Jossip has the Drudge story…

Anderson Cooper has the top selling book? He beat out Tim Russert? Props, Coops! While currently, there is no link to the actual sotry… hence the “developing” aspect … one thing’s for sure.

UPDATE: Meanwhile Jossip wants to hear what your fourth name for Cooper is. Read the backstory here…

FNC was the only cable news network to make the Top 10 primetime cable channels for the month of May. Mediachannel News’ Linda Moss writes about The Top 10 in May…

TBS and Fox News Channel tallied the same primetime rating, a 1.2. Both networks were down 8% from last May.

Here’s a graph of Glenn Beck’s Demo numbers since the show launched…
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Earlier I mentioned CNN talking about how The Situation Room was narrowing the gap in the Demo. Here is a slide courtesy of CNN that shows The Situation Room gaining Demo viewers while FNC was losing Demo viewers…
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CNN’s Arwa Damon turns in a Reporter’s Notebook entry on the Haditha massacre allegations…

Now, all these months later, while watching the tapes, I found a walk and talk with one of the company commanders that was relieved of his duty as a result of the Haditha probe.

After being hit by an IED, his men were searching the area and found a massive weapons cache in a mosque. Although it wasn’t his company that we were embedded with, the Marines had taken me to the mosque so we could get footage of the cache.

And so began the e-mails and phone calls between myself and my two other CNN crew members, Jennifer Eccleston and Gabe Ramirez: Do you remember when we were talking with the battalion commander and his intel guy right outside the school and then half an hour later they found an IED in that spot? Do you remember when we were sitting chatting with them at the school? And all the other “do you remember whens.”

There was also — can you believe it? — the allegations of the Haditha probe.

Yesterday, CNN kicked off the first of a series of high profile guest editorials and opinion pieces on CNN.com with Robert Redford. Redford’s piece is on kicking the oil habit…

The recent surge in gas prices has touched a raw nerve for many around the country, reminding us of an economy that is increasingly uncertain for the middle-class, a growing addiction to oil that draws us ever closer to dictators and despots, and a fragile global position with a climate that is increasingly out of balance. I believe America is ready to kick the oil habit and launch a new movement for real solutions and a better future.

Here’s an image showing FNC’s year to year May ratings by hour in both the P2+ and P25-54 categories. The higlighted areas are hours that FNC was down vs. May 05
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Nancy Grace, another show that didn’t get highlighted by CNN, declined in May in both the Total Viewer and Demo categories; dropping nearly 25% in both categories since April.
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Here is chart showing the top 10 cable news programs in the Demo. The only non-FNC program to crack the top 10 was Deal or No Deal…
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Here is a chart showing the Demo gap between MSNBC and CNN in Primetime. MSNBC has cut the gap nearly in half over the past year, though it did widen a bit recently.
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One of the programs CNN wasn’t highlighting in May was Paula Zahn Now. May was PZN’s lowest month since December 04. Here is a graph that illustrates what the show has been doing in the Demo since that time.
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The May numbers are out and CNN is touting Demo gains…

CNN GAINS VIEWERS IN MAY 2006

The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer UP 58%; Anderson Cooper 360 UP 53%; Lou Dobbs Tonight UP 85% in P25-54

Lou Dobbs Tonight continues to garner viewers in all demos, up a staggering 94% in total viewers

HLN Glenn Beck premieres with 58% increase total viewers at 7pm

CNN included a PDF showing The Situation Room narrowing the Demo gap between itself and its competing programs on FNC…
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Cary Darling in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram writes about Anderson Cooper…

“I think there are moments in the news when you do wish there were greater emotional involvement on the part of the newcaster and, as a viewer, I appreciate that,” says Jeffrey Hyson, a history professor and pop-culture commentator at St. Joseph’s University in Philadelphia, who was in Cooper’s class at Yale but didn’t know him. “The famous confrontation with Landrieu; it’s one of those great moments of realization that this is great TV and he’s saying what we want to say.”

Others remain unconvinced. “The problem I have with someone like Anderson Cooper is he’s paid his dues and worked his way up but not on the local level,” says Andrew Clark, an assistant professor in the communications department at the University of Texas at Arlington who specializes in broadcast and cable issues. “He becomes the news, instead of the story, and he has done nothing to downplay that . . . I would have to think he’s less sensationalist than Geraldo [Rivera] but it’s that sentimental aspect to what he’s doing. The tears on Katrina, I’m not going to say if it’s genuine or not, but it’s going over the top a little bit.”