David Doss Out As AC360 Senior Executive Producer, Also Anderson Cooper Dons Bunny Suit At Request Of Apes

Hello readers! An odds and ends post for you! Given all the breaking news of the Chilean miners the last week, I really haven't had much to say. It was great to finally have a story to celebrate. Special shout out to Gary Tuchman and his producer Ismael Estrada for all their hard work. Check out Ismael's 'producer's notebook' here.

Last week also brought us some meta news in the land of 360: Senior Executive Producer David Doss is moving elsewhere at the network. He's been with the show since I started watching regularly, so this is no small tidbit. What it means exactly is anybody's guess, but I hope it results in a better quality newscast.

I know many regular viewers are pretty excited about this announcement. Personally, I always put more of the blame for the show's problems on Klein than I did Doss, but hey, what do I know? I just think some of those viewers might be longing for the so-called "Red 360," which I suspect was never as good as they remember it being. In any regard, that show is long dead.

Doss suddenly being out definitely makes one wonder about those rumors that he and Anderson Cooper were butting heads. Honestly, I can't imagine Anderson butting heads with anyone, but again, hey, what do I know? It just seems weird that it took five years for it to happen.

Anyway. The best part out of all of this? Charlie Moore is taking over! Will we soon be seeing more of AC360's Waldo? One can only hope! What? No specific reason! It can't always be about the Silver Fox, people. Ahem.

In seriousness, he seems to get along well with Anderson, which I would assume means they have the same sort of vision, which I hope means good things for we the viewers. See Mr. Moore, we're not scary, really! We just want quality news. You will get on Twitter now, yes?

Okay, people. Something else happened last week, and it was, shall we say, strange. The normally Twitter-averse Silver Fox shot out the following tweet:

From ac: in IA for story on ape communication. The apes asked me to dress as a rabbit. Weird, huh? http://twitpic.com/2xd7lq

And that twitpic was the following, so yes, weird!

Honest to God, my first thought was photoshop. Because seriously, the man who refuses to merely dance in front of cameras is going to put on a bunny suit and then send the picture to hundreds of thousands of people? Anderson Cooper, I do not understand you!

Where to even begin? What does one mock first? Perhaps the casual vagueness of the initial tweet. He's just there chilling in a bunny suit because apes told him, y'all! You know, just like every Wednesday! Did the Silver Fox really think he was going to send that picture out into the world with less than 140 characters of explanation and the Internets were not going to have a collective WTF seizure? Needless to say, the next day our anchor decided to give us a little more info:

From ac: lots of questions re yesterdays bunny costume. Doing story on bonobo chimps. the researchers sometimes dress up as a rabbit....

...when chimp indicates that is what he wants on a complex lexigram chart. I thought it was a joke, but the chimp wasn't laughing

Oh, he was laughing. On the inside, Anderson. On the inside.

But I think my absolutely favorite part of all of this was his last tweet:

From ac: who knew bunny suits had so many fans online? Going to post more pics. Find out whats up with the bunny tonite on 360

Up until this point, I had been trying very hard not to think about that dark corner of the interwebs that surely became quite excited by this whole situation. "Who knew bunny suits had so many fans online?" Bwah! That is either some mad subtle snark or one of the most naive things he's ever written. But I'm going to go with snark. I have my reasons.

So! That should be an interesting piece. Below is Thursday's "shot," which contains more explanation and more pictures of hilarity.



To put the 'end' on this post of odds and ends, finally, I give you this little morsel that I happened to come upon a week or so ago. Apparently, our friends at AC360 enjoy doing the news and science experiments! You see, if what I've linked to can be believed, there has been a piece of chocolate crumb cake sitting just outside our anchor's office since 2003. And it has disturbingly not changed in all these many years!

I hope Charlie Moore's new duties don't force him to give up the very important task of cake-keeper. That would be tragic. Specifically amusing to me, with any other show I'd be WTFing all over this post. But as I read, my initial reaction was, "yeah, that pretty much sounds exactly like something the 360 kids would do." Yes people, our news-givers are kinda weirdos...and it's part of why I love them. Suddenly the bunny suit doesn't seem that out of the ordinary, huh?