FNC’s White House Correspondent Greg Kelly dressed up as Elvis today on Fox and Friends. Kelly was decked out because President Bush was visiting the Graceland with the Japanese Prime Minister today. FNC has video (via TVNewser)

CNN announced today that it will be airing a special edition of 360 on July 5th on the Gulf Coast…

Anderson Cooper and a team of CNN correspondents will share inspiring stories of unsung heroes from the Gulf Coast region in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina during a Wednesday, July 5, special. In addition, country music superstars Faith Hill and Tim McGraw will join Cooper for a revealing tour of St. Bernard Parish and the lower 9th Ward on the same day of their benefit concert in New Orleans.

The special, “American Heroes: Giving Back to the Gulf,” airs during Anderson Cooper 360° on July 5, beginning at 10 p.m. (ET)
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Larry King Live nearly tripled its normal audience last night with the Star Jones interview. The show had 2,957,000 viewers with 917,000 in the 25-54 demo. That’s nearly double what Cooper got for the Jolie interview. No wonder CNN re-ran it today, though I wish they hadn’t.

Let it not be said that ICN would only single out CNN for pandering to celebrity interviews. All day MSNBC recycled Al Roker’s NBC interview with Star Jones. It reached its nadir at the 2:30 pm hour when the whole half hour, minus 2 minute news updates by Dan Kloefler, was spent showing the interview.

CNN is in the middle of re-running the Larry King/Star Jones interview from last night, which coincidentally (or maybe not so coincidentally) puts the show up against The View on the east coast. But there’s a lot of breaking news going on today and for an hour CNN’s news viewers will be deprived of that. This doesn’t exactly acquit CNN of the charge stemming from the Cooper/Jolie interview that CNN is pandering to entertainment and celebrity over news. If anything it re-enforces it.

UPDATE: TV Squad’s Bob Sassone doesn’t think much of this… (via TVNewser)

Today on The Situation Room witih Wolf Blitzer: an in-depth remport on whether Kevin Federline is good for Britney Spears.

Earlier in the week MSNBC started putting two “Breaking News” producers behind the news anchor to somewhat awkward results on the screen. Apparently that wasn’t enough. Now they’ve started showing the control room telling the news anchor that there is breaking news. This happened this morning when during the 9 am hour MSNBC jumped to a Florida courtroom…

Donna, before we go to Jay let’s go first to the hearing in Florida. We’re listening to the Judge in the Couey case…

MSNBC isn’t going to fool anyone with this. This was play acting. They already knew they were going to do this before they came back from break. At some point, and I suspect that point is going to be coming soon, someone is going to tell Dan Abrams that showing that you can cover breaking news isn’t what matters…it’s covering breaking news well that matters…

The Napa Valley Register’s Marty James covers the career of FNC’s Adam Housley from baseball player to cable news reporter…(via FTVLive)

“It’s tough on your family in the minor leagues because they don’t know where you’re going to go and you don’t know where you’re going to go,” Housley said. “I realized that every year I was going to be that guy on the bubble no matter how well I did. I played with a lot of guys, and I include myself in that, who put up good numbers. But it’s not about what you do, it’s about the potential you have.”

After sitting down and talking with his family, Housley — a 1989 Vintage High School graduate — made a decision to walk away from the game and go in a different direction in life.

“I think for anybody, your dreams sometimes change,” he said. “Even though I had dreamed of playing baseball — and I will always wish I had played in the big leagues — sometimes it’s not meant to be.”

Lloyd Grove dishes big time on the behind the scenes involving yesterday’s MSNBC news.

As news execs were deciding to kill her show - which has lost viewers since a promising launch last August - Cosby requested the meeting with NBC News president Steve Capus. Yesterday’s agreement was hammered out in a sometimes tense session of finger-pointing that lasted far longer than expected, as Cosby’s staff sat fuming in ignorance for the better part of the day.

The meeting involved Capus, NBC News senior vice president Phil Griffin, MSNBC general manager Dan Abrams and Cosby’s agent, Larry Kramer.

“I’m thrilled,” Cosby told me as she traveled to last night’s surprise birthday party for her boyfriend, Tomaczek Bednarek.

