Fred Micklen

**Fred Micklen** was the President of UBA, the network that airs *The Morning Show*, the most successful morning show in the country, until he was fired.

## History

### Mitch's 50th Birthday and Vegas Shooting

Fred joined the cast and crew of TMS to celebrate Mitch's 50th birthday. At the party, he and Reid talked about Dick Lundy and agreed to set up a meeting between Dick and Cory. Reid also said that Alex needed to go, but Fred said they could still reinvent her.

Later, they learned there was a shooting in Las Vegas and TMS sent a team to do a special show from there. When they returned from that trip, Hannah came to Fred's office to tell him that Mitch had raped her while they were in Vegas. In order to keep her quiet, Fred offered her the head booker job.

### Mitch's Firing and Bradley's Hiring

Fred called Chip when he learned that someone had leaked the news that Mitch Kessler, co-host of The Morning Show, was being investigated for sexual harassment. Chip then had to call Mitch and fire him. When Alex learned about Mitch's firing, he and Cory talked to her over the phone. They promised her they'd get through it and that behavior like Mitch's would not be tolerated. Fred was forced to concede when Alex insisted on addressing her audience alone, with no one in Mitch's seat, reporting on the allegations and making her own statement. He watched Alex's report with Cory and they agreed that she was doing well.

After Mitch was out, Fred said they needed to create a safe working environment for everyone at TMS. YDA was creeping up on them in ratings. When he learned that Alex was refusing to sign her new contract without co-host approval, Fred said to get a list of names of men who could work with her and work with someone younger once she was gone. Not long afterward, at an awards show where Alex was being honored, Alex shocked everyone by announcing Bradley as her new co-host.

Immediately after the announcement, Fred ordered Cory to get both Alex and Bradley to the studio and not let either of them make a statement. Once they were back at the office, Fred told Cory to fix it. Cory said that Alex did them a favor, as this would bring the spark back to the show. It would spike the ratings and then they could finally let Alex go. Fred agreed to give Cory a month to try it.

Fred then met with Alex and told her he could fire her immediately. Alex replied that her show was the only thing holding the news division up and America loves her. She refused to apologize for what she'd done.

On Bradley's first day, Fred was horrified when she went off script and told everyone she'd had a rough child and had even had an abortion when she was fifteen. He tried to call Cory and Chip, but both of them ignored him. After the show was over, he told Cory that advertisers were already pulling out, but Cory was unconcerned. Fred then said he didn't want Bradley doing the Ashley Brown interview. Cory pointed out that there would be serious backlash if they pulled the interview, as they'd already advertised it, so it had to go forward as planned.

Despite Fred's resistance, ratings increased with Bradley on the show. While this was happening, Fred hired Vicki Manderly to interview everyone on the show and see if anyone was implicating anyone other than Mitch. After some interviews, she reported that no one had implicated him or the show yet. She needed to finish her interviews to find out where he was vulnerable.

During Ashley's interview, Bradley again went off-script, angering Fred. He tried to call Chip and Cory, but neither of them would take his call, which angered him even more.

### New York Times Article and Alex's Party

Fred and Cory listened in on a call between Gerald and Richard from UBA and Robert from the New York Times, who was writing an article about Mitch and the show. Robert said that four accusers had come forward and two had named themselves. Some of the women said they'd reported Mitch's actions to UBA. They gave Fred eight hours to provide a quote for the story. Fred refused unless they gave more information about what was in the story. Robert said they could publish the story without a quote. Richard didn't believe that was true until Jane Taft spoke up and said they had four sources of quotes, including three women who worked for the show and one man who currently worked there. One of the sources was Fred's old assistant, Janine Friedman. Her quote was extremely damning. When he heard the quote, Cory suggested they trade the story about Mitch coming to the studio for dropping the quote. Gerald relayed the message to Robert, without giving details of the story, but Robert said they'd just run the story as it was. Once the call was over, Fred told Gerald and Richard to do whatever they had to do to kill the story, including sabotaging the quote sources.

Fred and his wife, Geneva, attended Alex's fundraising party together. At the party, Fred stepped outside, where he talked to Robert and agreed to give a quote in exchange for Janine's quote being dropped. He gave a quote about Mitch coming to the studio. After the article came out, Mitch called Fred and said if he was going down, Fred was going down with him.

### Wildfires and Replacing Chip

While wildfires raged in California, Fred got word from his property manager that they had to evacuate his house there was it was mandatory. Geneva told Fred to make sure they got all the animals. Once he hung up, Fred said TMS should go to California to cover the fires so the women could stop talking about MeToo for five minutes. He called Cory to execute this plan.

Fred's property manager later told him that TMS was trying to interview the firefighters Fred had hired to protect his property. Chip said it was for a story Bradley was doing, so Fred told him to kill the story. Despite this, Chip decided to have Bradley do the story anyway.

