Michelle Greppi of TVWeek.com writes that News Corp. today announced that it will form FOX Interactive Media in order to bring FOX.com, FOXSports.com, and FOXNews.com under one umbrella entity…

The president of Los Angeles-based FIM is Ross Levinsohn, who as senior VP and general manager of Fox Sports Interactive Media transformed Foxsports.com from a site attracting fewer than 800,000 unique visitors per month to a site that averages more than 10 million users per month and rivals ESPN.com.

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News Corp. indicated that FIM is mandated to work with managers of the various units affected by the consolidation to ensure the preservation of each Web site’s “voice.”

UPDATE: Paul Bond in The Hollywood Reporter has another report on the story…. (via BigNewsNetwork.com)

One of the first tasks on the agenda for the Los Angeles-based FIM will be to build out the broadband experience at the various Web sites, tapping the company’s vast video archive.

Following up on this, there’s been no mention on MSNBC this week of the Sunday special that Chris Jansing mentioned on Tuesday Night’s “Return To Flight” show and no press release issued. It is likely the special has been put on hold pending the launch of the Shuttle, which may be delayed until September.

WHAC got a tip that someone broke George Carlin’s very old rule today on Lou Dobbs….

In what this MSNBC press release is calling “his first cable interview”, Time Magazine’s Matt Cooper will be join Dan Abrams on Monday July 18 for an interview. This exclusive couldn’t possibly have anything at all to do with Dan’s dad Floyd being one of the lawyers on the case could it?

That was a rhetorical question….

UPDATE: It seems that MSNBC release is either in error or out of date. CNN will get Cooper first on Sunday with a special one hour of Reliable Sources according to this release… (via WHAC)

So much for nepotism…

Nothing much newsy in Thursday’s numbers. Paula beat Grace handily and The Situation broke 200,000 viewers. Other than that it was business as usual…
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Yesterday, ICN said Campbell Brown would be anchoring MSNBC Live today after checking their schedule. Well ICN was half right. It was Brown alright, only Dara and not Campbell. ICN regrets MSNBC.com’s error…

This piece, criticizing FOX News’ substitution of the word “Homicide” for “Suicide” isn’t breaking new ground particularly. It is true that FOX News does refer to “Homicide Bombers” instead of “Suicide Bombers”. It is also true that it is the only manstream TV organization to do so.

Personally ICN doesn’t care much one way or the other how FOX decides to label bombers. In ICN’s opinion there are both merits and pitfalls to either the “suicide” or “homicide” adjective. Left leaning organizations like to throw anything they can at FOX and they like to poke fun at this particular issue a great deal. And that’s what makes today’s comment all the more remarkable. It comes from the not at all left leaning Wall Street Journal Editorial’s “Best Of The Web Today” on OpinionJournal.com.

TVNewser notes MSNBC’s 9 year Anniversary today. ICN has already blogged extensively on MSNBC and doesn’t have much to add to what has already been written. For those who haven’t previously read it check here, here, and here…

(note: Yes, ICN knows it was a year off when that was originally written. It was written when ICN was on a different blog server and can’t be easily corrected.)

Jonathan Singer of The Hill has a profile on FOX News Sunday’s Chris Wallace…

Since taking over “Fox News Sunday” from Tony Snow in December 2003, Wallace has cultivated a noticeably younger audience than other Sunday shows.

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“When I was at ABC and NBC, I had always thought we were ‘fair and balanced.’” In retrospect, he now believes that many of his colleagues in the so-called “mainstream media” held a number of “unexamined assumptions.”