The Hollywood Reporter’s Paul J. Gough wraps up the shuttle coverage plans…

The longest coverage will be on the cable channels, with Fox, CNN and MSNBC — and their Web sites — devoting significant resources. But NBC and ABC have positioned anchors, correspondents and space experts in New York, Cape Canaveral and Houston and will interrupt regular programming. Fox won’t because its network isn’t on air at that time.

NBC, which will carry the U.S. Women’s Open Championship on Saturday, finalized a plan Thursday that will have NBC Sports throw a few minutes before the scheduled launch to NBC News weekend anchor John Siegenthaler. Joining him will be Tom Costello, longtime space correspondent Jay Barbree, astronaut Steve Robinson and analyst James Oberg. They also will work on MSNBC, where Chris Jansing will anchor coverage.

“We always felt this was indeed newsworthy,” NBC News specials executive producer Phil Alongi said. “There’s been a lot of discussion surrounding this launch.”

Here’s MSNBC’s release announcing the changes. Note the “Rita Cosby Specials” unit item…

MSNBC today announced that the network will air two hours of documentary programming during weekday prime, at 10:00 p.m. and 11:00 p.m. (ET), beginning July 10, 2006. On January 13th of this year, MSNBC began presenting documentary programming on Friday evenings, resulting in stunning ratings growth (MSNBC is up 67% in the adult demographic and 34% in total viewers)*. MSNBC is now expanding this popular programming throughout the week. The announcement was made by Dan Abrams, General Manager of MSNBC.

The documentaries will complement MSNBC’s existing programming by building on our library of award winning documentaries. Michael Rubin and Scott Hooker will lead MSNBC’s long form unit. Hooker, an award winning documentary producer who has been with the network since its inception, will be Senior Executive Producer of Documentary Production and Development. Hooker is joined by Michael Rubin, who recently returned to MSNBC in the role of Vice President, Long Form Programming. Rubin, a veteran broadcast and cable network programmer, had been with MSNBC from 1999 to 2001, as Senior Executive Producer of Long Form. Prior to that, he was an Executive Producer at CBS news for several years working in primetime, on the CBS news magazine “West 57th” and on special projects. Both Hooker and Rubin report to Abrams.
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MSNBC GM Dan Abrams 6:22 pm memo to staff announcing that Live and Direct has been axed, The Situation moves into The Abrams Report’s slot, and Rita Cosby becoming the primary anchor for “MSNBC Investigates”. Nobody should be surprised this happened though putting Rita in at MSNBC Investigates is a surprise. (Sorry for the delay. I was too busy to access Gmail for the past five hours)

From: Abrams, Dan (NBC Universal, MSNBC)
Sent: Thursday, June 29, 2006 6:22 PM
To: @MSNBC Everyone
Subject: Announcement

First let me just thank everyone for helping to make my transition to General Manager relatively painless. I truly appreciate all of your kind words of encouragement and hope that I can live up to your expectations. More important, in a few short weeks, I have become even more convinced that with the talent in this building, we can continue to surge ahead.

With that said, I want to announce a number of exciting changes in our evening schedule.

Beginning on Monday July 10, we will air two hours of taped programs at 10 and 11 pm Monday through Friday. Friday night taped programming has been an enormous success for us. As a result, we will complement our live primetime shows with programs from our library of long form shows. I believe this change will allow MSNBC to better reflect the numerous outlets that make up NBC News. The same way Dateline is a critical piece of NBC News, taped programming should be a critical piece for us as well. As we begin to ramp-up production of new programs, we will work closely with the team over at Dateline NBC to create hours on topics ranging from news of the day, to crime to the war on terror to politics. Of course we will also cover human interest stories which have long been a staple at Dateline as well.
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FNC had more viewers the past couple of days (Jun 26-28) than did The Weather Channel despite all the storms and flooding going on on the East Coast. FNC was up almost 100,000 viewers (13%) in Total Day while the Weather Channel was up only 6,000 viewers (2%) vs. June 2006

June 2006
FNC - 767,000 viewers
TWC - 270,000 viewers

June 26-28
FNC - 864,000 viewers (+13%)
TWC - 276,000 viewers (+2%)

An emailer wrote in to note something I missed in CNN’s Shuttle Launch press release…

As the only broadcast network to air every NASA shuttle launch live, CNN plans to continue that tradition across numerous platforms with live footage both on-air and online of the Space Shuttle Discovery launch on Saturday, July 1.

