The morning show wars are brutal. Which is why a recent New York Times profile of Jim Murphy, Good Morning America's new commanding officer, marveled at the former Dan Rather-sidekick's "Zen-like" calm and "serenity" in the trenches.

With an untested new male coanchor, Chris Cuomo, a noncommittal coanchor, Diane Sawyer—who's almost universally believed to have no intention of staying past next year—and The Today Show's 1.1 million-viewer lead in the ratings, Murphy has a lot on his plate. And yet, according to the Times, he seems like he "stepped out of a jazz album cover."

What's his secret? He doesn't "give a fuck."

That's what he told Weekend GMA coanchor Bill Weir, according to a TV news insider. After Cuomo got the anchor chair, the source says, Weir, who was also up for the job, stopped by Murphy's office to say no hard feelings. To which Murphy is said to have replied, "You didn't really think you had a shot, did you?"

The conversation quickly devolved from there, and ended with Murphy blurting that he didn't really care about the anchor job anyway. "I don't give a fuck if I'm here in six months," Murphy said, according to the source. (The conversation was first reported in the New York Daily News, but without details of Murphy's outburst.) It's perhaps unsurprising that Murphy—who spent 12 years at CBS News, six of them helming the evening-news broadcast, before being replaced last year—would avoid getting too invested in his job. Watching his former colleague Rather get unceremoniously tossed overboard by CBS after giving 43 years to the network is said to have soured Murphy on notions of corporate loyalty, and inspired a realist's view of his own job security.

Murphy didn't return calls for comment, but an ABC News spokesman dismissed his tantrum as an embellishment of an old rumor. Weir, meanwhile, declined to discuss the conversation, saying only, "I've had many conversations with Jim Murphy, and the most recent ones have been fairly positive."

* This story was updated on September 28, 2006, at 4:27 p.m. to reflect the latest ratings information and to clarify the fact that Sawyer's commitment to anchor GMA, and not her contract with ABC News, is believed to expire next year.

Photo: ABC/Ida Mae Astute