Something To Embarrass Everyone

By Richard Zoglin

On the first day, Co-Hosts Mariette Hartley and Rolland Smith told their new TV audience, "We want to be your friendly wake-up call." On the second day, Hartley pasted a HIT SHOW ON BOARD sign on Smith's lapel. By day three, she was fairly doubled over with laughter at the good time being had: "It's such fun waking up with all of these people!" But the credo for The Morning Program came at the end of its fourth show. As part of a tribute to Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday, the cast sang We Shall Overcome.

CBS's new entry in the early-morning wars had an armada of foes to overcome, even before it went on the air. Fans of the old CBS Morning News were outraged by the network's cancellation of that long-running broadcast, whose low ratings had persisted for years despite a revolving door of hosts and formats. CBS News staffers resented the fact that the fluffy newcomer would be produced by the network's entertainment division. Rivals were publicly contemptuous. Bryant Gumbel, co-host of the front-running Today, scoffed before the new show even aired, "Desperate people do desperate things."

After the program's debut last week, most viewers probably agreed. In an effort to look different from its morning competitors -- Today and ABC's Good Morning, America -- The Morning Program has come up with something to embarrass everyone. Smith, a straitlaced former anchorman for New York City's WCBS-TV, and Actress Hartley, who once filled in as a Today co-host, engage in strained banter on an elaborately homey set. The show's regular features include personal ads, in which singles promote themselves via 30-second video clips, comedy routines that, good or bad, do not go down easily at 7:55 a.m., and Hartley's dog Daisy, which gets petted a lot. All of this is witnessed by a studio audience that on opening day found even Mark McEwen's weather casts worthy of applause.

The Morning Program has more conventional features as well: celebrity interviews, daily health tips, movie reviews and short news inserts. But Hartley, babbling constantly, is inexcusably cheerful, and the whole enterprise pushes too fast and too hard: Hour Magazine on speed.

Still, the show seems to have an appealing goal in sight: a friendly kaffee- klatsch in the tradition of radio's long-running The Breakfast Club. Some of the ideas work. Bob Saget, the show's announcer and "sidekick," narrated a funny home video of his own wedding. Writers Roy Blount Jr. and Calvin Trillin were on hand with wry commentaries. And a few of the segments (like an interview with a Wall Street executive at the gym where he goes boxing before work) struck just the right, what's-new-this-morning? tone.

Criticizing The Morning Program as fluff is unfair, almost like blaming Late Night with David Letterman for not running news inserts. The show's main problem seems to be a failure of nerve. It tries to break from the morning mold but retains enough Today-like elements to make the entertainment features jarring. Another sort of host -- a folksy Arthur Godfrey type, perhaps -- might have made the format more palatable. Even Smith and Hartley could eventually relax and turn into pleasant morning companions. Right now they are working too hard at chemistry to notice that the ingredients are not jelling.