Last night the media elite gathered at the rooftop of The Park in New York’s Chelsea neighborhood to toast New York Times media reporter Brian Stelter‘s book Top of the Morning.

As the sun set over the Hudson River and the High Line park, guests sipped wine and nibbled on hummus, cheese and skewers of shrimp and scallops. NY1 traffic anchor Jamie Shupak, Stelter’s girlfriend, organized the affair.

“Matt Lauer and Ann Curry send their regrets,” Stelter quipped in his remarks. Indeed, NBC’s “Today” was not represented at the party, though there were plenty of notable TV news attendees.

ABC News seemed to have the largest contingent, led by president Ben Sherwood, and joined by senior VP of content and development James Goldston, and senior VP of communications Jeffrey Schneider. CBS News was represented by chairman Jeff Fager and “CBS This Morning” co-host Charlie Rose (pictured below). NY1′s morning news anchor Pat Kiernan was there, as was CNN “Piers Morgan Live” EP (and former “Today” EP) Jonathan Wald. Foursquare CEO Dennis Crowley, New York Post publisher Jesse Angelo and Gawker founder Nick Denton were all spotted in the crowd.
Read more

Barbara Walters following a 2012 interview with Pres. and Mrs. Obama.

ABC’s Barbara Walters, in Washington for coverage of the Inauguration, fell on a stair while visiting the British Ambassador’s residence last evening. The fall left her with a cut on her forehead. “Out of an abundance of caution, she went to the hospital to have her cut tended to, have a full examination and remains there for observation,” says ABC News spokesperson Jeffrey Schneider. “Barbara is alert (and telling everyone what to do), which we all take as a very positive sign,” he adds.

Politico’s Mike Allen was first to report the story this morning. Walters, 83, will not be able to contribute to ABC’s reporting tomorrow and may not be back on the air for several days.

ABC News, and anchor Diane Sawyer, have been named in a defamation lawsuit filed by Beef Products Inc. (BPI).

The Dakota Dunes, S.D.-based meat processor is seeking $1.2 billion in damages for roughly 200 “false and misleading and defamatory” statements about the product officially known as lean, finely textured beef, but has been refered to as “pink slime.”

ABC’s reporting “caused consumers to believe that our lean beef is not beef at all — that it’s an unhealthy pink slime, unsafe for public consumption, and that somehow it got hidden in the meat,” said Dan Webb, an attorney for BPI.

The 257-page lawsuit cites 11 TV reports and 14 online reports between March 7 and April 3, 2012. In addition to Sawyer, ABC correspondents Jim Avila and David Kerley are also named as defendants, as is a former Dept. of Agriculture microbiologist who coined the term “pink slime” in 2002. He was the “whistleblower” featured in ABC’s reports.

“The lawsuit is without merit,” says ABC News SVP Jeffrey Schneider, adding, “We will contest it vigorously.”

Watch Avila’s report from March 7, after the jump…

Read more

When Nik Wallenda, of the famous flying and tight rope-walking Wallendas, makes his way above Niagara Falls next month, what you see on TV will be on a slight delay. In a story in today’s New York Times, ABC says it will put the walk on a delay, just in case:

ABC television plans to broadcast the walk in a three-hour special, but also plans a 5- to 10-second delay, just in case. “We want it to be exciting and thrilling, but we also want every parent in America to hear loud and clear that we’re going to make it comfortable for them to watch with their kids,” said Jeffrey Schneider, an ABC spokesman.

ABC News and Wallenda, a 7th-generation daredevil, came to an agreement last week on broadcasting the walk on June 15. “It’s a return to some of the great events you’ve seen on television over the years,” Schneider told the AP. “I think back to my own childhood and Evel Knievel where literally the whole country would gather around the set and watch one of these extraordinary stunts.”

Media analyst and Syracuse professor Robert Thompson says the element of danger — Wallenda will be untethered, walking without a net — becomes an issue of media ethics. “They’re planning a show where one of the pre-production activities is making sure everyone knows what happens in case this guy dies. The real tension here is not will he get from one side to the other, the tension is will he make it across without dying, and I think there are some real serious ethical issues.”

Our sister site FishbowlDC reported this morning that CNN is actively pursing Jake Tapper, the senior white house correspondent for ABC News. Although Tapper is currently under contract with ABC, network execs at CNN — including SVP Amy Entelis, who joined CNN in January after 30 years at ABC — have their eye on him, Betsy Rothstein reports.

Tapper responded this afternoon, calling his current gig “a dream job.” “I couldn’t be happier where I am right now,” he told FishbowlDC.

“Hardly surprised to read about all kinds of poachers being interested in Jake Tapper — that’s what happens when you are at the top of your profession,” ABC News SVP Jeffrey Schneider said. “We are thrilled Jake works for ABC News and expect him to have a leadership role here for a long time to come.”

A spokesperson for CNN declined to comment.

Lara Spencer, once host of PBS’s “Antiques Roadshow,” loves a good roadside sale. And now she’s written a book about it.

So last night, designer Jonathan Adler hosted the GMA anchor and a crowd of tvnewsers and friends at his Madison Avenue store celebrating the publication of her new book “I Brake For Yard Sales.”

