The TV Zone

It's a morning of network musical chairs!

Check out there big announcements made in just the last few minutes:

1.) Campbell Brown: Curious thing about CNN's announcement a little while ago that Campbell Brown will join CNN on Sept. 1 - No where in the press release does it say exactly what Campbell will do. It's almost as though CNN wants us to guess, which shouldn't be too hard: She'll take over the 8 p.m. hour from Paula Zahn – Paula's immediate fate unknown.

Brown, of course, is the NBC "Weekend Today" co and longtime political/White House correspondent for the network. Long before Katie Couric split, she was considered a candidate - if not quite "front-runner" - for "Today."

What's the logic of this move? Believe me, it's not readily apparent. Brown's competent, but so is Zahn - whose show is actually quite good (thoughtful, never hysterical, usually intelligent, or at least when I've sampled it on my travels.) Numbers have been relatively modest, but does a Brown-anchored show instantly translate in millions more viewers? Only in Jon Klein's (CNN prez) dreams.

Zahn - you may recall - joined CNN just prior to 9/11.

2.) Lee Cowan: Not wanting to be in the position of having lost a reasonably big star without having something or someone to show for it, NBC has picked up Lee Cowan from CBS News. He'll be based in Chicago... I've always liked Cowan - he was one of Dan Rather/Bob Schieffer's most reliable people, but - as far as I could tell - seemed to recede in the Katie era.

3.) Dean Reynolds: Heading to CBS News, where he'll be based in the Chicago bureau too. In some ways, this is the most amazing move of them all - totally unexpected. Reynolds is son of legendary ABC Newsman, Frank - Peter Jennings’ predecessor - and was as closely associated with the on-air fortunes of ABC News as just about anyone I can think of. Over the decades - twenty-three years to be exact - he's covered everything for ABC. Reynold's is one of those network correspondents of the first rank so why did ABC let him go?