STEPHANOPOULOS BEING EASED INTO BACKGROUND AT ABC?

Coincidentally, an ABC News spokesperson told me today that Stephanopoulos has just signed a new, multiyear contract with the network, unrelated to the timing of the settlement. Several insiders speculated that Stephanopoulos’s new deal includes a pay cut, and noted that he is likely to eventually take on a more limited role, after already ceding pole-anchor position on special event coverage to David Muir. Disney is trying to lower costs across its linear portfolio, including at ABC’s Good Morning America, where Stephanopoulos and his co-anchors Robin Roberts and Michael Strahan have historically made around $25 million a year—a gross misalignment of funds, given the declining audience for morning television, generally, and particularly in light of GMA’s ratings slide since Almin Karamehmedovic became president of ABC News. Presumably, Stephanopoulos’s heir apparent, Whit Johnson, would deliver similar ratings and cost a lot less.

Indeed, that is where things seem to be headed—albeit with the discretion and diplomatic finesse befitting a revered network veteran who, despite his slip-ups, has earned the right to an elegant exit. Also, as you all know, television news is a business wherein executives and talent air kiss each other at lunch but complain ceaselessly about one another in private—their own version of being “electronically sloppy.” George may be headed toward his next act as a public figure, but no one wants to be the person responsible for it.

Why, it’s as if: Mainstream Is Now Fringe, and Fringe Is Mainstream.