Shortly after this, Fred met with Cory and several others. As the meeting ended, Fred told Cory his office would be calling to set up a meeting betwene Cory and Marlon Tate, a potential EP for TMS. He said the investigation would be wrapping up soon and they needed to be prepared for whatever might come of it. He made it clear to Cory that Marlon was meant to have the job. Cory said that he heard him, but as head of news, he'd take it under advisement. He also asked if Fred was happy, because he didn't seem to be.

When Alex learned that Bradley was planning to interview Mitch, an interview which would expose Fred's role in covering up his behavior, she immediately went to Fred, who feigned ignorance and said that he'd always suspected something was happening with Mitch and regretted not doing anything about it. They agreed to work together to get Bradley out. Fred said Chip also had to go, which Alex briefly fought him on before relenting. Fred asked Alex to meet with Marlon Tate, whom he'd chosen to replace Chip.

Fred met with Maggie, who told him she was writing a story about UBA. He was upset and thought she was betraying him. He reminded her that he'd always supported her. She said she'd supported him as well, but said the story kept making its way back to her desk. She'd thrown it out before, but said those stories no longer stayed buried. The story would be coming out either way, but she promised Fred she'd give him a fair shake. She said she'd be in touch and left. Once she was gone, Fred called Vicki and asked why she didn't know about Maggie's story. He then ordered her to wrap up the investigation and report her findings by Tuesday morning.

Once Vicki's report was in, Fred set up a meeting with Chip. First, he met with Alex. She'd met and liked Marlon. Fred said Marlon liked her as well. Alex made another attempt to save Chip's job, but Fred said that the investigation had implicated Chip, so he had to go. In exchange, he offered her co-anchor approval written into her new contract. He also encouraged her not to feel bad about Bradley because she was getting a good payoff. Once Alex was gone, it was time for him to meet with Chip. Fred quickly fired Chip, though Chip knew it was just him trying to cover himself. Fred reminded Chip that he asked Chip to kill the story about the private firefighters, but Chip didn't.

When Marlon arrived to take over for Chip, Fred introduced him to the TMS team. He also told everyone that Chip had covered up Mitch's actions, which is why he had to be fired. Fred then turned it over to Marlon, who started to give a speech. He was then interrupted by Bradley coming up in front of everyone and delivering the news that Hannah had died. Fred called for them all to take a moment to honor and remember Hannah.

During that day's show, Fred was shocked to see Alex and Bradley implicating him for covering up Mitch's actions. He raced downstairs to stop them, but Mia and Cory locked the doors of the control room, keeping him out. Alex and Bradley contineud talking until the studio cut the feed.

### Forced Leave

Immediately after Alex and Bradley's broadcast ended, Fred told Cory he was a dead man, but Cory said Fred was. Cory was fired by the network outright while Fred was placed on administrative leave as they investigated the claims against him.

In order to get Fred out of UBA, the network paid him $119.2 million. He wasn't satisfied that and tried to call Mitch, but Mitch ignored his calls. Finally, Fred went to see Mitch directly, but Mitch told him to leave.

Despite this, Fred continued to try to talk to Mitch. Mitch quickly realized that Fred had no guilt for Hannah's death. Fred maintained that her parents didn't have a case and wanted Mitch to go with him to the network to ask them to fix a motion to dismiss. Mitch told Fred to leave him out of it. Despite this, Fred continued to call him. He also later called Cory.

Cory tried to convince Fred to call off the story, but Fred said it was Cory's fault for not doing what Fred asked and trying to get the lawsuit dismissed. Fred also reminded Cory that he wouldn't come out looking good when Maggie's book came out as he was in the room when UBA decided to pay Fred off.

### Mitch's Memorial

Fred attended Mitch's memorial. When Alex showed up at the reception portion, Fred looked at Alex, but they didn't speak. When she called everyone's attention to herself and gave a speech about Mitch, Fred secretly recorded it and later leaked it online.

## Career

Fred was the President of UBA until he was fired.

## Notes and Trivia

* He is the only non-main guest character to appear in all 10 episodes of the first season.

## References

1. ↑ Lonely at the Top, 1x08
2. ↑ In the Dark Night of the Soul It's Always 3:30 in the Morning, 1x01
3. ↑ A Seat at the Table, 1x02
4. ↑ Chaos Is the New Cocaine, 1x03
5. ↑ That Woman, 1x04
6. ↑ No One's Gonna Harm You, Not While I'm Around, 1x05
7. ↑ The Pendulum Swings, 1x06
8. ↑ Open Waters, 1x07
9. ↑ Play the Queen, 1x09
10. ↑ The Interview, 1x10
11. ↑ My Least Favorite Year, 2x01
12. ↑ It's Like The Flu, 2x02
13. ↑ Laura, 2x03
14. ↑ Ghosts, 2x05
15. ↑ Testimony, 2x09