ICN is starting to run out of original ways to describe FOX News beating up on the competition in the ratings. The race between #1 and #2 isn’t much of a race now. It’s not a question of whether FOX wins anymore but by how much. In Monday’s case FOX’s lead was 3:1 over CNN in daytime and nearly 5:1 in primetime. Cosby is starting to fall in the ratings. Scarborough had 150,000 more viewers. Larry King Live tanked badly last night even though sub host Bob Costas had a NASCAR night.
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FOX beat MSNBC and CNN combined again and its primetime lineup turned in an impressive 1.2 million average. MSNBC wasn’t as strong on Sunday (or CNN wasn’t as weak) as it was on Saturday in the demo and ended up placing fourth.
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FOX News beat MSNBC and CNN combined in Total Day and Primetime. And take a look at those Demo numbers. That’s not a mistake. MSNBC came in 2nd above both HLN and CNN (though it was nearly a statistical dead heat during the daytime demo). And in primetime CNN dropped to 5th behind even CNBC.
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FOX News announced today that David Asman has been promoted to head the FOX News documentary unit. He will continue to host Forbes On FOX on Saturdays. In addition to heading the unit, Asman will also host a series of investigative specials.

Asman said of the promotion, “Even though I love breaking news, what I love most is going in depth on stories that have either been missed or underreported and now I have the unique opportunity to do that. It’s a great honor to be a part of the FOX News team and I look forward to continuing the network’s tradition of solid journalism.”

Andrew Wallenstein in The Hollywood Reporter writes about the belt tightening that’s going on at NBC Universal, parent of NBC/MSNBC News…

With NBC Universal Television Group suffering through a fiscal downturn, the division’s president, Jeff Zucker, is implementing cost-cutting measures affecting everything from travel expenses to the snacks served at meetings, according to an internal fiat obtained by The Hollywood Reporter that sources say he issued to key execs this month.
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Curtailments also are called for on overtime (the memo discloses that the TV Group spent $10 million here in the first half of the year), with overtime not related to production eliminated.

In classic GE style, no line item is apparently too small for excision, with prohibitions ordered on the acquisition of any office supplies, furniture and electronic equipment including BlackBerrys for the rest of the year. The memo also stipulates that any food or snacks served at off-site meetings would be restricted to “those in which an outside guest or customer are present.”

The article doesn’t mention anything about what’s going on in the news divisions but you can use the above cuts as an example of the thinking that’s going on and extrapolate what kinds of things News will be looking at to cut…

The Hollywood Reporter’s Paul J. Gough has a wrap up on Roger Ailes’ Chairmanship of the FOX Television Stations Group and includes an update on the status of FOX Business Channel…(via TVN)

“There are a lot of ways that we can work together that we think will improve the news and the quality,” Ailes said. He didn’t say that the station group’s news channels would adopt the same type of energy that has worked so well at Fox News but added, “Anybody who knows me understands that having a lot of energy and intensity about your work is pretty important.”
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What the move won’t do is change any timetable on the Fox Business Channel, which has been on the drawing board for months but hasn’t been announced. Ailes repeated his statements about how News Corp. won’t make a move until the conditions are favorable, including on the distribution front.

“It (Monday’s announcement) doesn’t make it less or more likely,” Ailes said. “That’s operating on a separate track.”

Mike Seate of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review joins the increasing chorus of commentators decrying the media for obsessing over Missing White Women…

Although the disproportionate amount of media attention paid to the nation’s missing pretty white girls would make most of us realize how little chance a black, Hispanic or even average-looking woman has of being found alive, this fact was apparently lost on Melvin Figueroa. The Philadelphia man has been hard at work lobbying TV news outlets to make at least a cursory mention of the disappearance of his daughter LaToyia, who was last seen July 18.