Anne Becker of Broadcasting & Cable gives a must read profile of Jim Cramer and his Mad Money program. The article covers all the bases and doesn’t gloss over the less positive areas…(via TVNewser)

Cramer has made his share of enemies, and some on the message boards dedicated to him lambaste his predictions. “Thank you for greasing the plank for the rest of my money,” posted John R. Gordon. “I am a low income person who just lost 3k+ on this trade … Thank you for giving my money to the insiders.”

While CNBC would not offer details on Cramer’s stock-prediction track record, he has had his share of lucrative hits, such as recommending Kmart at $40, only to see it climb to $157 within a year. But he has also had some colossal misses, including what he describes as a $17 million loss in one day on Cendant, when the travel/real-estate-services giant was charged with fraud. Cramer reviews his misfires on a Mad Money mea culpa segment called “Cramer vs. Cramer.”

WHAC has a rundown and includes the closing comments of the show….

The Washington Post’s John Maynard frames the Carlson/Cosby switch in terms of a Stewart/Carlson rematch and includes a rehash of the Crossfire incident….

Beginning Aug. 8 at 11 p.m., MSNBC’s “The Situation With Tucker Carlson” will go mano a mano with Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show,” hosted by Stewart, who last fall called Carlson a rude term for a portion of the male anatomy.

Their on-air spat began when Stewart took advantage of an appearance on CNN’s now-disbanded “Crossfire” to scold Carlson and co-host Paul Begala.

TV Week plays the story straight:

MSNBC is rearranging its weeknight lineup starting Aug. 8 to put former Fox News Channel personality Rita Cosby at 9 p.m. and move 6-week-old “The Situation With Tucker Carlson” to 11 p.m., where it will be the only live cable news program.

David Bauder of the AP takes a more skeptical line with this headline in the Houston Chronicle:

MSNBC dumps Carlson from prime-time slot

Broadcasting & Cable modified it’s original story. TVNewser earlier noted that B&C said the move appears “to be a vote of low-confidence for Tucker Carlson.” But that passage was missing from the article when ICN read it. There is this though…

“The move had all the earmarks of a downgrade, but Kaplan and Carlson saw it differently”

ICN is doing some rethinking on my earlier comments and was probably too quick to rush to judgement this morning in claiming that this was a vote of no confidence. Clearly the show wasn’t doing well in its 9pm slot and there wasn’t any indictation of the show trending higher in the ratings, though six weeks isn’t really enough time to make a definative judgement on that. But it is possible that the show in its current form could find a new larger audience at 11 pm without having to be tweaked. And ICN is intellectually honest enough to admit that Kaplan and Carlson’s comments played a role in this re-assessment. Sure, they’re going to put the best possible face on the story. But, and this is the key for ICN, Kaplan said that he’d been wanting to do something with 11 pm. ICN is going to give Kaplan the benefit of the doubt on that. If you want to call that backpeddling, I could see why you would come to that conclusion.

ICN thinks Cosby’s show should fare better against the competition than The Situation though. This is due in no small part to Cosby’s reputation of getting the big interview and her tenacity when given a challenge. Like Geraldo Rivera, Cosby has a history of flourishing when she’s gets a big interview. And she has something of a fan base that I’m sure MSNBC is counting on following her over in kick starting a rebounding of the numbers for the 9 pm hour.

Here are Thursday’s numbers…a wee bit late (hey, occasionally I actually have to do work at my job). And a not great day it was for CNN. Its sibling network decided to knock it around a bit. HLN beat CNN in both the Daytime and Primetime Demo and came dangerously close to beating it for Prime Time flat out. Grace beat Zahn again. Larry King was flat as was Cooper. FOX beat the competition combined in everything except the Total Day Demo. MSNBC didn’t do too bad for itself. Countdown, Hardball, and Scarborough were all over the 300,000 mark and The Situation had an above average evening.
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TVNewser, who has for all intents and purposes owned the Situation story today, tops it off with comments from both Carlson and Kaplan.

