Broadcasting & Cable’s Anne Becker writes up the story of American Morning moving to a new location…(via WHAC)

The show currently airs live from a streetside studio in the Time Life building in midtown Manhattan. But starting Aug. 22, it will move to CNN’s headquarters at the Time Warner Center on the Upper West Side and begin airing out of a temporary studio while the newsroom set is constructed over the next few months.

The move, which brings together all of CNN’s New York-based shows under one roof, is meant to further emphasize American Morning as a news deestination to counterprogram, music, cooking or other entertainment fare on other morning shows.

UPDATE: Marisa Guthrie in the NY Daily News has another take…

Moving the show upstairs is an attempt to differentiate “American Morning” from the competition, said CNN’s U.S. president Jonathan Klein.

“There are five other morning shows on that look exactly the same,” said Klein. “Our morning show is clearly a newsy alternative to all of the other morning shows which feature a lot of chat and a lot of cooking and entertainment.”

Here’s an interesting wrinkle to the Kaplan/Olbermann dust up. MSNBC announced today that Countdown is starting an “I Quit” campaign…

“I Quit, with Keith Olbermann” has launched in response to substantial viewer feedback asking… “how do I quit?” after Olbermann’s segments and Weblogs about Peter Jennings’ untimely death and Olbermann’s own recent cancer scare. Olbermann, an admitted long-time cigar and pipe smoker, has just quit smoking.

“We have a lot of fun on ‘Countdown’ and while the viewers and I need to get serious about quitting smoking, I think we can try to make it as positive and creative as possible,” said Olbermann. “‘I Quit’ is about taking control of your health and saving your life and I hope we can do some good.”

Perhaps we are reading way too much into the Kaplan/Olbermann fracass on Monday? If there was a really big todo that occurred Monday as Grove’s story read, ICN doesn’t see how Kaplan and MSNBC would now back Olbermann this way, going so far as to even refer to Monday’s incident, which led to the dust up, in the press release. If Kaplan and MSNBC didn’t like what Olbermann did, one would think they’d want to stop it before it got any further. To issue such a release pretty much implies MSNBC condoning and even supporting the direction Olbermann has taken with this story. Then again it could all be just spin to make the best of what was a bad situation but not even ICN is that cynical to believe that is the case….

TVNewser tries to cut through the spin on the debut numbers of “Live & Direct”…

In between the “Rita Gets It” promos, MSNBC is calling Live & Direct the “big new cable hit.” But on her second MSNBC night, Rita Cosby lost 38% of her premiere audience — and more than half of her younger viewers.
…
She was still the #1 show on MSNBC’s primetime, and has helped boost the network’s primetime average. But look at her competition; It’s obvious she has a long way to go…

ICN thinks this pretty much sums it up. Calling the show a hit based on initial success is typical network behavior and should be taken for what it is, a brazen attempt at building on initial momentum. But ICN would add to what TVNewser wrote that it’s too soon to really pronounce judgement. All one has to do is look at Nancy Grace. She debuted at the 300,000 range. Now look at the show. It hasn’t seen levels that low in months. Who knows where “Live & Direct” will be in six months? Well…nobody does know. And that’s the point.

But also in terms of what MSNBC is trying to do, the competition isn’t what the other networks are doing. It is the ultimate goal but it isn’t the near term goal. The near term goal is to do better than the shows that previously held that slot (Donahue, Norville, The Situation) did. If the show consistently beats those previous shows numbers and remains the number one show on MSNBC primetime, then MSNBC should be rightly pleased. Considering its current ratings position versus the other networks the true goal is to establish a beach head to build around. FOX had O’Reilly. CNN had Larry King. HLN has Grace. MSNBC is hoping Rita will be that beachead.

One of the eagle-eyed Commentors on the thread brought up a point that nobody, including myself, had caught on to. Grove wrote this…

Olbermann - a former pipe and cigar smoker - is said to have looked stunned as Kaplan raced onto the set and shouted at him after he signed off.

