The September of Stelteritis

Chuck Todd
"Meet the Press" host Chuck Todd. Photo: Larry French/Getty Images
Dylan Byers
September 2, 2022

Last week, as part of its quixotic, nearly decade-long effort to modernize Meet the Press and satisfy Chuck Todd’s enduring and perhaps obstinate vision for a 24/7, multi-platform media mini-empire built on the back of a 75-year-old Sunday show, NBC News announced that it had hired a new executive producer: David P. Gelles, late of the late CNN+. The move comes just over a year after NBC hired the much-beloved Carrie Budoff Brown, then Politico’s top editor, to expand the MTP franchise, and three months after the network announced that it would once again rebrand the MTP website, once again overhaul the MTP newsletter, and once again launch a new MTP blog—a flurry of moves betraying a wistful belief that, with enough product launches and relaunches, one can effectively will an analog brand into digital relevance.