Lots of strange things going on Friday. Grace clobbered Zahn nearly 2:1 (ok, that’s not that strange). Greta beat O’Reilly without having to go over the 2,000,000 mark. HLN beat CNN in the Prime Time Demo and came within 8,000 of beating them in the daytime Demo as well. MSNBC cratered in Prime Time. The Situation did its usual 150,000 and yet that was still more than enough to make Countdown (sub host) the lowest rated show for MSNBC prime time.
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CNBC’s On Assignment series will go to Las Vegas for a special called “Las Vegas, Inc.” to be hosted by Dylan Ratigan according to today’s release.

“CNBC on Assignment: Las Vegas, Inc.” examines how much these casinos actually know about you, how and what they manipulate so that you will stay longer and the burning questions, “Is entertainment, not gaming, Sin City’s new monopoly? And can the boom last?”

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“CNBC on Assignment: Las Vegas, Inc.” also probes into which casinos believes it wins by courting small-wager players and which seek out only high-rollers. In addition, it takes a look into the famous “old wives tales” such as the removal of clocks from the casino floors to trick players into staying longer and the means used to boost the number of annual tourists.

Lloyd Grove today writes up on the rumor that Rita Cosby’s new show will debut at 11 pm on MSNBC. He does break new ground on when the show will start as the original press release said “Fourth Quarter” and next month is anything but “Fourth Quarter”

When her still- untitled show debuts the first or second week of next month, it will be at 11 p.m. - when Fox News and CNN are airing Bill O’Reilly and Lou Dobbs reruns, respectively.

ICN has trouble buying in to the viability of an 11 pm slot for the following reasons…

1) It interferes with NBC affiliates’ local news on the East Coast.
2) It undercuts The Tonight Show in the East Coast. Imus is on MSNBC because NBC didn’t want hard news going up against Today on the East Coast. ICN can’t see why NBC would want to undercut The Tonight Show by putting fresh live programming up against it on one of its other networks.
3) It throws the West Coast’s prime time into dissaray by shoving everything back an hour. Scarborough Country would go on at Midnight West Coast Time under this new scenario.
4) ICN thought Rita wanted a Prime Time show….?

It could happen that way but ICN believes it would be problematic for MSNBC. If it was as simple as opening up 11 pm as MSNBC is rumored to be doing, FOX could have done so if they thought 11 pm worked as a timeslot in order to keep Rita with them. It didn’t do that though.

UPDATE: Somehow I left the link off this morning. That’s been fixed now.

Reuter’s Paul J. Gough has a good write up on CNN’s The Situation Room which premieres August 8th…

It’s old-fashioned, good, solid, serious journalism, which I’m dedicated to,” said CNN veteran Wolf Blitzer, who will anchor the show out of a new Washington, D.C. studio that will feature many of CNN’s top correspondents, contributors and analysts in a revolving format

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The studio includes several video screens where Blitzer, walking around the set, can take viewers to locations like Baghdad, New York, London, Paris and anywhere news breaks. It’s also going to feature blogs, podcasts and other high-technology.