The early bird doesn't always get the worm. 
 
 CBS' "Early Show" is playing musical chairs yet again by replacing its on-air team. Making their exit are Maggie Rodriguez, Harry Smith and Dave Price. 
 
 Moving in are Chris Wragge and Erica Hill, co-anchors of the Saturday edition of the "Early Show" since 2008, who are scheduled to take over as co-anchors of the weekday show starting Jan. 3. 
 
 Also joining the team will be Jeff Glor, who has been anchoring the network's Saturday newscast, and Marysol Castro of ABC's "Good Morning America" weekend edition, who will serve as a weather anchor. 
 
 Smith will become the primary substitute anchor for Katie Couric's evening newscast, "Face the Nation" and "Sunday Morning." 
 
 New roles for Rodriguez and Price are to be determined. 
 
 What do you think of the new team, Show Trackers? Will it be enough to break the show out of third place? 
 
 -- Yvonne Villarreal 
 
 twitter.com/villarrealy 
 
 Photo: Maggie Rodriguez. Credit: Getty Images ||||| CBS News abruptly gave "The Early Show" a complete makeover in an attempt to freshen the show, replacing co-hosts Harry Smith and Maggie Rodriguez with its current Saturday anchor team of Chris Wragge and Erica Hill. 
 
 FILE - In this Nov. 25, 2009 file photo, host Maggie Rodriguez is shown on CBS News' "The Early Show" in New York. CBS News is completely overhauling "The Early Show" broadcast team. Co-anchors Harry... (Associated Press) 
 
 FILE - In this May 13, 2008 file photo, Harry Smith, anchor of the"The Early Show" on CBS television introduces the announcement of the nominees for the American Theatre Wing's 2008 Tony Awards for Broadway... (Associated Press) 
 
 FILE - In this May 24, 2010 file photo, Dave Price, center, performs with Backstreet Boys Howie Dorough and Brian Littrell on CBS News' "The Early Show" in New York. CBS News is completely overhauling... (Associated Press) 
 
 The network is also replacing weather forecaster Dave Price with Marysol Castro, formerly of ABC's "Good Morning America" weekend edition, and adding Jeff Glor as the regular news reader. 
 
 The new team will start Jan. 3. 
 
 There had been little inkling that alterations were afoot, although the show had changed its executive producer, David Friedman, within the past year. Friedman said he believed the new team had the right energy and chemistry to embark on another effort at lifting the show out of third place in the network morning news ratings. 
 
 "It's less about what we weren't getting and less about a generational change or a different direction," Friedman said. "We just literally think this is the right team going forward." 
 
 "The Early Show" has consistently ranked behind the morning champ, NBC's "Today" show, and ABC's "Good Morning America." The week before Thanksgiving was typical. "Today" averaged 5.6 million viewers each day, "GMA" had 4.6 million and "The Early Show" had 2.9 million, the Nielsen Co. said. 
 
 CBS News President Sean McManus said he won't be expecting any immediate ratings changes in a time where "Today" hasn't lost a single week in nearly 15 years. But he said he believed the new team will help the show grow. 
 
 "This group, I think, will work very well together," McManus said. "I think the chemistry will be very good." 
 
 "We just felt the timing was right to start planning for the future," he said. 
 
 Smith had the longest tenure on "The Early Show." He was the sole survivor from 2002 when CBS installed a four-anchor team that included Smith, Hannah Storm, Julie Chen and Rene Syler. Chen still contributes occasional reports to the show; the others have left CBS News. 
 
 Smith also hosted a previous CBS morning show from 1987 to 1996. CBS said he'll stay at the network as a news reporter and primary substitute at the "CBS Evening News," "Face the Nation" and "Sunday Morning." 
 
 Alerted that changes were coming, Smith said he took a "long walk on a cold golf course" Sunday and reflected on doing the CBS morning show for 17 of the last 25 years. "To be honest, I'm incredibly grateful for the opportunities I've had," he said, confirming that he plans to stay at CBS. 
 
