The increase in visibility of the O’Reilly/Olbermann feud reaches a new high tonight with Jack Shafer’s dissection of the combatants in Slate…

I’m sure that O’Reilly will reject my layman’s analysis, but drop Olbermann on the same couch and I venture that he’d accept my diagnosis that he’s only happy professionally when he’s goading somebody out of their gourd. In the past, Olbermann’s Satans were his bosses—at ESPN primarily, and at MSNBC, where he did a previous tour of duty. In O’Reilly, Olbermann finds the perfect target of his sarcasm and sadism: somebody bigger and more powerful; somebody who takes his bait and runs every time he casts a line; but also somebody who can’t fire him or make him miserable enough to quit. That O’Reilly and Olbermann compete in the same time slot is pure gravy for Olbermann. That his ratings are up in recent months is a maraschino cheery on top of the gravy.

A couple of weeks ago I noticed that MSNBC was using Weather Plus instead of Accweather and I wondered if this was going to be a permanent thing. Well apparently MSNBC has indeed dumped Accuweather after having problems with the service. Sources say that MSNBC had become increasingly frustrated with the quality of the Accuweather product. While CNBC’s Accuweather was live, on MSNBC Accuweather ran from tape. And there were problems. Sometimes Accuweather would play without music. Other times the music would be too loud and drown out the meteorologist voice over. Sometimes there would be no audio at all. Plus Accuweather just signed a deal with ABC O&O’s to provide a channel to compete with NBC Weather Plus, making Accuweather a direct competitor to Weather Plus (paste this link in your browser to see the Accuweather broadcast on WABC’s digital channel: mms://a151.l1058843249.c10588.n.lm.akamaistream.net/D/151/10588/v0001/reflector:43249). So MSNBC has switched over to NBC’s Weather Plus as has CNBC.

The Times Picayune’s Michelle Krupa wraps up the New Orleans Mayoral Debate last night, which Hardball’s Chris Matthews co-moderated, in a piece that ABC’s The Note says “is a bit more about moderator Matthews than it is about the debate.”

Matthews had said before the debate that he wouldn’t tolerate breaches in the rules of decorum, an offense frequently punished with hostile retorts on his “Hardball” cable show. He also had promised to tackle subjects relevant to viewers across the country, given that billions of dollars of aid derived from federal taxes will be spent in New Orleans.

“This is about a city, but it’s also about a country being asked to pay to rebuild it,” Matthews said at the start of the debate, which featured lawyers Virginia Boulet and Rob Couhig; Audubon Nature Institute Chief Executive Ron Forman; Lt. Gov. Mitch Landrieu; Mayor Ray Nagin; the Rev. Tom Watson; and former City Councilwoman Peggy Wilson.

Agri News reports that FNC’s Neil Cavuto will be speaking at the “Capitalizing on Rural America — Iowa” conference on April 25-26…

Fox News’ Neil Cavuto and A&E’s Bill Kurtis headline a roster of nationally known experts who will weigh in on the future and fortunes of Iowa at a conference here April 25-26.

“Capitalizing on Rural America — Iowa” will be held at the downtown Marriott in Des Moines. There is no charge to attend, but registration is required.

Starting next week MSNBC will be switching Live and Direct and Scarborough Country’s timeslots. Also, the Countdown re-airing is happening starting next Tuesday. Rick Kaplan sent out an internal memo this morning announcing both moves…

I’m happy to share with you some news about a primetime schedule adjustment we’re going to make beginning next Monday. Rita and Joe are going to switch timeslots. Joe will move an hour earlier to 9pm and Rita will take his place at 10pm. Both Rita and Joe have great programs built around their unique personalities and this change will support their continued growth. We’ve had a lot of ratings growth this year with Chris and Keith and I’m confident that this change will improve our audience flow and allow us to extend that momentum to the second half of primetime. Tucker will continue to round out our primetime lineup at 11pm.

Also, beginning next Tuesday, we’re going to give our morning viewers a chance to sample a program they may not have had the opportunity to watch. Countdown will get an additional re-air at 9am on weekdays. It is, after all, a program about “the stories you’ll be talking about tomorrow,” so it should be a natural fit.

Last week there was an aborted attempt to move Live and Direct to 11 pm. As FTVLive reported, Cosby has a prime time stipulation in her contract with regards to her show, and that basically killed the plan. So now they’re apparently moving Live & Direct as far back as they can while still keeping the contract stipulation intact.

As for the Countdown news…well…just read what I wrote below to get my opinion of that move…

ICN is hearing that MSNBC is mulling a programming change in daytime. The change would be a repeat of the previous Countdown with Keith Olbermann airing after Imus In The Morning at 9am ET instead of live news. Live News (MSNBC Live) would now begin at 10 am ET.

It’s bad enough that MSNBC can’t compete directly with FNC and CNN in the mornings with live news because Imus is on. To delay the start of live news to 10 am further undermines MSNBC’s credibility as a cable news network. The only reason I could see this happening is as another budget cutting move; brought on by NBC Entertainment’s dive in the ratings and resultant loss of advertising revenue. And there have been plenty of those cuts at MSNBC already. We’re long past the “trimming the fat” stage at MSNBC. Now the marrow is getting gutted.

I guess we’ll find out whether this is for real or not pretty quickly.

UPDATE: It’s for real. It was announced this morning in an internal memo from Rick Kaplan.

UPDATE 2: Re-wrote the first paragraph because it was overly meandering to read the way it was originally written.

MSNBC is taking the highly unusual step of doing a Natalee Holloway special during MSNBC Live this morning. The special started at 10:30 am ET this morning and is basically a wrap up program, retracing the story from the beginning.

The Denver Post’s Bill Husted writes about In Touch Weekly’s “Hottest TV Host” list. Anderson Cooper came in at #4…

Anderson Cooper is No. 4 with his CNN show “Anderson Cooper 360.” In Touch calls him the “silver fox.”