(FORTUNE Magazine) – Over a power breakfast of fresh berries and juice, former Today show executive producer Steve Friedman, 41, pages through that morning's USA Today pointing out the stories he would air if the newspaper were a television show: a piece on Sixties radicals, a segment on money managers, an item on Marilyn Monroe magic. He would emphasize people over concepts, positive over negative. Three anchors, lots of graphics, five nights a week and a weekend edition, and there you have it -- McPaper, the daily they said took its inspiration from TV, ready for the boober. Now all Friedman has to do is turn the concept into reality. This month he joined GTG Entertainment, a joint venture formed in December by former NBC chairman Grant Tinker, 61, and Gannett Co., owner of USA Today. Tinker recruited Friedman to develop nonfiction programming, beginning with the USA Today show. Says George Merlis, the former executive producer of Entertainment Tonight: ''Everybody in the station world is waiting anxiously for this show.'' The hot question: Can the syndicated early-evening offering outdraw such shows as Wheel of Fortune? Vanna's new competition has impressive backing. Gannett, at the direction of its strong-willed chairman, Al Neuharth, is bankrolling the project, which will cost close to $30 million a year to produce and promote. Friedman is fresh off an eight-year tour at Today, which he made the top-rated morning news show in America. And then, of course, there's Tinker. After taking NBC from No. 3 to No. 1, he is back in Hollywood, living happily, he says, with ''a wonderful lady'' who is ''more than a couple years'' his junior, and working hard to create the same magic at GTG that he did in the Seventies as head of MTM Enterprises. Says the deceptively easygoing Tinker: ''I subscribe to the theory 'Show me a good loser and I'll show you a loser.' ''