After all, “it requires a real commitment of resources,” MSNBC president Rick Kaplan said. “It’s cheaper to just run your schedule, turn it around and run it over again.”

“I told the network back in December or January that we were going to do an 11pm show,” Kaplan told TVNewser this afternoon. “What we really created for Tucker was a late-night show, but the hole in the schedule at that moment was nine, so we figured ‘Okay we’ll premiere it, we’ll fill the schedule.’”

…

The bow-tied host discussed a late-night show with Kaplan before he even came to MSNBC. “This is what I’ve wanted to do for a long time,” he said.

He continued: “This is a chance for Fox viewers, CNN viewers, people who are tired of reruns, to find a first-run program…It’s a huge move, from my perspective, on MSNBC’s part. As Rick said, it’s a commitment of resources. It’s a big deal. Other networks haven’t wanted to do it because it costs money, but MSNBC is bold enough to do it.”

ICN doesn’t think that this is spin we’re reading here and that Carlson was always intended to be on late night. Though one wonders why they didn’t just come out and say that Tucker was moving to 11 when Cosby was signed instead of making it this big guessing game about what was going to happen since they were going to put The Situation on at 11 in the first place. It just makes things look bad like it was a panic move when you already knew what you’re going to do but didn’t signal it that way (and even let conflicting data come out through back door means that Cosby was going to be on at 11 as other boards had reported).

But MSNBC will need more than the “Hey we’ve got fresh programming here.” tagline to make it work. They’re going to have to give viewers a reason to watch. That will mostly depend on whether a) The format of the progam is something that late night viewers truly want, and b) Whether Carlson is the guy to deliver those viewers. This is uncharted territory MSNBC is wading in to. Clearly they’ve done their due dilligence on the matter, to a greater extent than ICN had given them credit for. And ICN is pleased that this isn’t a return to the “here one day, gone the next” days of Erik Sorenson and that the commitment is still there. Because this show is going to need that commitment to have a chance at succeeding.

Here is a year to year comparison of the 9pm hour. The first number is the Total Viewers number. The number in parentheses is the P25-54 Demo number. The third number is the HH rating.

6/14/04-07/28/04 Norville/Hardball 353,000 (109,000) 0.4 rating
6/13/05-07/27/05 The Situation 201,000 (82,000) 0.2 rating

What these numbers don’t reflect though is the period from when Norville’s show ended its run to when The Situation started. That 9 pm time period became a programming graveyard of sorts for about 4-5 months where a rag tag group of specials and canned programming aired. In ICN’s opinion this made things difficult for The Situation at launch because there had been no consistency at that time period for so long and you never knew from week to week what would be on. Viewers would have to be led back to that time slot once The Situation started up.

UPDATE: Changed “audience share” to the more correct “HH rating”

TV Newser says that The Situation is going to be bumped to 11 pm to make room for Rita Cosby’s new show on August 8th.

If this is true this is a huge setback for The Situation and and Tucker Carlson…tantamount to a no confidence vote in the program. It has only been on the air for a few short months (much less time than the even lower rated Connected: Coast To Coast which has had no action taken against it so far). For Rick Kaplan, who has been following the “baby steps” approach in how he manages primetime, to juggle the lineup this quickly, as opposed to tweaking the program format and giving it more time to establish itself, suggests that the in house research on the program has come back so negative that only a program switch will save the 9 pm hour.

Cosby’s show was originally supposed to launch in Q4 so ICN’s eyebrows were raised when the Aug 8 launch date was announced. Something caused MSNBC to change its mind. Despite the biggest advertising blitz in MSNBC’s history for a new prime time program, The Situation, which took five months to come together after Carlson was signed, has been in trouble almost since the day it was launched. Panelist Jay Severin was removed from the program for reasons that are still murky. The ratings came back showing that people were tuning out in huge numbers from its lead-in Countdown and then coming back for the next program Scarborough Country. Now The Situation is being moved to 11 pm without tweaking the show first. It’s only a matter of time before the previously unthinkable word “cancellation” will start being bandied about regardless of the merits of such a discussion…

