the morning show

Teaser for ‘The Morning Show’ wakes up some trivia

/ Topical Trivia / By

A new teaser for “The Morning Show” was released today, and as a huge stan of “The Newsroom,” my antennae are tingling. The new show looks at morning cable news hosts and the struggles they face trying to be objective journalists in the face of a 24-hour news cycle machine. It stars Jennifer Aniston, Reese Witherspoon and Steve Carell, and will air this fall on Apple’s new streaming service, Apple TV+.

I’m totally down with a Witherspoon-Aniston reunion; Rachel and Jill Green back together again! And Carell is always good. What I do wonder about is the tone: Why get so many amazing comic talents together for a tense, hard-hitting drama? Intriguing.

But this “The Morning Show” teaser got me thinking about actual morning news hosts. See how much you know about the faces we wake up with.

Questions:

  1. Over on MSNBC, former congressman and conservative Joe Scarborough hosts “Morning Joe” with what liberal political commentator who also happens to be his wife?
  2. When Gretchen Carlson left the “Fox and Friends” couch in 2013 to host her own show, she was replaced by what “Survivor” alum?
  3. Al Roker has been the weather anchor of “Today” on NBC since 1996. Who was the show’s weather presenter before him who held the spot from 1980 till 1996 and began the tradition of wishing centenarians happy birthday in 1983?
  4. Former White House communications director George Stephanopoulos is currently one of the co-hosts on what morning show?
  5. It began as “The Morning Show” in 1983 and later took on the name “Live with …” followed by the names of its stars when it went into national syndication, thanks to the chemistry of its two co-hosts. The show’s title has since included the names of those two hosts and three others. Who are they?

Answers up after the teaser, which features a beautiful set and a lot of highly dramatic voiceover. I might actually need to get Apple TV+ to watch this show.

Answers:

  1. Mika Brzezinski
  2. Elisabeth Hasselbeck
  3. Willard Scott
  4. “Good Morning America”
  5. Regis Philbin, Kathie Lee Gifford, Kelly Ripa, Michael Strahan and Ryan Seacrest

If you’re an Aniston fan, check out my “Friends” trivia book. It’s more than 600 questions about the classic show, available now on Amazon.