This article is more than 1 year old

Eric Schmidt 'eyes own TV show'

Google boss in alleged CNN pilot 'disaster'

Some say Eric Schmidt is stepping down as Google CEO because he lost "energy" and "focus" after Larry Page and Sergey Brin pulled the company from China against his wishes. But another report indicates his rather large head was turned by the possibility of his very own TV show.

The New York Post reports that for more than a year, Schmidt has been eying a future in television. According to the paper, he's been working with a CNN executive producer to develop a show hosted by himself, and a pilot was filmed last August.

The CNN executive producer in question is Liza McGuirk, who oversees the network's "Parker Spitzer" show, featuring Pulitzer Prize winner Kathleen Parker and former New York attorney general and governor Elliot Spitzer. Schmidt appeared on the show in October, and at one point, he told Parker that if you don't like Google Street View cars photographing your house, you can "just move." But this was removed from the final airing of the program.

Apparently, McGuirk and Schmidt are very close indeed.

The Post says the pair first met on the Sunday foreign-affairs show "Fareed Zakaria GPS," which frequently used Schmidt as a guest. "Eric Schmidt has been looking for a TV job for over a year," a "CNN insider" tells The Post. "But the pilot he filmed with Liza was a complete disaster."

We don't doubt it.

Schmidt's "just move" bit was no isolated incident. In late 2009, he told MSNBC that "if you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place." Last year, speaking to a print journalist, he famously said that "Google policy on a lot of things is to get right up to the creepy line and not cross it," but this was merely one example of Schmidt leaping across that line.

Come to think of it, we'd tune in for The Eric Schmidt Show. In a heartbeat. ®

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