FOX tripled CNN in prime time. O’Reilly had a huge night coming very close to Greta’s record numbers from last night. Nancy Grace’s rampage over Paula Zahn Now continues unabated. Mad Money beat Abrams but managed to scratch in the Demo. In other news, Connected: Coast To Coast scratched both times yesterday averaging 100,000 viewers and 24,000 in the Demo. ICN wonders how much longer will Rick Kaplan allow Connected to drive down MSNBC’s daytime average because it is far and away MSNBC’s lowest rated program on daytime. And it’s on twice a day which means double the ratings damage (though the afternoon version traditionally performs better than the morning version). Like The Situation, the programs on either side of Connected perform noticeably better. Not good.
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CNBC announced today that Tyler Mathisen has been promoted to Managing Editor of CNBC Business News. The announcement came from David Friend, Senior Vice President, CNBC Business News and Glen Rochkind, Vice President, CNBC Business News. Quoting parts of the release…

Tyler knows CNBC inside and out and completely understands what our unique audience of business leaders and executives demand from us,” said Friend. “He is the right person to make sure that we continue to break news, land exclusive interviews and take our viewers right to where the action is.”

“The Managing Editor position is a critical role for our network and today’s announcement marks a significant step up for Tyler,” added Mark Hoffman, President, CNBC. “He brings to the position a unique combination of extraordinary journalistic instincts coupled with significant management experience and he is, without question, the right person for this important leadership role.”
…

In light of today’s announcement, Mathisen will relinquish his “Closing Bell” (M-F, 3-4 p.m. ET) anchor duties effective Friday, July 29. He will, however, appear on occasion on CNBC programming.

Said Mathisen: “This is an opportunity too important and too full of potential to pass up. I am so looking forward to working with the best business news team in this new capacity to strengthen our coverage and make it even more vital to viewers.”

The Boston Phoenix’s Mark Jurkowitz takes an in depth look at Media Matters For America and David Brock…(via Romenesko)

Given his own history, Brock knows plenty about conservative pressure. But he’s also aware that questions continue to dog him in his new incarnation. Who is the real David Brock, and why should we trust him?

…

“In terms of accuracy, they’re generally pretty good as far as they go,” says Bryan Keefer, assistant manager editor of CJRDaily.org, an online media-monitoring site created by the Columbia Journalism Review. But they are “self-consciously lefty…. They’re really only looking for things where liberals have been treated unfairly or where conservatives have gotten away with things.”

Tom Rosenstiel, director of the Washington, DC–based Project for Excellence in Journalism, says, “I don’t have a lot of patience for any media criticism that is based in ideology. Frankly, [for] reporters who cover the news business, it makes our lives more complicated.”

ICN thinks it is about time someone did a proper in perspective look at Media Matters. They’ve gotten too much of a free pass from the media for too long in as much as nobody has called the spade a spade. Media Matters is about as unbiased as the Media Research Council and Brock is about as credible as Brent Bozell. Both should be soundly dismissed for what they are…partisan hacks.

Harry’s got out-takes of Tucker Carlson doing a promo for The Situation.

The Yahoo Patti Ann Browne Group today got word that Patti Ann delivered a son on July 21st…

Fox has been extremely supportive during this difficult period, as well as during Patti Ann’s long recent hospitalization and earlier bed rest. She might go back to work for a few weeks during her son’s stay in the ICU, to save some maternity leave for when her son is finally allowed to come home with her. But this all depends on how things go. In the meantime, thank you all again. Your support truly means a lot.

