A big night for FOX. All its prime time shows were over 2.2 million viewers. MSNBC’s decision to go on with wall to wall Toronto Air France coverage with Chris Jansing and Dan Abrams paid off for it as it got significantly higher ratings than it would have if it had run Hardball at 7 pm. And the viewer interest continued on throughout the evening for MSNBC (except for The Situation). Newsnight with Aaron Brown had a big night with over 800,000 viewers.
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Here are the numbers from the peak period (4-6 pm) of the Toronto Air France crash coverage…

FNC - 1,014,000 viewers and 301,000 viewers in the 25-54 demo
CNN - 735,000 viewers and 270,000 viewers in the 25-54 demo
MSNBC - 249,000 viewers and 97,000 viewers in the 25-54 demo

Word has reached ICN that Geraldo Rivera and his wife welcomed a new life into the the world yesterday. Solita (Sol) Liliana Rivera was born August 2nd. Both mom and baby are doing fine.

ICN has learned, contrary to what FTVLive reported last night (which we blogged on yesterday), that no formal decision has been made on whether Juliet Huddy and Mike Jerrick will or will not team up together on Dayside. ICN learned that Jerrick was telling people in the newsroom yesterday that they were going to need to find a replacement for him on FOX and Friends Weekend and that’s what must have filtered back to FTVLive.

However ICN has also learned that no formal decision has been made on who is going to officially anchor Dayside. The smart money continues to be on a Huddy-Jerrick team but Huddy, like Jerrick, has weekend duties for which a replacement would be needed. This is what is causing the hold up in coming to a final decision.

FTVLive is again reporting that Neal Shapiro’s days are numbered at NBC. FTV makes an interesting observation that Shapiro was supposed to be a guest speaker and appear on a number of panels at NABJ in Atlanta but insiders are telling FTV that that has all been scrapped. Not exactly a smoking gun, but it’ll probably make tongues wag…

FTVLive says that Mike Jerrick will take over full time on Dayside. ICN doesn’t doubt FTV thinks this is going to happen but this information conflicts with what ICN learned and posted last month from a very reliable source that both Juliet Huddy and Jerrick will alternate on Dayside until Vester returns in a year. But it is possible that that has now changed and our original information is now outdated. ICN will try to get a definative answer on this….