 "I have given them everything I can possibly give," said Smith, 59. "I wish the people who follow nothing but the best. God love 'em, I hope they can move the (ratings) needle more." 
 
 Wragge worked in sports, including a stint as a sideline reporter at events for NBC, until he made the jump to news in 2006. Beside his weekend job at CBS, he had been anchoring local news broadcasts at the network's New York affiliate, a job he'll give up to go national. 
 
 Hill, who came to CBS from CNN, briefly filled in for Rodriguez last year when Rodriguez was on maternity leave. She's the only holdover from the current daily program, although in a different role. Currently, she reads the newscasts. 
 
 Wragge and Hill's growth as a team has been evident on Saturday mornings, and they've proven adept at shifting between hard news and lighter fare, McManus said. 
 
 "They're uniquely suited to each other and to the morning show genre," he said. 
 
 Friedman said it's an advantage for CBS that its regular viewers know each of the new personalities, except for weather forecaster Castro. 
 
 "You're not introducing somebody to the morning genre that has never been in the morning genre," he said. "That is a little bit tougher." That's likely a reference to the other recent morning transition, where George Stephanopoulos replaced Diane Sawyer as a co-host at "Good Morning America" late last year. 
 
 "It's hard to fault CBS for looking to shake things up," said David Bianculli, a veteran television critic and now a media professor at Rowan University in New Jersey. "I have a lot of respect for Harry Smith, but for a long time, this has not been working on a daily basis." 
 
 The suddenness of the "bloodbath" was surprising, Bianculli said. 
 
 "Anything that's done this quickly smells of desperation," he said. 
 
 CBS News said it is discussing future roles at the network with Rodriquez and Price. Price has filmed human interest reports along with doing the weather on "The Early Show." Earlier this month, producers dropped him off in Alaska with only $50 and a phone and challenged him to earn his way back to New York City. 
 
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 CBS is owned by CBS Corp. 
 
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 http://www.cbs.com ||||| AP Photo Fourth Estate Megyn Kelly’s Big Mistake Why the Fox News star will regret her move to NBC. 
 
 Stop thinking of what Megyn Kelly's move to NBC News means for her and her new network and start thinking about what it means for the network she’s leaving behind, the Fox News Channel. Television talent raids—like the one NBC News chairman Andrew Lack has just pulled off—are almost never a simple matter of improving your own roster. As the history of broadcasting shows us, a single major defection by a popular anchor rarely improves that acquiring network’s ratings or public appeal. The primary aim of such larceny: Weaken your TV opponent’s line-up by making off with one of their visible stars. Anything else accomplished is just gravy. 
 
 An early example of the TV talent-poaching game came in 1976, when third-place ABC News hired Barbara Walters away from NBC, where she anchored the Today show, one of the greatest money-making machines in the history of television. ABC enticed Walters with a $1 million a year contract, the highest ever paid to a newscaster. The network paired Walters with Harry Reasoner, a defector from CBS, to co-anchor ABC’s nightly news. She and Reasoner were expected to improve ABC’s ratings, but as the New York Times reported, the real target was NBC's Today. Removing Walters, Today’s best-known face, from the show weakened it and gave ABC’s a.m. offering, Good Morning America a fighting chance. The plan worked. By 1978, the Good Morning America's audience had surged, tying Today in some markets, making the second-place program very profitable. At $1 million a year, $4.25 million in today’s money, Walters was a bargain. 
 
 Story Continued Below 
 
 Walters, however, failed as a nightly news co-anchor, a job for which she proved unsuited. After 20 months and no rating bump, the network replaced the Walters-Reasoner duo. History sorta repeated itself in 2006, when CBS News lured Katie Couric from her co-anchor slot at Today, paying her $15 million to anchor The CBS Evening News. Couric wasn’t part of a grand morning-TV chess game like Walters, but she bombed just the same, leaving CBS in 2011. 
 
