NBC Nightly News Notes: Meet The Press, Pearl, Conan and Obama

A few special notes from NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams tonight. During one of the later commercial breaks, a promo for Meet the Press aired. It's a softer side of MTP. David Gregory is softly talking over lightly playing moving while promising. It just feels soft... way too soft for MTP. Notice a theme here: soft. It gets old. The music and tone do not match a hard news image.

Williams also announced that Nightly now airs on the Pearl network in Hong Kong. Williams pimped tonight's debut of Conan O'brian. And finally, he promoted his behind-the-scene at the White Hosue special for Tuesday and Wednesday night.
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CNN's Anderson Cooper Returns Again to CBS' '60 Minutes" With David Beckham Fluff

CNN's Anderson Cooper returns again to CBS '60 Minutes' Sunday with a piece about David Beckham and his manager possibly buying their own soccer team. Take a close look at the tease online at CBSNews.com for the piece. The second paragraph is:
CNN's Anderson Cooper's interview of Beckham, in which he demonstrates his famous "bend it" soccer kick, will be broadcast this Sunday, March 23, at 7 p.m. ET/PT.

Plus, we get to hear about Beckham's 15 tattoos.
Wow, what have we become? '60 Minutes' promoting an Anderson Cooper peice with such elements of great interest? '60 Minutes" has, over recent years, transformed what was once a hard-hitting investigative news magazine (allbeit light in flavor, presentation and pop culture) into a hart-hitting, investigative, pop culture magazine show. Ratings are still pretty darn good. But, it's hard to imagine that '60 Minutes' resorts to such a piece about Beckham. Of course, there is the "revelation" that Beckham has the right to buy his own MLS team when his contract expires in L.A. Still, from the magazine show that challenged world leaders, fought for the innocent, claimed victories over con artists and laid the foundation for all news magazines to come, this kind of Anderson Cooper - David Beckham fluff is hard to beleive.

Plus, this deal between CBS and CNN to share some correspondent reports is interesting. I can really see how a Christiane Amanpour report would fit nicely into '60 Minutes'. Dr. Sanjay Gupta reporting on Katie Couric's 'Evening News' even seems logical. But, Anderson Cooper? It must be a deliberate ploy to snag a younger demo for a very 'old' show. What next? Tom Bergeron anchoring a morning show? (Wait, that happened on CBS for a while)