CJR Online’s Thomas Lang today under the headline “John Madden Infiltrates FOX News” goes overboard in criticizing the telestrating ability of FOX military analyst retired Major General Bob Scales…

But then Scales got marker happy as he talked up “what many people call the so-called cone of uncertainty or Cone of Instability in the region. The idea is to find those seams that Al Qaeda may seek to exploit, not only just to export their brand of terrorism but frankly also, to take over governments, to control the military, the political systems in those nations so they can build another Afghanistan. They can build another sanctuary if you will, in the Muslim areas of Africa.” So watch out, Eastern Hemisphere, you are about to be overrun by the ch-ch-ch-chia Cone of Instability:

Ok so not everybody is an art major with the telestrator. Cut the guy some slack CJR. What he says is far more more germaine (and worthy of examination…either pro or con) than how he illustrates it. Sheesh…

FOX had another huge evening. For starters FOX’s Demo beat CNN’s Total Viewer number in Primetime. On the Record broke another record for 2005 by coming within a whisker of 3,000,000 viewers. O’Reilly’s demo numbers beat Zahn’s total viewer number for the second night in a row. And, in what is getting dangerously close to going from being an occasional trend to becoming the norm, Grace beat Zahn. Larry King was flat last night considering the levels of the prior two CNN shows. MSNBC cratered in daytime. Not even the Shuttle launch was enough to keep MSNBC from 4th place. Hardball’s Boots On The Ground Special nearly sunk below The Situation for lowest rated MSNBC program. Abrams beat Cramer. Scarborough Country was big for MSNBC last night. Deutsch continues to scratch away in both the Total Viewer and Demo numbers.
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Newhouse News Service’s Bruce Taylor Seeman’s very good article (via WHAC)throws out a rather innocent lead graph…

It’s opinion. It’s conjecture. It’s a tidbit from the newest poll or another alarming image — delivered with rising drumbeats — from the day’s top story. It’s today’s 24-hour news.

But quickly goes in for the kill…

After a disaster, “television news shows the same images repeatedly — with virtually no additional information each time,” said Frank Vespe, executive director of the TV-Turnoff Network, a group that calls for less TV watching. “The horror is beaten into you with no corresponding increase in knowledge. The message you receive is that the world is big, dangerous, scary and completely out of control — a message that is profoundly disturbing.”

The last third of Seeman’s article should be clipped and put on the poster boards off all three cable news channels…

But it’s the content and presentation of news, not just its ubiquity, that troubles those who track the evolution of the information age. Cable TV news in particular, critics say, is often speculative, combative and — to fill the hours of broadcast time — repetitive.

“One of my colleagues and I have been throwing around a concept called `phantom news,”‘ said Robert Simmermon, an Atlanta media psychologist. “Basically, what’s happening is, there’s less there than meets the eye. With 24 hours of news, and nothing breaking, we go over and over it again.”

Mark Fleisher of the Elmira Star-Gazette wraps up yesterday’s coverage…(via FTVLive)

Fox and CNN made the unfortunate choice of retaining distracting crawls throughout their coverage, offering such vital news as TV Guide planning to soon publish a full-size magazine.

As does Mike McDaniel of the Houston Chronicle…

“The press corps is normally very cool and very jaded,” said FNC’s Rick Leventhal, “but there were a lot of gasps” as Discovery lifted off.

And Richard Huff of the New York Daily News…

“I remember thinking to myself, ‘I hope this thing does not blow up,’ ” retired astronaut Rick Hauck said on MSNBC, recalling the moment when his fuel tanks separated from the shuttle.

TV Guide’s Stephen Battaglio has a profile on FOX’s Shepard Smith called “The World According to Shep — How Shepard Smith Keeps the Top-Rated Fox Report fast and furious” (no link available). The article has some very positive things to say…

“He’s won admirers even among the competition. ‘He shows you don’t have to be as serious as a heart attack to get the news across,’ says a producer at another network.”

“He keeps it casual off the air, as well. When he goes to Yankee Stadium, he prefers to sit with regular fans instead of in a corporate box.”

“Technology lured him into TV news, and now he uses it to pull out all the stops on his rapid ride of a nightly newscast, The Fox Report. Smith’s honeysmooth delivery of the day’s events is punctuated by pounding drums and enough whooshing graphics to satisfy the most avid video gamer.”

“According to Fox News executive John Moody, Smith understands the news as well as he delivers it. ‘He prepares like crazy,’ he says. ‘Everybody thinks of him as slick, Southern accent, fast talker. He also knows the story.’ “

“With two cable shows and radio, has Smith hit the maximum speed? Forget it: He says he’d love to do an 11pm newscast for the Fox broadcast network. Fast paced of course.’It can be an outstanding vehicle,’ he says. Fasten your seatbelts.”

