Anchor Dan Rather Left Out of ‘48 Hours’ Twentieth-Anniversary PartyEverybody who is anybody in television news — with one glaring omission — showed up for last week’s twentieth-anniversary blowout for 48 Hours, which, after 60 Minutes, is CBS News’ most durable magazine program. On hand for the party in the twentieth-floor lounge at 230 Fifth Avenue were CBS chairman Leslie Moonves, CBS News president Sean McManus, 48 Hours executive producer Susan Zirinsky, former CBS president Sir Howard Stringer, and former news president Andrew Heyward.
Missing was Dan Rather.
The original anchor of 48 Hours — who, along with Stringer, got the show off the ground in 1986 with a highly rated pilot, “48 Hours on Crack Street,” and pushed the network suits to put it on the weekly schedule — wasn’t invited. In an awkward phone call before the celebration, Zirinsky explained to Rather that he couldn’t come under the circumstances.
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Do Not Get in Diddy’s Way at the GrammysAt Rolling Stone’s pre-Grammy party, Diddy bumped Grey’s Anatomy cast members T.R. Knight, Kate Walsh, and Sara Ramirez from their spot in the VIP lounge; Britney exes Justin Timberlake and Kevin Federline hugged it out. Timberlake also partied so hard that he had to cancel a performance at Clive Davis’s party the next night. Singer Harry Connick Jr. says Anna Wintour is nothing like her character in The Devil Wears Prada. Also, Wintour-cinematically, a filmmaker working on a Vogue documentary lost footage of her at Bryant Park.