What’s Happening at CNN got a tip that Carol Lin has left CNN. John Klein has apparently denied this is the case. So what’s the story?

The Sky is Blue, The World is Round, and now there’s another story about FOX News having a conservative bias.
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What’s Happening at CNN got a tip that Newsnight will either be canned or repeats this week. This is surprising that CNN’s much overhyped Anniversary Week would have one of its supposedly flagship programs be canned for this week only.

TVNewser has some insider dirt on Tucker Carlson’s “The Situation”.
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What’s Happening at CNN says it received a tip that PZN EP Mark Nelson has either been let go or re-assigned. Can anyone confirm or deny this?

No… it’s not anything on NBC… or any of the NBCU networks.

It’s the O’Reilly Factor.

Yep. So he told Donny D. on CNBC.

That’s the angle from the New York Times today. The speculation is that Shapiro is jumping before being forced out. This raises some interesting questions…
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So says Drudgey…

Also according to Drudge — an NBC News spokesperson is “strongly denying” the rumor.

Tonight’s Nancy Grace on Headline News featured a guest talking about Chris Tucker’s upcoming testimony in the Michael Jackson trial.

On screen at the time? A picture of Chris Rock.

Ummm… they’re different people, right?

Jeff Jarvis at Buzzmachine posits the notion of high priced anchors being too homogenized and floats the idea of replacing them with more opinionated personalities. Money quote…
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NY Daily News is reporting that one of Don Imus’ minions, Sid Rosenberg, has been yanked from the program due to some not at all nice comments he made on air last week about singer Kylie Menogue’s breast cancer battles.

First the Brewer incident and now this (not to mention all the pot shots Imus has taken at MSNBC; its management and particularly its talent, over the years). One has to wonder how much longer Rick Kaplan (and by extension Jeff Zucker and Neal Shapiro over at NBC) will continue to value Don Imus’ show as a benefit to MSNBC’s programming. Presumably they have a line in the sand. But where is it?

Here’s the link to the page. And for those out there who like to know about such things, they’ve started posting the anchor schedules again. And you might be shocked to learn just how many people out there on the internet want to know when their favorite anchor is on…among other things. But that’s a story for another day…

MSNBC’s NewsForce produers are joining in the blog game — with the launch of an MSNBC Live show page.

So far just a handful of items are posted — but it’s interesting to see a line or segment producer’s take on the news they are covering.

TVNewser has an interesting post about The Young Turks — a liberal-leaning radio show pitching a demo 8-minute video version of their show. The demo is well produced — and while it definitely takes a left-leaning point of view — is engaging to watch.

They are targeting Rick Kaplan — by encouraging listeners to e-mail or write the MSNBC chief.

USNews & World Report quotes an MSNBC spokesperson as saying “we’re going to take a look at their pitch.”

(I personally love the opening sequence… I’d be happy if they could license the music from Green Day…)

The TVSpy crowd is buzzing about the Accuracy in Media story about CNN & George Soros.

CNNFan.com has a very nice package up on a recent tour of CNN New York. Take a look.

What’sHappening@CNN notes tonight’s Anderson Cooper 360 was scheduled to feature a survivor story already featured twice on the program.

MSNBC is giving some “promo love” to the Scarborough Country Campaign to tighten laws on sex offenders — even featuring Congressman Mark Foley in a testimonial about the push that Scarborough Country viewers gave the legislation.

Hadrball with Chris Matthews is airing a live edition at 9pm - covering the Filibuster compromise. This time he is in a much quieter environment.

The Rake has an a short interview with Aaron Brown covering a range of issues from the Schiavo case to Bloggers to FOX News.

I’ve talked about this a lot in the last year. We seem to be in a time when too many people just want to hear that which they agree with—whether it’s Iraq or Terri Schiavo or anything, honestly. Fox is part of that, but, believe me, I hear it on the left all the time, too. For democracy—not to get too highfalutin on you, we are Minnesotans, after all—but for democracy, that’s a very dangerous place to be.

(hat tip: Romenesko)

Not quite. But next week will be the official Anniversary Week. CNNFan has more information on the details about what will happen next week. This culminates what has seemed like an eternity of shows and stories on the Anniversary which has continued Cable News’ dubious tradition of running a story into the ground; even when it’s a self-serving one.
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Although I’m not 100% certain, it appears FOX was on first with the news that a compromise on the Fillibuster deal had been reached with CNN right behind it. However MSNBC was caught woefully out of position and behind the curve. Hardball was Live for a change but it was on location which may have been a factor. But the fact remains that rather than interrupt the interview Mathews was conducting, MSNBC instead opted to put up a lower third announcing the upcoming press conference…and only about 5-7 minutes after FOX and CNN went live with the news.

The idea that Mathews and the remote crew had no idea what was going on was partially borne out by Mathews tossing to break by saying that up next would be a story on the fillibuster showdown that’s going to happen tomorrow….five minutes after MSNBC changed that lower 3rd. It wasn’t until he came back from break that Mathews acknowledged the news conference. Black eye for MSNBC tonight…

UPDATE: What’s Happening at CNN reported that FOX dumped back to a taped O’Reilly Factor at 8 pm while CNN stayed on the story with Paula Zahn Now. MSNBC dumped back to Hardball for analysis and then went to Countdown at 8 pm.

