'Person to Person' bows with Clooney

CBS's reprisal of "Person to Person" has announced the first guests of the first show, debuting Feb. 8 at 8. Garbo-ish, they are so famous, only one name suffices: Clooney. Buffett. Jovi. (Actually, the last one requires two names: Bon Jovi. ) Charlie Rose and Lara Logan head to their homes (Warren Buffett will be debriefed in his office) and do the interviews.

Yes, it's the same format as the Edward R. Murrow version -- which was Murrow's sop to the entertainment division and his boss, Bill Paley, and whom he came to bitterly regret. 

In fact, as the story goes, "P to P" was conceived as a show in which CBS correspondents would go to the homes of the ordinary and poor -- average Americans, like farmers, and how they were dealing with the tribulations of life. But CBS execs demanded celebrities instead, and Murrow - who owned the show - went along with them . (He left the program after selling the show to CBS, and his successor as host would be Charles Collingwood, another august figure within the CBS News' ranks.) The show was a huge hit, and Murrow -- one of the great war correspondents of his generation and leader of CBS' peerless Murrow's Boys -- would end up looking in Lauren Bacall's closets.

But it was a fascinating early show, and some of Murrow's travels through the homes of the rich-and-famous remain TV classics; they were also prototypes of what was to become TV's preoccupation with celebrity. 

The release: