As it turns out, Jane Clayson should have been worried.
The former Utahn will be relinquishing her post as anchorwoman of CBS's "The Early Show," as has been rumored ever since Bryant Gumbel left the broadcast in May. She won't be leaving CBS, however — the Brigham Young University graduate and former anchor/reporter at KSL will become a correspondent for "The CBS Evening News."
Things haven't worked out the way Clayson or anyone else at CBS expected when "The Early Show" was launched on Nov. 1, 1999. With Gumbel — the high-profile, high-paid former "Today Show" host — on board and a new $20 million New York studio, the network thought it was ready to take on "Today" and "Good Morning America."
But "The Early Show" never became competitive in the ratings. It managed to make some money — which was an improvement over its many predecessors at the network — but viewership and profits lagged far behind its competitors.
Following Gumbel's departure in a contract dispute, CBS executives expressed support for Clayson. And she was certainly under the impression that she was going to be around "The Early Show" for a while. "If the question is, 'Are you worried?' No. I'm not. I really am not," Clayson told the Deseret News just days after Gumbel's exit. "My contract is up in the fall, and I'm here doing my job and taking on more responsibility and looking forward to the future. I have no reason to think that it would be otherwise."
But after months of working next to various guest hosts who were ostensibly auditioning to take the chair beside her, CBS has yet again decided to go in a different direction. This, after a failed effort to lure Meredith Vieira from ABC to create the first two-woman anchor team.
Clayson's fate may have been sealed when "Early Show" executive producer Steve Friedman — the man who, along with Gumbel, was most responsible for hiring her in an effort dubbed "Operation Glass Slipper" — left the show shortly after Gumbel did.
Clayson's last day as "Early Show" host will be Sept. 27; she's scheduled to join "The CBS Evening News" in October.
CBS has not announced who will take over "The Early Show" or even whether it will be renamed and/or revamped again — something the network has been doing for decades without making inroads in the ratings competition.
Speculation currently centers on two veterans of network morning news — Harry Smith, the host of A&E's "Biography," who hosted an earlier incarnation of CBS's early morning news from 1987-1996, and Deborah Norville, the host of the syndicated tabloid show "Inside Edition," and the woman who rode out one of the biggest storms in "Today Show" history. (She was seen as the woman who forced Jane Pauley off the show in 1990, a move that led to a big drop in "Today's" ratings and Norville's quick ouster in favor of Katie Couric.)
Another frequently mentioned name is that of Hannah Storm, the NBC sportscaster best known for her work on that network's coverage of the NBA — a contract that NBC lost to ABC and ESPN.
E-MAIL: pierce@desnews.com