June 28
P2+ Total Day
FNC - 863,000 viewers
CNN - 483,000 viewers
MSNBC - 196,000 viewers
HLN - 177,000 viewers
CNBC - 158,000 viewers

P2+ Prime Time
FNC - 1,629,000 viewers
CNN - 926,000 viewers
MSNBC - 387,000 viewers
HLN - 329,000 viewers
CNBC - 134,000 viewers

25-54 Total Day
FNC - 248,000 viewers
CNN - 152,000 viewers
MSNBC - 76,000 viewers
HLN - 75,000 viewers
CNBC - 64,000 viewers

25-54 Prime Time
FNC - 404,000 viewers
CNN - 265,000 viewers
MSNBC - 140,000 viewers
HLN - 114,000 viewers
CNBC -88,000 viewers
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Wellp…let the record show that I called it…

Keith Olbermann ran “Factor Fiction” to return O’Reilly’s fire from the night before. Crooks and Liars has the video…as does MSNBC which is putting it on its main page…

Fox’s ratings are lower than they were five years ago. Bill-Oh, 267,000 of your nightly viewers have vanished since last June. Call Fox Security, they are missing,”

FNC announced its shuttle coverage plans today…

Anchor Martha MacCallum will lead the morning and afternoon coverage live from Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, FL and will also host a special program, “Space Shuttle Discovery: STS-121,” beginning at 3 PM/ET and through the launch. Programming will also include analysis from former NASA astronaut Tom Jones, who will be stationed at Kennedy Space Center, along with live reports from correspondent David Lee Miller at the Kennedy Space Center and correspondent Kim McIntyre from Johnson Space Center in Houston, TX.

Fox News Radio (FNR) will also provide anchored coverage of the launch, led by anchor Todd Starnes. Live coverage will begin approximately at 3:30 PM/ET with reports from correspondent Lisa Carton and Fox News Space Expert Jim Slade, a veteran space reporter and pilot, from Kennedy Space Center. Additionally, Mike Majchrowitz will be reporting from Johnson Space Center. NASA’s audio of the launch will be fed on the Unanchored channel.

This morning on CNN’s American Morning, Soledad O’Brien interviewed U2’s Bono about the one year anniversary of Live-8 and Congress’ possible plans to cut AIDS funding in Africa. Transcript follows…

SOLEDAD O’BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: For years, U2’s Bono has made it his mission to help fight poverty and AIDS, especially in Africa. This morning, a CNN exclusive. We’re going to talk to Bono in just a moment, but first, a look at his work, and his legacy, too.

BONO, SINGER/ACTIVIST: I don’t think what’s happening in Africa, with AIDS in particular and just the poverty and despair there, is a cause. I think it’s an emergency. And lots of people have causes, and I have. But 69,000 people die ever day — not a cause, an emergency.

S. O’BRIEN: Last July, Bono and Bob Geldof staged Live 8, billed as the biggest rock concert ever with a powerful message for the world’s most powerful leaders. Days after Live 8, members of the G8, the world’s eight most industrialized countries, responded. They pledged to cancel the debt of the 18 poorest African nations, and to increase aid by $50 billion by 2010.

Bono is the only person to be nominated for a Grammy, an Oscar and the Noble Peace Prize.
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TVNewser noted a set of stills of a camera crew outside of the FNC studios that were posted on the FNC website this morning.

There’s nothing nefarious about it though. A Fox News spokesperson told ICN that the folks in the pictures are scouting out FNC studios for an upcoming major movie. foxnews.com is having some fun in trying to help hype the movie a bit, the reason for the item on the Web site.

UPDATE: Clarified original entry.

It’s been nearly a year since the space shuttle Discovery last launched. I’ve said this before but it bears repeating. I’m a space junkie. I live for this sort of thing. Sometimes if nothing interesting is on TV I’ll switch over to the NASA Channel just to see what’s going on in space.

Last time I was looking at this as a two network race between CNN and MSNBC/NBC’s teams. However the aborted launch threw everything out of whack and when the shuttle finally did launch, NBC opted not to throw everything at it a 2nd time and it showed.
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Crooks and Liars has the video of Fox and Friend’s E.D. Hill alluding to some sort of secrets about The New York Times’ Bill Keller that she apparently knows that should be exposed in the wake of the Bush Administration terrorist financing tracing story it leaked. Transcript by C&L…

E. D. HILL: Since Bill Keller is in the news now, wouldn’t you consider him a newsworthy figure? Because I’ve heard some very interesting things about Bill Keller.

