The NY Post’s Michael Starr reports that Donald Rumsfeld will be appearing on The O’Reilly Factor tonight in the the first of a two part interview…

When I heard that Countdown would be re-run on MSNBC at 9 am, my first question was “What would MSNBC do if a scheduled news event happens during that time period?” Well I got my answer this morning. At 9:30 the Hayden confirmation hearings began. CNN and FNC covered it. MSNBC chose not to interrupt the Countdown re-run. In fact, they were doing a news update with Norah O’Donnell live at the hearings the moment the hearings began and then went back to Countdown. Unbelievable…

UPDATE: TVNewser suggests that MSNBC would call this counterprogramming and points to an uptick in the Demo numbers. My response to that would be what is the point of counterprogramming a breaking news live event of national significance if it drives news viewers who want to see that event to other channels?

What? They’ll automatically come back to MSNBC when Countdown is over and they start up coverage (which is what MSNBC did near the end of Countdown)? Bzzzt! Wrong. They’ll stay with whatever channel they are watching because all the channels look the same at that point so there’s no need to switch.