Posted on 05/22/2007 12:48:55 PM PDT by Clemenza
NEW YORK - NBC News is dropping "Dateline NBC" anchor Stone Phillips in a cost-cutting move when his contract expires at the end of June.
Phillips won't formally be replaced. His co-anchor, Ann Curry, will continue and other "Dateline NBC" reporters will serve as on-air hosts when the newsmagazine presents stories they're working on, the network said Tuesday.
"It's been a wonderful 15 years," Phillips said in a statement issued by NBC. "I'm profoundly appreciative of the many friends and colleagues, past and present, who have been a part of the `Dateline' family. This is a great news division with a bright future. I wish the people of NBC News all the best."
He didn't immediately return a call for further comment.
Phillips was teamed with Jane Pauley, who left NBC is 2003, for much of his time at "Dateline NBC." At its peak, the newsmagazine churned out as many as five episodes a week.
The newsmagazine is probably best known now for reporter Chris Hansen's "To Catch a Predator" series nabbing suspected pedophiles. On NBC's fall schedule, the newsmagazine has only one permanent time slot — on little-watched Saturday night. It will be on three times a week in June.
NBC News has been restructuring to cut costs. Earlier this spring, it didn't renew the contract of "Nightly News" weekend anchor John Seigenthaler.
The Phillips move was similar in that the network is concentrating money on reporting and more versatile personalities. Seigenthaler, for example, was replaced by Lester Holt — who's also host of "Weekend Today." Curry is a newsreader on "Today" and reporter for "Dateline."
Over and over and over.
Stone Phillips is one of the least overtly liberal anchors around.
The network isn’t a law enforcement entity, and the perp isn’t under arrest when Hansen pops in. The arrest only happens after he leaves the house...
Pick your big chin up off the ground and get out there in the private sector Stone! Course, the wages wont be the same.
I’ve wondered how effective those tactics are in reducing the crime, and if the police manpower may be better served elsewhere.
Hey, he's a step above his model,
Max Headroom.
That show was prescient.
They can't afford for someone like John Stossel to win.
You exactly right, I have never seen his politics at all, quite refreshing really.
Just a regular newsman.
No wonder they fired him.
His siblings Paper and Scissors had no comment.
He is being replaced by the much cheaper Particle Board Phillips.
After 9-11, all the networks put on was MORE garbage combined with “all-Bash Bush and lie about the war all the time”. Thus now I automatically flip past the “major” networks, CNN, MSNBC, and the other socialists to watch History, Discovery, and very few others. When I was in Iraq, the DFACs played CNN and all it did was sour my stomach and raise my blood pressure.
After being in Iraq and seeing the MSM lie about events I witnessed along with their propensity to know EXACTLY where a bomb will go off and have cameras ready, I could truly give a rat’s rear end about “poor Stone”.
This is not to say that I am not interested in the story. Far from it. It is one more indication that the People of the USA are waking up, though the media is still in denial. Now they just have to go and vote the left out of office. Staying home in 08 is NOT an option. Letting the leftists control Congress and the White House will cause nothing but pain for the world and America.
He is the guy that set a bomb on a pick up to show what happen to a pickup that is T-Boned— . To show a pick up on fire—because it did not do it evertime. NEVER Watch after that BS
Honestly, I had lost faith in the media when I was 15 during Sen Al Gore’s “Salem Witch Hunt” on Iran-Contra. I had the help of involved parents and relatives (many military) who knew what was going on and were smart enough to see the politics.
By the time the “first staged VIED” fake story hit NBC, I was already an engineering student and saw through the lies. We still had to dissect it for our leftist fellow students. My first remembered attempt to reason with fools.
That is when I realized I had to read “Animal Farm” and “1984” to see the effect of the leftist brainwashing known as “education” and the “main stream” media.
ooops.. I meant “VBIED”.
I refer to Ann Curry as “the voice”. She has the best, no accent (none that I can tell) delivery, and is just a real pleasure to listen to. She came out of Oregon, as I recall.
I think he first made his claim to fame when he accused George Bush, Sr. of having an extramarital affair.
President Bush nearly threw him out of the Oval Office.
“How dare you ask me that question, and here in the Oval Office!”
It meant something more back then.
Are we to read anything by the major networks dropping or not replacing male anchors, and putting women (at least they call themselves a woman in the case of Katie..) up as the lead folks?
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