Check out this fantastic, wide-ranging profile of Fox News star Greta Van Susteren in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution today:
How does it feel to be compared with CNN Headline News' Nancy Grace, MSNBC's Rita Cosby and others whose prime-time cable shows often address the same legal topics as hers?
Van Susteren, 51, doesn't hide her frustration.
"I'm right up there with the boys," she says. "But I only get compared to women who are way down the [scale] of success. If I've played with the boys and competed with the boys, I want to be compared with the boys."
She's got an excellent case.
Fourteen years after her daily analysis of the William Kennedy Smith rape trial on CNN helped lay the groundwork for a new and robust category of TV show --- legal talk --- Van Susteren, who jumped to Fox in 2002, is the indisputable star in an increasingly crowded and sometimes controversial field.
Endlessly curious and refreshingly willing to own up to what she does and doesn't know, Van Susteren's tempered, tenacious approach to dissecting complex legal matters --- and more --- makes her stand out in a genre that seemingly can't get enough of colorful, even combative characters. She's nightly proof that nothing speaks louder than success.
"Greta's probably the country's best-known attorney," says Bill Shine, Fox's senior vice president of programming.
Last month, "On the Record," which airs weeknights at 10, had more than triple the viewership of its closest legal competitor, "Nancy Grace." Even more impressive, "Record" came in third among all cable news shows, trailing the second-place "Hannity & Colmes" by fewer than 100,000 viewers. And in the all-important 25-54 age group, it was No. 2 behind only cable's 800-pound gorilla, "The O'Reilly Factor."
"Greta is a player," says Gail Evans, the former CNN executive vice president who asked the American Bar Association for the names of top defense lawyers in several cities in 1991 and ended up hiring Van Susteren for the Smith trial. "If I were Bill O'Reilly, I'd watch out."
Great article--I just wish Greta would post some pics of her family's "plus-size pet," Jim the cat, on her GretaWire blog for us cuteness addicts!
Read on to get the skinny on her career as a clown at a child's birthday party at Ted Koppel's house, her quest to interview Brett Favre, and why the Miss America pageant can't be considered sexist...
