Clooney Breaks His Own Big Story, A Live 'Network'

CBS and George Clooney are planning a live TV remake of "Network," Paddy Chayefsky's critically acclaimed, scathing satire of the television industry, in which a network's news division encourages an aging anchor to rave madly on-air for the sake of bigger ratings.

I know -- but in 1976 it was considered shocking and outrageous.

Execs at CBS were taken by surprise when Clooney leaked word of the project -- being developed for next fall -- to the Associated Press while promoting his flick "Good Night, and Good Luck."

Ironically, that flick details how, in the '50s, CBS newsman Edward R. Murrow defied corporate and advertiser pressure to expose the scaremongering of Sen. Joseph McCarthy and the House Un-American Activities Committee's communist witch hunt.