After some brief downtime with the blog’s servers, here are Fridays Nielsen numbers. Greta had another phenomenal night and was FOX’s number #1 show that night (O’Reilly had a sub)…
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Saturday I noted the MSNBC press release announcing the Hardball Church Tour that will be in Tennessee on Tuesday, the night of President Bush’s Iraq speech. Well MSNBC has taken what was a potential logistical headache (Mathews in Tennesse…the action in Washington D.C.) and turned it into something of an advantage by using the same TV audience for the Church Tour to be in a Town Hall meeting after the speech is over according to today’s release…

Immediately following the President’s address Chris Matthews will anchor a live Heartland Town Hall Meeting from Twin Lakes Baptist Church in Nashville, Tennessee. Matthews will gauge audience reaction to the President’s speech and have analysis from MSNBC’s Chief Washington correspondent Norah O’Donnell, MSNBC’s Tucker Carlson and Newsweek Managing Editor Jon Meacham. The town meeting will conclude at 10 p.m. ET.

The Washington Post’s Libby Copeland has an interview with Nancy Grace… (via What’s Happening At CNN)

“I’m on a search for the truth,” she says during a recent visit to the District to promote her new book, “Objection!,” in which the former prosecutor calls defense attorneys “dangerous” and compares them to pigs. The way Grace sees it, prosecutors want to do what’s right, whereas defense attorneys are unethical and just want to win. She’d never cross over to what she calls the “dark side” because “I don’t really want to have any part of getting guilty people off.”

ooooooooook….the article is sure to give more ammo to Grace’s detractors….

The New York Times’ Katharine Q. Seelye has a report on a new Pew Research survey on the media which some pretty obvious (to me) observations…

The survey found “a startling rise in the politicization of opinions on several measures,” and its authors said the results reflected the increasing political polarization of the country. This was especially pronounced on the question of whether news outlets “stand up for America” or are too critical of America.

“Republicans increasingly express the view that the press is excessively critical of the United States,” the survey said, with 67 percent agreeing with that statement now compared with 42 percent in July 2002. About a quarter of Democrats say news organizations are too critical, the same level as three years ago.

No kidding. TV Newser breaks down the numbers even further…

While CNN still ranks #1, (giving Roger Ailes another reason to declare that Pew is a “liberal lobbying organization”), its audience share has declined in the Pew study

Ailes might be critical? That’s an understatement. It totally flies in the face of the Nielson numbers. FOX has consistently beaten CNN handily on every breaking news story. If more Americans are ranking CNN above FOX according to Pew, where the hell are they when news breaks? Not turning on their TVs apparently if Nielson is accurate. Someone needs to reconcile these two sets of numbers in such a way that it shows that they’re both right. That would be one survey I would be very interested in reading.

Rachel Tobin Ramos in the Atlanta Business Chronicle writes up CNN’s struggles to re-define itself in the face of FOX News Channels dominance and has some juicy Jim Walton quotes in it…

Although Walton denies CNN has any reporting bias, he said some have called CNN “anti-American.” In his thinking, that’s because “it sometimes angers people when we report the truth.”

The truth? Oh man…FOX’s PR machine could have a field day with that one….

“CNN does not have fans per se, like other networks,” he added. “Our job is to report the truth without bias from different angles. We should be like your best friend … who’ll be honest with you. That angers people sometimes.”

I don’t know about that. CNN has fans. CNNfan and What’s Happening At CNN are proof of that. Is Walton really in tune with his own audience?

The article seems to get Walton on the record about how long Jonathan Klein has to turn things around.

He said the changes Klein is making on CNN/U.S. will have gradual returns. He wants to give Klein six to 18 months to implement his plan and start to see results. The focus, said Walton, is on better “storytelling,” and reporting on “characters that are surprising and interesting,” which is what makes a successful book or movie.

Six to eighteen months? It took FOX five to six years to overtake CNN. I guess it will all depends on what sort of “results” Walton is looking for. An uptick in the ratings? Or overtaking FOX? If it’s the latter six to eighteen months is very aggressive for a timetable…