THE FORTUNE TELLERS by HOWARD KURTZ

Author:HOWARD KURTZ
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Business
Publisher: THE FREE PRESS
Published: 2000-07-15T00:00:00+00:00

10

STAR WARS

JEFF Gralnick, the executive vice president of Moneyline, is addressing his troops around a long conference table in a 21st-floor office with a panoramic view of Manhattans West Side, from midtown to the World Trade Center.

Were not hurrying, he tells the fifteen assembled staffers, some of whom are sitting on the floor. Were going to try all kinds of combinations. The numbers, thankfully, continue to be rock solid. Rock solid. For all the onslaught CNBC was going to mount, theyre sitting at a point-one at seven oclock.

It is June 15, 1999, Gralnicks first day in the office after Lou Dobbs stunned the television world by resigning as president of CNNfn. Dobbs had clashed with his Atlanta bosses one time too many, particularly after he announced on the air two months earlier that CNN President Rick Kaplan was ordering him to cut away from Moneyline and return to a speech that President Clinton was giving in Littleton, Colorado, after the school massacre there. But the real issue was that Dobbs was determined to launch a Website called Space.com, dealing with all manner of space exploration, and blast off with enough IPO millions to put him in the same galaxy as his corporate pals. CNN executives insisted that this would be a clear conflict of interest for a network executive, but Dobbs faxed over an ultimatum with a 5:00 P.M. deadline. When Ted Turner, calling from his Montana ranch, failed to talk him out of the plan, Dobbs quit. After 19 years, he felt, it was time to move on. Gralnick is particularly embarrassed that CNBC got the scoop, reporting Dobbss resignation six hours before CNN got around to telling its viewers.

The staff is still shell-shocked. Could Moneyline succeed without Lou Dobbs? Would CNNfn survive without Lou Dobbs?

Gralnick, a wisecracking man with a thick shock of gray hair, has been at CNN for just three months, having spent his career at the three major networkscovering Vietnam and the Persian Gulf War, presidential campaigns and conventions, running NBC Nightly News and the ABC Website. On his wall, beyond the nine television sets, are framed photos of him with Tom Brokaw, Peter Jennings, Walter Cronkite. In February, shortly after ABC axed Gralnick in a round of budget cutting, Bruno Cohen, CNBCs senior vice president, met with him in a coffee shop and made him a lucrative offer. Next Gralnick saw Lou Dobbs, who made an even more attractive offer. On the way home, Gralnick, who didnt really want to join CNBC, called Cohen to say he was taking the Moneyline job.

There was one small problem: Gralnick knew next to nothing about business. For the past three months he had been slowly learning the language, and he didnt mind asking dumb questions; if he couldnt understand something about Wall Street, maybe viewers would be confused as well. Gralnick often e-mailed his daughter, a 25-year-old rookie trader at a Connecticut hedge fund, for guidance. Now, suddenly, he and David Bohrmann, CNNfns executive vice president, are running the place.

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