HLN is readying for Glenn Beck’s premiere Monday…

Glenn Beck, a new topical talk show featuring radio personality Glenn Beck, will premiere on Headline News on Monday, May 8, at 7 p.m. (ET. In a first for Headline News, the show will air seven days at a week at 7 p.m. and 9 p.m., with encore presentations of weekday shows on Saturdays and Sundays.
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On Your World Today, Neil Cavuto paid tribute to Louis Rukeyser. Transcript follows…

BECAUSE OF THE NON-STOP MOUSSAOUI COVERAGE YESTERDAY, I DIDN’T HAVE TIME TO PASS ON A SIGNIFICANT PASSING YESTERDAY.SO, SOME REFLECTIONS ON THAT TODAY. HE HAD NO RIGHT BEING A TV STAR. HE DIDN’T LOOK LIKE ONE. HE DIDN’T ACT LIKE ONE. HE STOOD IN FRONT OF A CAMERA FOR WHAT SEEMED LIKE AN ETERNITY AND TOLD OH-SO-DRY JOKES ABOUT AN OH SO-DRY SUBJECT — BUSINESS. HE HAD A GUEST GREETER ON SET. AND OFTEN MONOTONE DISCUSSIONS ON INTEREST RATES ON THAT SET. HE LOVED CAPITALISM IN THIS COUNTRY WHEN A LOT OF PEOPLE WERE ASHAMED TO EVEN SAY THE WORD IN THIS COUNTRY. HE SPOKE GLOWINGLY OF COMPANIES THAT PRODUCED EARNINGS. AND DAMNINGLY OF THOSE THAT DID NOT. HE WAS COOL IN A MEDIUM THAT WANTED HEAT. BUT HE WAS HOT NONETHELESS. IN THE WORLD OF BUSINESS GEEKDOM, HE WAS OUR GOD. AND HE WAS MY HERO. LOUIS RUKEYSER, THE FATHER OF MODERN DAY BROADCAST BUSINESS JOURNALISM. BEFORE MY FRIEND LOU DOBBS, BEFORE FNN, BEFORE CNBC, BEFORE NIGHTLY BUSINESS REPORT, THERE WAS “WALL STREET WEEK.” AND THERE WAS LOUIS R. RUKEYSER PIERCING EGOS, DE-MYSTIFYING MONEY, AND DEBUNKING SO-CALLED NEW PARADIGMS. DURING THE TECH RUSH, WHEN THEY SAID EARNINGS DIDN’T MATTER, RUKEYSER SAID THEY DID. WHEN MARKETS CRASHED AND INVESTORS LOST HOPE, RUKEYSER SAID THEY SHOULD NOT. HE UNDERSTOOD FEAR AND GREED. HE UNDERSTOOD US. BUT MOSTLY, HE UNDERSTOOD THAT IT’S OK TO WANT TO BE RICH. IT’S NOT OK TO ACT LIKE IT. I THINK HE WAS A GIANT. AND NOW HE’S GONE, SUCCUMBING YESTERDAY TO THE BONE MARROW CANCER THAT HE HAD FOUGHT SO BRAVELY, SO QUIETLY, FOR SO LONG. SO NOW, GOODBYE, TO A MAN WHO TAUGHT ME SO MUCH. AND TAUGHT A COUNTRY, SO MUCH MORE.

U.S. Newswire notes that CNN will be honored at the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children’s Fifth Annual Hope Awards…

The Media Award is being presented to CNN for their unprecedented coverage of NCMEC’s efforts to locate and reunite missing and displaced children with their families during the aftermath of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Soledad O’Brien, anchor of American Morning, and Susan Bunda, senior vice president of news of CNN/U.S., will be on-hand to receive the award.

Page Six dishes…

IF Anderson Cooper isn’t just a little embarrassed, he should be. Sure, he made the cover of Vanity Fair - but inside is a creepy photo of the CNN dandy in a mama’s-boy pose with real-life mother Gloria Vanderbilt that has media types snickering. Worse, Cooper was sucker-punched with his April ratings that had his prime-time show down about 36 percent with younger viewers he’s supposed to attract. Aaron Brown, whom Cooper ousted, was actually doing better this time last year.

I saw the photo in question, pictured at right, last night on either CNN or Entertainment Tonight and I didn’t consider it particularly creepy. Annie Leibovitz shot it and she is well known for her “eccentric” celebrity photo shoots.

Shanto Iyengar and Richard Morin in the Washington Post chronicle the results of an online experiment that suggests that viewers apply a political litmus test to their news viewing.

No matter how we sliced the data — either at the level of individuals or news stories — the results demonstrate that Fox News is the dominant news source for Americans whose political leanings are Republican or conservative (the results presented above are even stronger if we substitute ideology for party identification). Fox’s brand advantage among Republicans is especially strong when the news deals with political subjects. The effectiveness with which Fox attracts Republicans suggests that “news with an edge” — the motto of one popular Fox News show–is no impediment to market success.

Unlike the Republican enthusiasm for Fox, Democrats showed only lukewarm preferences for CNN and NPR. Perhaps the Democrats’ brand loyalty is weaker because they find CNN and NPR content insufficiently slanted to their liking. Alternatively, Democrats may be less inclined to seek out one-sided news coverage that confirms their view of the world.

The Washington Post’s Richard Morin writes about a recent study which suggests that FNC may have been a factor in the 2000 election.

We report. You decide. Does President Bush owe his controversial win in 2000 to Fox cable television news?

Yes, suggest data collected by two economists who found that the growth of the Fox cable news network in the late 1990s may have significantly boosted the Republican Party’s share of the vote in the 2000 election and delivered Florida to Bush.

This second passage appears only in the print edition of The Post…

They found clear evidence of a Fox effect among non-Republicans in the presidential and Senate races, even after controlling for other factors including vote trends in similar nearby towns without access to Fox. ‘While this vote shift is small….it is still likely to have been decisive in the close presidential 2000 elections,’ they concluded. DellaVigna and Kaplan say the Fox effect seems to be permanent and may be increasing. But they caution that their study does not prove that Fox is shading the news to favor Republicans. Their findings would also be explained if Fox is offering balanced coverage that counteracts lefty bias in competing media.

Forbes’ Parmy Olson writes about the raise The Street.com gave to Jim Cramer…

Cramer, who writes columns for the Web site and whose grinning visage can be found plastered all over its pages, has just been given a pay rise by its board. It seems though, that Cramer is the only one of several top executives of TheStreet.com to see his wages gradually swell. While his salary was reportedly increased to $500,000 from $400,000 for 2005 and then nudged up to $750,000 for this year, the chief executive, president and chief financial officer of the group all saw their bonuses get cut by more than half. And to perhaps add salt to already stinging wounds: According to documents filed with the U.S. Securities & Exchnage Commission, Cramer will see his salary (by far the largest in the company) surge once again to $1 million come 2007.

The Seattle Post Intelligencer’s Melanie McFarland has an interview with Deborah Norville in which Norville talks about her MSNBC show and what came after it…

… So, would I want to go back? I thought I had a little bit, when I did the MSNBC show. But it was really two things. One, you cannot do two full time jobs at the same time. It was impossible, and it was killing me. … And increasingly, they wanted the show live. They wanted it live because Laci Peterson’s mother might cry at the trial. You know, the show they have on now has a lot in common. And I’m sure Rita Cosby is a very hardworking woman, but you will never see Deborah Norville anchoring a show from a whorehouse. I don’t think that’s the definition of news in this country.