Meet the New ‘Press,’ Without Wriggling Guests

There was no distant replay on Sunday’s “Meet the Press.”
Tom Brokaw, the temporary host, did not try to duplicate Tim Russert’s trademark custom of digging up old videotape to catch politicians flip-flopping and contradicting themselves.

Mr. Brokaw, the former “Nightly News” anchor who will host the program until NBC finds a more permanent replacement for Mr. Russert, made a point of breaking with the past; the first segments were not even taped in Mr. Russert’s studio in Washington but at a meeting of the Western Governors’ Association in Wyoming. The majestic snow-capped Jackson Hole setting didn’t provide for a very exciting political debate, but the changes did suggest just how difficult it will be for NBC to revamp a Sunday news program that was so shaped by the personality and passions of its longtime host.
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But in the middle of one of the fiercest and most exciting presidential races in years this “Meet the Press” had a little too much comity. Mr. Brokaw, who was a guest speaker at the governors’ conference and has a ranch in nearby Montana, invited as his guests two Democrats, Gov. Bill Ritter Jr. of Colorado and Gov. Dave Freudenthal of Wyoming, who, not surprisingly, agreed with each other on the economy, energy policy and the war and at times finished each other’s sentences, a little like the medley-singing Sweeney Sisters in the old “Saturday Night Live” skit.
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Mr. Brokaw did spar gently with his last guest: Chuck Todd, NBC’s political director, who this year has emerged as MSNBC’s most understated star, a master of exit polls, electoral maps and delegate counts. When Mr. Todd asserted quite categorically that Senator Barack Obama would not win Montana and North Dakota, Mr. Brokaw, a native of South Dakota and a veteran of the 2000 election-night fiascos, reprimanded his younger colleague.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/30/arts/television/30watc.html?th&emc=th