Tick, Tick, Tick, Tick, Tick: Jeff Fager, executive producer of “60 Minutes” and one of the most powerful figures in network news, was fired yesterday amid accusations of misconduct. He has been only the second person to run the show in its 50-year history.

He was fired because of a nasty note he sent to a CBS reporter covering allegations of personal misconduct by Fager. He had been mentioned in New Yorker  stories that were mostly about former CBS network boss Les Moonves. The “60 Minutes” boss had been accused of tolerating sexual harassment within the staff and even committing a bit of it himself.

CBS News President David Rhodes said in his memo that “this action today is not directly related to the allegations surfaced in press reports, which continue to be investigated independently. However, he violated company policy and it is our commitment to uphold those policies at every level.”

Ironically, Fager, who used to be President of CBS News, hired Rhodes who succeeded and eventually fired him.

CBS correspondent Jericka Duncan reported on the Evening News last night that while she was working on a story about Fager he texted to her that, “There are people who lost their jobs trying to harm me and if you pass on these damaging claims without your own reporting to back them up that will become a serious problem.”

Fager is a personal friend of The Rooney Report. He issued a statement saying CBS  “terminated my contract early because I sent a text message to one of our own CBS reporters demanding that she be fair in covering the story.”

He said, “My language was harsh and, despite the fact that journalists receive harsh demands for fairness all the time, CBS did not like it. One such note should not result in termination after 36 years, but it did.”

Mighty Winds: Hurricane Florence has weakened to a Category 2 storm with winds of 110 mph as it approaches the North Carolina coast. At 5 this morning, the center of the storm was about 205 miles away from Wilmington, NC, bringing high winds and heavy rain to the coast later this morning.

The worst is expected to hit tomorrow with as much as 35 inches of rain falling in some coastal areas. Duke Energy estimates that as many as 3 million people could lose power.

Both the amount and geographic spread of the rainfall could be 50 percent greater than normal because of ocean warming and climate change, according to scientists at Stony Brook University on Long Island.

Kids in Custody: The number of migrant children held in federal holding pens has spiked in the past year, The NY Times  reports. The total is now 12,800. It was 2,400 in May 2017, the paper reports.

The increase is not because more kids are being taken into custody, but because fewer are being released to the care of friends and family in the US, according to numbers provided by the Department of Health and Human Services.

Most of the children are teenagers from Central America who came to the US alone. They  held in more than 100 shelters across the US.

About 500 children who did come into the country with their parents and were separated are still being held, despite a federal court order.

Police Beat: A gunman went on a shooting spree in Bakersfield, Calif. last night, killing his wife and four other people before he was confronted by a sheriff’s deputy and took his own life.

The Kern County sheriff said, “This is the new normal.”

It’s a strange case. The gunman and his wife entered a trucking business and had a confrontation with a man there. The shooter killed that man, then turned and killed his own wife. He went on to kill another man outside a sporting goods store, then went to a nearby home where he killed two more people. Investigators are trying to find out what the connection might be between the shooter and his victims.

There They Go: Sunday’s Miss American pageant, held without a swimsuit competition for the first time in its history, lost 19 percent of its viewers from last year, according to the television ratings. The show had 4.34 million viewers, down from the 5.35 million last year.

Gender Identity: New York’s city council voted yesterday to allow New Yorkers a third gender category on their birth certificates. It would be a “non-binary” identity to be called “X” people who don’t consider their gender to be male or female.

The Great Books: Porn actress Stormy Daniels, who says she had a one-night fling with Donald Trump, is publishing a memoir to be called “Full Disclosure.” That’s the name of her book. Disclothesure is her profession.

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