Spotted in the crowd: George Stephanopoulos and Ali Wentworth, Josh Elliott, ABC News President Ben Sherwood, (right, with Spencer) ABC SVP’s James Goldston and Jeffrey Schneider, ABC anchor Deborah Roberts, WABC anchor Diana Williams, Fox5 New York anchor Greg Kelly, ABC’s Dan Abrams and NBC’s Donnie Deutsch, among others.

Spencer outlines some of her tips in a Yard Sales 101 column on ABCNews.com.

Inside ABC News there have been some unforeseen repercussions from Katie Couric‘s stint as guest-host of “Good Morning America.” As a pair of recent stories in TMZ and Gawker noted, and multiple sources at ABC News have backed up, some staffers on the program are unhappy with how the network has been handling the Couric stunt.

The issue is not with Couric herself (everyone we spoke to agreed that she has been nothing but gracious) but rather with how the network decided to go forward with the plan. The biggest gripe: choosing to have Couric host while Robin Roberts is on vacation.

The big question is whether ABC overtakes “Today” in the ratings this week. If it does (still a big “if”), and if “GMA” slips back down to second place when Roberts returns, it could be an embarrassing moment for the ABC anchor, who we are told had no say in the decision to have Couric fill-in for her.

A spokesperson for ABC News disputes the notion that the decision to add Couric was meant to undercut anything that the network has been doing with “GMA.”

“This whole thing is predicated on building the momentum that Robin, George and the rest of the team have already created,” ABC News spokesperson Jeffrey Schneider tells TVNewser. “Everybody adores Robin Roberts, and can’t wait to have her back in her chair on Monday.”

Roberts is extremely well-liked by both executives and staffers, and is credited by almost everyone at ABC for having helped turn “GMA” around. Ironically, NBC News executives are also said to be “big fans” of Roberts.

The concerns over ratings can also cut both ways. If “GMA” places second to ‘Today” and/or is in the same ratings ballpark as it usually is, then Roberts looks even better when she returns.

ABC News is fighting back against a claim made by Newt Gingrich at last night’s debate.

In the course of answering John King‘s question about ABC’s interview with Gingrich’s second wife Marianne, and her claims that he asked her for an “open marriage,” Gingrich said, “The story is false. Every personal friend I have who knew us in that period says the story was false. We offered several of them to ABC to prove it was false. They weren’t interested because they would like to attack any Republican.”

ABC Senior Vice President Jeffrey Schneider says of Gingrich’s remarks: “That’s just not true. His daughters (right) were interviewed for our ‘Nightline’ story last night and we sought interviews with Gingrich or surrogates very aggressively starting Tuesday morning. We would have been happy to interview anyone they put forward.”

On Tuesday, ABC News contacted the Gingrich campaign for comment. Reporter Brian Ross talked with the New York Times which reported that the campaign told him: “we’re going to provide somebody who will answer point by point everything she says,” but had not done so as of Thursday morning.

Last night, even as the question was being asked at the CNN debate, Ross was on Bill O’Reilly‘s show on Fox News. In his introduction, O’Reilly pointed out Ross’s fairness in investigating all candidates, not just Republicans. “Mr. Ross as you may know broke the Jeremiah Wright story during the last presidential campaign and he is also reporting on Mitt Romney’s off shore investments now.”

Here’s Ross’s appearance on O’Reilly and after the jump, Ross’s report on “Nightline”

Read more

Press release shocker in the TV news world for about :30 seconds this morning, when NBCUniversal sent out this headline:

JEFFREY SCHNEIDER NAMED EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT, BUSINESS AFFAIRS FOR NBCUNIVERSAL’S ENTERTAINMENT & DIGITAL NETWORKS AND INTEGRATED MEDIA PORTFOLIO

A shocker because of another Jeffrey Schneider who is SVP of communications for ABC News. A move to NBC would be — while not out of the questions — pretty damn surprising, especially considering the hyper-competitive environment between ABC News and NBC News at the moment — and always.

Schneider — the ABC one — got several congratulatory notes and phone calls from colleagues and reporters in the minutes after the email hit inboxes. He’s since sent a congratulatory note to the other Jeffrey Schneider, whom he has never met.

The full release from NBCU, after the jump.

Read more

ABC, CNN and CBS news executives all headed to NBC’s 30 Rockefeller Center headquarters yesterday to discuss the safety and well-being of freelance journalists who increasingly serve the network news divisions worldwide.

NBC News president Steve Capus — the dean of network news executives — invited his colleagues, from ABC News, Ben Sherwood, CBS News’s David Rhodes and CNN’s Bart Feder to the gathering.

NBC’s Brian Williams wrote on his blog yesterday, “Because competition stops at the water’s edge, and because some things — like the safety of journalists — are more important, I’m proud to say we hosted a great luncheon here.”

The presentation was by Tina Carr the director of the Rory Peck Trust, an organization named in memory of Rory Peck, a New York-born freelance cameraman, killed in Moscow in 1995.

Other attendees included, Jeffrey Schneider of ABC, Barbara Levin of CNN; NBC News EPs Jim Bell and Bob Epstein, MSNBC president Phil Griffin and NBC News execs Alex Wallace, David Verdi, Cheryl Gould, Chris Hampson, Stacy Brady and Lauren Kapp. Fox News was invited to, but did not participate in the luncheon.