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Morning shows all alike, NBC exec. says

Associated Press

NEW YORK - Starting November 1, the top three broadcast networks will have morning news shows that look remarkably alike - and that's not something NBC's news chief takes pride in.

''It's actually a terrible indictment of television that we've ended up with three programs now that look so much like each other,'' NBC News President Andrew Lack said yesterday.

Lack said he was disappointed in ABC's ''Good Morning America,'' which last month debuted an audience-participation studio in Times Square modeled after the success of the NBC ''Today'' show window in Rockefeller Center.

CBS's ''The Early Show'' starts in less than three weeks with former ''Today'' host Bryant Gumbel from another Manhattan studio that allows passersby to peer in. The three shows will have similar mixes of news and features, with local news cut-ins at the same times each morning.

With the morning TV market increasingly lucrative, ABC and CBS are bearing down hard against ''Today,'' which last week celebrated its 200th consecutive week atop the ratings. Television producers are notorious imitators of what's been successful.

Lack said he could understand why third-place CBS, given its longtime struggles in the time slot, would want to try a show with Gumbel, who left ''Today'' in the midst of its run at the top.

Lack said he wishes viewers had a dramatically different choice in the morning, although he acknowledged he's not sure what that would be.

An ABC spokeswoman said ''Good Morning America'' has been doing several innovative things in the past few weeks, including launching a series of town meetings with presidential candidates and a two-hour program on happiness.

''Perhaps Mr. Lack isn't watching our program as closely as our viewers,'' said ABC's Eileen Murphy.

Meanwhile, ''Today'' will be moving into battle temporarily without its leader. Executive producer Jeff Zucker is undergoing surgery Friday for a pre-cancerous growth on his colon, and will be absent four to six weeks. Zucker was treated for colon cancer two years ago.