note to all my colleagues covering this conflict and chastened the press corps not to wave the banner and cover warfare in a jingoistic way. It didn’t sit well with my employers at NBC — who are no longer there. I think they overacted. I was banished. I sat in the outfield for a long time.

When did you officially leave NBC?

I left in 2004 — a few months after my contract expired. I was very much in the warehouse while my contract petered out.

Looking back on that time, what were the biggest lessons you learned?

On one hand you could say, “Keep your mouth shut while our nation is embroiled in war,” but I don’t think that was a responsible way to behave. If I have been fortunate enough to have risen to level in this business where people would actually listen to me, then I think I have a duty to convey all truths that I encounter. I felt it was my duty at the time. I was a war correspondent who had seen that the hearts and minds of the Arab world were not that easy to win.

The CourtTV folks have sent along the press kit (skinny Star pictures and all) for the upcoming Star Jones show.

CourtTV writes, Jones’s program “will be a live, daily talk show that features the day’s top stories and top guests from the worlds of law, news, pop culture & entertainment.”

The show premieres August 20, at 3pm ET.

Court TV’s offices on the 19th floor of a nearby building were evacuated following the steam pipe explosion in New York City yesterday.

“It was ten to 6:00, we heard a loud explosion. It felt like an earthquake,” Adaora Udoji said on CNN last night. “I’m a block down. We’re on the 19th floor. And it was shaking, we looked out the window. We saw hundreds and hundreds of people running down Third Avenue.”