so long. people expected it to be resolved way sooner than it has. but it appears there s this third option that s emerged. i learned of this through my reporting in the past few days. frankly, it surprised me at first. because i, like a lot of people were under the impression there either for williams to come back from his suspension or for him to leave nbc all together. most have been guessing he s leaving nbc and negotiations are under way about how exactly he ll leave. you know how it works in the industry. people like brian williams has a contract so nbc would have to pay him a lot of money if he leaves the network so some sort of settlement but there s a third option that came through in my reporting and that s a new role for brian williams at nbc. not as the nightly news anchor but as something else. that could be a reporting job. it could be something else at the network. it might be a way to bring him back onto television and have him return and see if people accept him in a
malaise in this country that people on wall street who are too big to fail can do terrible things in 2007 2008 to the economy and not be toumpdched. i think there s a reason people were saying early on about brian williams too big to fail. he s going to get away with this. i think americans are really sick of that heartsick in a way, and i think if they put him back in that anchor chair they re going to risk facing that kind of blowback from those people. andrew help us pull the curtain back a little bit. fundamentally, it comes down to money, right? it comes down to financials. we re talking about a contract and one way or another nbc might have to pay brian williams a lot of money. yeah but, you know, here is the thing i don t understand. why would he be not okay on the anchor desk but you put him anywhere else and he ll be just fine? i think that s ridiculous. because it s an entertainment program. because he s doing entertainment. he faces a credibility problem. he faces a
is good fodder for a drama series. david, i would completely agree with what andrew just said. i wonder what you make of the idea of a new role for brian williams. you ve been outspoken his credibility has taken a severe blow here. i think it has. as a journalist. i don t think he can return to that anchor desk. he certainly can t return as managing editor and anchor. number one, i think brian and you are absolutely right about trial balloons. i think nbc is floating a trial balloon and this is a good place to do that. but i think also if you look at andy lack s history, he did news magazines in the 80s and 90s, and one of the things i learned writing about those news magazines is they were a great place to lay off anchormens sal salaryies salaries. you saw the anchors hosting prime time news magazines because the money was so great for them.
third option this new role that would keep williams in the fold. presumably it would keep lester holt at the news now anchor desk for the foreseeable future. brian williams has called nbc home for over 20 years but it s still quite possible two sides will not agree on this new role. some of my sources think he is on the way out but others see a way for him to stay in. these negotiations have been going on for weeks and several times along the way it s seemed there is imminent news but i m at the moment told there s been no official decision about whether he will stay or whether he will go. so we have all the angles covered this morning beginning with brian, a correspondent with vanity fair who wrote an article about what happened inside nbc when all this happened in february. thanks for being here this morning. pleasure. your story was a tick tock explaining how we got to this point. do you think it makes sense for him to return in some way? i think for all parties concerne
moment if you would, please. i m getting a few documents in on the anchor desk. at the same time, i want to show them some of the images that are coming in to us live. so what you re seeing here from our affiliate kprc are some of the aerials in the houston area. i m also being told as we see some of the aerials that president obama is going to be speaking live to us. he s been in a meeting with the nato secretary general. he s already called governor abbott of texas and has pledged a lot of help. federal assistance not only for the rescues that are still ongoing as we speak, all of the missing that still need to be found but also the recovery operations and then the disaster assistance afterwards. as people continue to drive, it s remarkable to me when i see water on the roads like this and people continuing to drive. this is how this is how people are swept away and go missing, you know, you never know how much water is on those roads. this is now ktrk s helicopter