Greta had another huge night in the 25-54 demo, averaging 680,000, the highest demo number on FOX last night — her demo numbers beat Aaron Brown’s Total Viewer number as did O’Reilly who averaged 610,000 in 25-54 and beat Zahn’s Total Viewer number. It was a double whammy for Zahn who also got beat solidly by Nancy Grace. Cramer beat Abrams again. Deutsch double scratched again….
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The 2nd Chris Jansing special called “America’s Astronauts: From Mercury To Apollo To Today”, which ICN noted this morning was in limbo after being originally announced on the air to have aired two weeks ago, is now going to be aired this Sunday at 9 pm EST according to this release…

Featuring rare interviews with seven former astronauts, “America’s Astronauts” takes viewers from the exciting first steps on the moon to the riveting crisis of Apollo 13. From the early “right stuff” days of the Mercury mission to the current challenges of the Shuttle missions, one thing remains constant, America’s astronauts are a unique combination of scholar and explorer, all of whom would relish the opportunity to explore beyond the moon.

CNN today announced that on August 21st it will air a CNN Presents on the “intelligence failure” leading up to the Iraq war called “Dead Wrong–Inside an Intelligence Meltdown” reported by David Ensor…

The presidential commission said “the harm done to American credibility by our all too public intelligence failings in Iraq will take years to undo.” In “Dead Wrong,” CNN Presents interviews government officials intimately involved in the process and provides new insight to how the mistakes were made and how they might be avoided in the future.

The release goes on to give sound bites from people interviewed for the CNN Presents documentary….

David Kay, former chief weapons inspector in Iraq, on the future of U.S. intelligence gathering: “We can’t afford to be wrong a second time. How many people are going to believe us when we say, ‘It’s a slam dunk … Iran has nuclear weapons?’ The answer is going to be: ‘You said that before.’”

FOX News Channel has promoted Greg Kelly to White House Correspondent today. Kelly will be responsible for reporting on Presidential issues both national and international.

Kelly joined FOX News Channel in 2002. He has had numerous assignments to Iraq and also was part of FOX’s embeded team of journalists during the Iraq War.

What was shaping up to be a great battle two weeks ago between CNN and MSNBC sort of fizzled out. NBC didn’t arm MSNBC like it had the first time and there was a noticeable shift in scope and location of coverage away from Florida and back to New York. In ICN’s opinion that hurt MSNBC. Yes, it’s hard to argue with cutting costs and it has been reported in lots of places that the media returned in far fewer numbers this time around.
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TVNewser noted that the FOX folks noticed that MSNBC moved in to the NBC building at Kennedy Space Center.

WHAC noticed that Miles O’Brien blogged the launch…

MSNBC never had Robert Hager appear and Jay Barbree was only on in the early hours and again after it was over. I guess Hager couldn’t make it out this time or NBC decided not to pay him for a 2nd appearance. Too bad. His presence was missed badly.

Williams exited MSNBC’s coverage at 11:21, leaving Jansing to handle the rest of the coverage…

FOX dumped wall to wall coverage at 11. I caught a report on the War On Terror at 11:05 am. CNN switched to Live From at 11 but led off with O’Brien before going to other news 10 minutes later. MSNBC is still going full bore with Williams and Jansing.

NBC dumped coverage at about 11 am EST. Williams stayed on MSNBC with Jansing. All networks are doing post launch coverage (next steps, replaying the launch footage and the way way way cool external tank separation space shot).

In the moments running up to blast off the addition of Williams finally kick started MSNBC’s coverage out of the doldrums and you could feel an energy level that was missing for most of the morning when the coverage wasn’t originating in Florida.

When the Shuttle finally lifted off ICN got frustrated by the networks’ poor choice of camera angles, particularly NBC hanging on forever with that itty bitty rocket light shot from a distance, and switched over to the NASA channel to watch the external tank shots which were much cooler. So I don’t know how the other networks did during that time.

