Brian Williams Needs His Own Show. Oh, Wait.

This week Arianna Huffington filled in for Rachel Maddow on her hit show on MSNBC. If Conan O'Brien ever needs a night off, he can call in Brian Williams.

The tan and taut NBC Nightly News anchor was in good form Tuesday night at the Joan's Legacy benefit gala at the Frederick P. Rose Hall, Home of Jazz at Lincoln Center in Manhattan.

The charity event brought together big names in New York real estate and news media to remember Williams' and Tom Brokaw's former news writer, Joan Scarangello, a 47-year old non-smoker who succumbed to lung cancer in 2001, after a nine-month battle.

Williams described the NBC Nightly News newsroom in which he worked with Joan as WJM-TV from The Mary Tyler Moore Show.

"Newsrooms aren't known for their wells of affection; we were close."

Williams, taking the comparison further, said with a laugh that he's a combination of Murray Slaughter and Ted Baxter from MTM.

He took some time to reflect on how his friend and close colleague -- "a free spirit who liked her journalism old-school" -- would think about the media landscape today.

"As morose as it sounds, I wonder if Joan, and all the people we've lost, if it's a good thing that they're gone for what's happened to our business." He cites the web and 24-hour cable news networks with their "attitude" as two examples of why they're better off.

Williams does embrace the web and is known to drop a punchy line himself on his NBC Nightly News blog Daily Nightly. Here's one recent example:

"A veteran security guard on the Plaza tells me '[the Rockefeller Christmas tree's] a little smaller than last year'... I guess in keeping with the G.D.P."

But he's reluctant to say on the record which websites he checks before bed. Let's just say they're popular. (You can leave your guesses in the comments section -- and just search your web guilty pleasures for the answer.)

The charity last night raised $850,000 for research into non-smoking related lung cancer. ( Lung cancer kills more people than the next four most common cancers--breast, prostrate, pancreatic, and colorectal--combined.)

The event enjoyed a packed house and a good turnout one would typically expect in a bustling economy.

A lot of big names in New York City real-estate were in attendance since Joan's sister, Mary Ann Tighe, is the chief executive of CB Richard Ellis Tri-State, and her brother, Thomas Scarangello, is chairman of Thornton Tomasetti . Other guests included David Greenbaum of Vornado, Douglas Durst of the Durst Organization, Mitchell and Gregg Rechler of RSquared, and Andrew Conner of Tribeca Associates.

Steve Ross of Related Companies who developed the massive Time Warner Center, was pleased to see a charity event in full swing given the "quicksand" that we're in. The billionaire co-owner of the Miami Dolphins and the Dolphin Stadium advises that now is the time for reinvention and survival mode.

"This is only the beginning," he warns.

Andrea Chalupa