 One lesson Walters and Couric—and the other high-profile network defectors (Harry Reasoner, Diane Sawyer, Roger Mudd, et al.)—teach is of the non-transferability of TV starpower. TV stars struggle to survive outside of the context in which they were nurtured. The current network anchors—Scott Pelley, David Muir and Lester Holt—all benefited from the fact that they ripened their talents at their respective networks before they got their evening chairs. Viewers grew accustomed to their faces and their styles. Walters and Couric, on the other hand, were hot-house transplants plunged into new environments. Although both women excelled at morning TV at their respective networks, neither ever took root with evening news audiences. The onus can be placed on them—they were rotten at it, you might say. Or the blame can fall on the audiences for failing to appreciate a woman in the nightly news anchor role. Or you can blame the laws of botany. Whatever your call, both were miscast. 
 
 Megyn Kelly’s shift from Fox to NBC fits smoothly into the Walters pattern. Like Walters, Kelly is an absolute star at her current network, Fox, and her departure will leave a big hole in its programming. The two biggest beneficiaries of the Kelly hire would seem to be NBC’s sister network, MSNBC, and CNN, and the shows they currently run against Kelly’s in the 9 p.m. time slot (The Rachel Maddow Show and Anderson Cooper 360). If CNN wanted to be gracious about NBC’s gift, it should chip in a million or two to help cover her new salary. 
 
 Without a doubt, NBC is getting a TV star. Kelly is the second-most watched host at Fox after Bill O’Reilly, the king of cable TV. But how much of Kelly’s appeal is hers and how much of it derives from having O’Reilly as her lead-in? A turnip could get good ratings if it had a Fox show following Papa Bear’s. According to news reports, Kelly will host a new daytime show on NBC, a highly competitive market where Katie Couric, Meredith Vieira and Anderson Cooper have recently struck out with well-financed, highly promoted productions. Why should we expect Kelly to succeed where they failed? And what percentage of her Fox audience can be expected to follow Kelly to a new format on a new channel? Viewers are creatures of habit. Grown fond of Kelly in the evening, will they really switch to Kelly in the afternoon? 
 
 The fact that NBC isn’t moving her show to MSNBC in the evening may indicate that she’s tired of cable and longs for the prestige of a broadcast network. If that's her logic, she’s making a mistake. I can’t think of any cable host who moved full-time to broadcast and thrived. On the other hand, going the other direction—from broadcast to cable—has worked to the great benefit of both Bill O’Reilly and Jake Tapper. 
 
 Kelly will also host something newsy in the Sunday evening slot. But as my colleague Hadas Gold points out, NBC has an unbudgeable tenant in Sunday Night Football, consistently the highest-rated show on TV. Sunday Night Football airs from September through December. What sort of momentum could a January through August news show possibly build? Kelly’s third job at NBC, reports the Times, will cast her in the network’s special political programming and its other big events. In other words, just another talking head. 
 
 I can’t believe Barbara Walters didn’t talk her out of this move. 
 
 ****** 
 
 Thanks to the banks of TV monitors at Politico, I'll be watching a lot of Kelly’s new daytime show. Send program notes via email to Shafer.Politico@gmail.com. My email alerts never trusted Walter Cronkite, my Twitter thinks that Roger Mudd had the greatest anchorman name of all time, and my RSS feed shrieks every time the dial falls on Wolf Blitzer’s show. 
 
 Jack Shafer is Politico’s senior media writer.
– CBS is scrapping its Early Show team, replacing co-hosts Harry Smith and Maggie Rodriguez with the anchors of the show's Saturday edition, Chris Wragge and Erica Hill. Other more minor players also are leaving in the switch, which takes place early next year, the LA Times reports. The show has been consistently stuck in third place, well behind Today and Good Morning America. Smith, who survived the last major overhaul of the show in 2002, will stick with the network as Katie Couric's main backup on the CBS Evening News, notes AP. Click here for more.