Hilton Interview
NBC News is denying reports that it has offered as much as $1 million for the first interview with Paris Hilton after her release from jail next week.”We don’t pay for interviews and we’ll never pay for interviews, and I have no interview to confirm,” NBC News spokeswoman Allison Gollust said. She did acknowledge the “common practice” of licensing pictures and video, but “Ive never seen a deal like that for this kind of money.” The accusation arose from a source at ABC News, as first reported by the New York Post. ABC had agreed to potentially pay up to $100,000 to the Hilton family for the interview as well as access to videos of Hilton and other material, according to an inside source. But ABC was outbid by an “astronomical” offer from NBC, the source said, citing information gained from the Hilton family. Hilton’s spokesman Elliot Mintz said, “I can’t comment because I really and truly don’t know.” The interview would apparently be for NBC News’ ‘TODAY’ show, which has a fierce rivalry for high-profile interviews with its ratings runner-up, ABC News’ ‘Good Morning America.’Network news divisions officially don’t pay for interviews, the ban can be sidestepped in various ways, including shifting the negotiations to a network’s entertainment division, which has no such restrictions.