But there is a problem with this scenario as it is written….namely Rita Cosby’s show was going on the air at that time. So how does Kaplan race on to the set after Olbermann signs off to yell at him if Cosby is on the air in that very same set and nobody at home heard it? Perhaps Kaplan yelled softly? Or perhaps there’s dramatic license being used by Grove to embellish the story? ICN doesn’t doubt that something happened between Kaplan and Olbermann by Kaplan’s refusal to even address the incident to Grove when he had the chance. But whether it happened the way Grove wrote it happened remains unclear….

Here are the numbers for the Shuttle Landing. The time period is from 6:45AM-8:30AM

FNC — 1,772,000 / 667,000 in 25-54
CNN — 839,000 / 297,000 in 25-54
MSNBC - 317,000 / 108,000 in 25-54

Here are the peak viewer numbers. For the first time in a while, all three networks peaks periods matched up…

FNC 8-8:15am — 2,442,000
CNN 8-8:15am — 1,412,000
MSNBC 8-8:15am — 436,000

FOX News seems to have reached a new bar. Its Primetime line-up is regularly going over the 2,000,000 viewer mark now. At CNN, King and Brown both were strong. The Situation Room did about the same as on Monday. On MSNBC Cosby dropped from her debut high. This was expected. What’s interesting is The Situation which at its new timeslot is back to having the same number of viewers it had for most of July before it started trending upwards slightly in the beginning of August. Currently the show is coming in behind the repeats from the other news networks including Showbiz Tonight which during its first broadcast last night came in 5th behind a repeat of Conan. But it has signifcantly more viewers at 11 pm….something MSNBC wishes The Situation had no doubt. Still early days though…
(more…)

LLoyd Grove reports that fireworks erupted between Rick Kaplan and Keith Olbermann immediately after Olbermann’s anti-tobacco speech at the end of Monday’s Countdown….

Olbermann - a former pipe and cigar smoker - is said to have looked stunned as Kaplan raced onto the set and shouted at him after he signed off.
…
I’m told that Kaplan erupted angrily and at length, calling Olbermann “out of control” and “not to be trusted,” and accusing him of driving away viewers from the 9 p.m. debut of Kaplan hire Rita Cosby’s show, “Live and Direct.”

UPDATE: The story is sort of dovetailing into two stories…Olbermann’s original speech and Kaplan’s reaction to said speech. From what ICN has seen where you land on the story seems to depend a great deal on what you think of Olbermann in the first place or what you think the role of a talk show host should be. Even Kaplan’s response seems to be eliciting divided opinion. This is what ICN has seen on TVNewser and Romenesko’s letters page where people either back Kaplan or take pity on Olbermann and accuse Kaplan of having a ridiculously hot temper…

WHAC notes the Sanjay Gupta cancer special that was announced a month ago and which airs this Saturday…

WHAC also found some clips that are on the CNN site…

TV Week’s Michelle Greppi takes a look at the ratings the two shows got and does some comparisons…(via TVNewser)

According to data from Nielsen Media Research, “Rita Cosby” averaged 665,000 viewers, which is up 159 percent from what the 9-10 p.m. time slot averaged in July and is the best number MSNBC has done in that hour with regular programming in more than two years.

In the key news demographic of 25- to 54-year-olds, “Rita Cosby” averaged 245,000 viewers, up 206 percent compared with July and only about 20,000 viewers shy of MSNBC’s total-viewer average for its entire prime-time lineup last week.

Meanwhile, CNN lost some ratings ground from 3-6 p.m. with the debut of “The Situation Room.” For the three hours, CNN averaged 410,000 viewers, down 15 percent from the previous Monday, down 6 percent compared with July and flat compared with the comparable day in 2004.

In the demo, “Situation” was down 8 percent compared with the three hours the previous Monday and down 14 percent compared with both July and the comparable day in 2004.

ICN isn’t going to put a lot of stock in one day’s ratings. ICN wants to wait at least a month before trying to ascertain whether the new shows are a boon or a drain on their respective networks fortunes. And even then the data may not be conclusive…