Williams did some more interviews and then tossed to Jansing again but her mic was turned off from the control room.

Brian Williams just took over MSNBC’s broadcast. It’s being simulcast on NBC (or visa versa). Williams who is in New York just tossed to Jansing. ICN gives props to NBC for using MSNBC talent. This is the 2nd time ICN has seen true MSNBC/NBC synergy this year. The first time was the ceremony for Pope Bennedict the XVI…

No…ICN doesn’t count the Williams/Couric incident a couple of weeks ago as an exmple of good synergy. Don’t get me started on that….

MSNBC finally let Jansing interview someone after being on the air for a couple of hours. Then they went back to Secaucus for more Secaucus based satellite interviews. MSNBC’s covreage so far is not as sharp as last time. ICN hasn’t seen Robert Hager at all and it appears some of the people that were on site at Cape Kennedy last time are not going to be on site this time. Clearly the cost of re-mounting the same level of covrage has come in to play for MSNBC and NBC. Unfortunate.

Over at CNN where cost doesn’t seem to be as important an issue as coverage, O’Brien brought in Lou Dobbs. ICN originally thought that was strange but then ICN remembered that Dobbs once headed up Space.com so of course he would be a natural to bring in for this.

Jon Scott is holding his own and so is FOX for the most part. ICN figured FOX couldn’t possibly compete with it’s deeper rivals and in a sense it isn’t. But it is presenting an informative broadcast so far from what I’ve seen. Though all this channel hopping and typing is keeping me from seeing it all…

Ok CNN is now going wall to wall. MSNBC looks to be too but once again it’s basing too many interviews out of its Secaucus studios and so far Chris Jansing hasn’t interviewed a soul. You’d think they would have learned by now that’s not the way to do it but they haven’t. CNN sure as hell knows because O’Brien has been doing the majority of the interviewing. Instead MSNBC is having Robach and Meier, who are nowhere near the launch site, do it.

FOX has impressed me with its computer graphics which are more detailed than anything I’ve seen on the other channels so far.

But in an ideal world, pure junkies like me would be watching the NASA channel…

I was wondering when John Glenn would make an appearance on the air and Miles O’Brien just got him. They talked about the future of space flight and Glenn made a point of the research that had been cut from the International Space Station in order to concentrate on the future Mars and Moon flights (he thought it was a bad idea). O’Brien asked him if he’d go back and Glenn said in an instant though he thought that if NASA wanted a Senior Citizen that there should be someone else because the current research pool on Seniors in space is just one…him. O’Brien quipped… “He’s tan, he’s rested, he’s ready. Maybe next time…”

FOX is running a permanent countdown clock now in the lower left corner but it’s above the lower 3rds. MSNBC’s countdown clock is more pedestrian and sits in the lower right corner above the Live Bug. I’m forgetting what CNN’s clock looks like at the moment.

MSNBC just tossed to Jim Cummins at Johnson Space Center in Houston. Cummins was basically just doing a check in and didn’t have much to say and actually started repeating himself a couple of times.

More coverage now but still not wall to wall. Jon Scott is now anchoring for FOX from Florida but is currently interviewing on the War On Terror. Chris Jansing says that NASA added 6 seconds to the countdown. MSNBC picked up on FOX’s car chase after the fact because one of the police cars flew through a building. They’re calling it Flash News even though as far as ICN knows that chase ended a while ago. Miles’ enthusiasim is really rubbing off on me…

MSNBC just gave a peak at some of the heavy coverage happening today. Chris Jansing ran a taped interview involving several of NASA’s heavy hitters from inside a hanger with a Shuttle in the background. The interview segment, which ICN assumes is part of a larger interview, focussed on whether the Shuttle was really ready for liftoff.

Over on CNN, Miles O’Brien is clearly enjoying himself. You can see it in his face as he was interviewing a former shuttle pilot about future manned delivery vehicles once the Shuttle is retired.

FOX’s car chase must have ended as the last time I checked in they were talking about the War On Terror…