MSNBC’s Hardball with Chris Matthews will cablecast from the Ronald Reagan building near the White House in DC Monday. Matthews will sit down with Arizona Senator John McCain, right before a premiere of “Faith of My Fathers” the A&E adaptation of his book.

Larry King is celebrating 20 years on CNN — and has a string of huge interviews on deck for the week of the 30th — including Bill Clinton, George HW & Barbara Bush, VP Dick Cheney — and Barbara Walters will interview Larry.

Great post from FishBowlDC on Jessica Yellin

Robert Smigel’s weekly SNL cartoon imagined a world where “those in charge” can distract the media — and thus the country — with a superhero who create salacious news (to pull the media away from “real” news).

The sequence featured animated versions of a generic MSNBC anchor, FNC’s Hannity & Colmes — Wolf Blitzer from CNN, and Nancy Grace from HN (who said very little more than “they should FRY!” repeatedly).

“Distractor” swooped in and made comedian Sinbad drop his pants in front of a group of school children… and other “distractions.”

The SNL season finale also opened with a Darrel Hammond Hardball skit… nothing super remarkable — just the usual Zell Miller meltdown.

Fox News Watch spent two segments on the Newsweek swirl — giving it labels like “Magazine’s Mess.” I’ll spare you the recap — you know what they said without even watching.

Reliable Sources talked only about Newsweek and the Saddam photos. One interesting exchange:

KURTZ: David Frum, I’ve got — excuse me, David Gergen, I have got a few seconds. You say that once it’s out, but of course, had newspapers declined to publish these leaked photos, they wouldn’t have been out. So you seem to be letting the media off the hook a little bit here.

[David] GERGEN: Well, listen, Howie, once they’ve been leaked, they’re going to get out somewhere. We know the nature of this business, and if “The Sun” hadn’t published them, somebody else would, some other tabloid would have. So I don’t think you can blame the press on this. This was — these pictures should never have been allowed to be taken.

Johnny Dollar notes this asertation:

“I don’t think I have heard anyone on CNN or MSNBC note the common
ownership of the Sun and the NY Post and FNC,” a viewer writes in.”

…doesn’t hold much water.

To wit: Countdown with Keith Olbermann mentioned Rupert Murdoch by name 7 times Friday (so says OlbermannWatch); NewsNight with Aaron Brown mentioned the link; even FoxNews.com notes it; as do numerous other sources.

I promised myself I would not attack or even mention TVNews any further. But this is so far out there.

Brian ran a new item blasting NBC for calling Tim Russert’s interview with Howard Dean as “first” and “exclusive.”

Then the young blogger claimed his transcript of Topic A was “First on TVNewser.’

Uhhh… ‘cept I heard most of those quotes 24 hours before… on MSNBC Live. Or here.

Those in glass houses

If you are Dan Rather — you go on another cancelled show to talk about it.

Read Bloggermann — or, better yet — read the briefing and scroll down until “MSNBC” pops at you.

And my question, since MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann wrote about Scott’s alleged letter of resignation, you can assure us that the president regards this as being as asinine and abusive as the network bullying of Scott, can’t you?

Yes. Network bullying. In a blog. Did you read the blog?

FTV, continuing its history of blazing the trail upon which we all follow, speculates today that Ann Curry will be eased out at Today now that she’s getting the co-hosting job at Dateline. Among the possible alternatives are Natalie Morales, Amy Robach, and Alexis Glick.

Incidentally, Glick had appeared to be the front runner a few months ago because Jeff Zucker had made her his personal project with stealth anchor training sessions and a sudden flurry of appearances on Weekend Today, MSNBC, and the Today Show but that seems to have tapered off recently.

Lloyd Grove in the New York Daily News excavates some pretty heavy dirt in reporting on the upcoming debut issue of Radar magazine. Actually it’s a relaunch but whatever. The magazine did a not at all scientific poll of TV Industry people on TV News anchors who were “dumb, vain, or mean”. Among the cable news “dumb”, if you want to call them that (and I’m sure they don’t), are CNN’s Paula Zahn, Heidi Collins, and Rick Sanchez, and FOX’s Linda Vester who was tagged “not as dumb as you might think”.

What? They didn’t bother with MSNBC?

FTVLive was first to report that Bill Hemmer is leaving American Morning and maybe CNN. The Washington Post had more on this story this morning. CNN wants to make him a White House correspondent but that apparently isn’t making Hemmer jump up and down with joy and he’s doing the proverbial “weighing my options” thing. He says that there’s been interest from “other outlets”. He also didn’t seem none too happy that this leaked out and he seemed to insinuate that CNN did it deliberately.

By Nielsen Media Research, via FNC.

FRIDAY 5-13 IN TOTAL VIEWERS
PRIMETIME
FNC - 1,417,000
HEADLINE NEWS — 383,000
CNN - 345,000
MSNBC - 195,000
CNBC — 180,000

25-54 Prime Time
FNC - 358,000
HEADLINE NEWS — 155,000
CNN - 107,000
CNBC — 108,000
MSNBC - 71,000