TV Watcher Asks: ‘Is Charlie Rose Too Old For This?’

The news that Charlie Rose will be a part of CBS’s re-imagined morning news show still has a lot people buzzing today.

In his story, Brian Stelter points out that Rose is a “mainstay on the Manhattan cocktail party circuit,” with a CBS executive adding, “Is there a curfew for morning TV anchors? We won’t have one.”

But Forbes’ Jeff Bercovici asks whether Rose is simply too old for a morning routine.

[I]t’s very unusual for anyone as old as Rose to be starting a new anchor job, much less one on a new, or at least entirely revamped, show. Rose is already older than ABC’s Charles Gibson and Peter Jennings were when they retired (both were 66) and older than Tom Brokaw was when he stepped down from “NBC Nightly News” (64). He’s six years older than Diane Sawyer was when she left “Good Morning America” for “World News Tonight.” He’s 16 years older than “Today’s” Matt Lauer.

I asked Andrew Tyndall, an analyst who closely tracks network news, if he could think of another instance where someone Rose’s age moved into a new anchor job. He could not. “It is especially astonishing that Rose is being used in the physically arduous morning timeslot with his history of heart disease,” he says. (Rose had open heart surgery in 2006.)

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