BRIAN KILMEADE: Like what?

HILL: They’re secret!

STEVE DOOCY laughs.

HILL: But, you know what? Since Bill Keller is in the news, I think that the person …

KILMEADE: Oh, good one!

HILL: … who had someone uncover those secrets would be doing a public service, perhaps, by releasing them.

DOOCY: Was it Jayson Blair, who uncovered it?

HILL: No, it was not.

The LA Times’ Matea Gold writes about FNC’s decision to pull the plug in Mexico in the run up to its election on Sunday because it didn’t want to be censored…

Fox News decided to temporarily halt transmission into Mexico because of concerns that the channel’s coverage would violate a ban on disseminating opinion polls or campaign commercials in the days before the election, and jeopardize the standing of the cable and satellite companies that distribute its signal.

“I just don’t think we had much choice,” said Janet Alshouse, senior vice president of international distribution for Fox News. “We can’t restrict our coverage.”

The channel planned to go dark at 12:01 a.m. today and resume transmission after the polls close Sunday evening. A message in Spanish and English will tell viewers that Fox News is temporarily unavailable.

Mediaweek’s Mike Shields writes about CNN getting Chase to sponsor its Podcasts…

Initially, CNN.com’s David Payne, CNN.com’s senior vp and general manager, said that advertising on the new podcasts was expected to ramp up roughly a month after launch. However, according to CNN, demand has been stronger than expected, leading to Chase’s early commitment.

The Hollywood Reporter’s Paul J. Gough writes about yesterdays news that NBC News was expanding its investigative unit. Gough also gets Steve Capus to comment…

While Capus didn’t discuss specifics, he said NBC’s commitment wasn’t being done on the cheap.

“I readily acknowledge it creates a lot of pressure from the business side of it, but in my view this is what a news division has to do,” Capus said. Other changes might occur at NBC News’ bureaus throughout the world, although nothing will be closed.

“We may reassess some of the other operations, but I don’t really expect to close bureaus,” Capus said. “We may move some resources around

CNN announced its plans to cover the Shuttle Launch…

As the only broadcast network to air every NASA shuttle launch live, CNN plans to continue that tradition across numerous platforms with live footage both on-air and online of the Space Shuttle Discovery launch on Saturday, July 1. Coverage includes live reports on CNN/U.S., CNNRadio and CNN Pipeline as well as an hour-long launch day special.

The special, “Shuttle Discovery: Miles O’Brien Reports” will air on Saturday from 3-4 p.m. on CNN/U.S. to coincide with Discovery’s scheduled liftoff at 3:48 p.m. CNN space correspondent and American Morning anchor Miles O’Brien and Eileen Collins, commander of the previous shuttle mission and the first female shuttle commander, will host the special.
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The AP’s Lynne Elber has a profile on CNN’s Jack Cafferty… (via WHAC)

This provocative figure is the same one who, as a longtime local New York anchorman, once was dismissed by a TV critic as having a broadcasting style that was “dry, workmanlike and at times, dull.”

If that was the case, it changed substantially when Cafferty joined the now-defunct CNNfn. On a lark, Cafferty started to read on-air the e-mails “that were trickling in (and) kind of built this following,” he said. His performance after the Sept. 11 terrorism attacks led to a co-host spot on “American Morning,” where his “Here‘s What I Don‘t Get Segment” allowed him to rant at will.

On “The Situation Room,” he plays color commentator to stolid play-by-play man Blitzer. Cafferty also anchors CNN‘s weekend business show, “In the Money.”

“In many ways, he‘s the voice of the Everyman on our program,” said Sam Feist, senior executive producer of political programming for CNN/U.S., with “The Situation Room” among his responsibilities. “He just wants to hold our political leaders accountable, and he takes it very seriously.”

NBC News announced today that it is expanding its Investigative Unit…

NBC News President Steve Capus announced today that NBC News will significantly expand its Investigative Reporting Unit, doubling the number of producers working on hard-news investigative stories. Reporting will appear on “NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams,” “Today,” “Dateline NBC,” on NBC News’ cable stations MSNBC and CNBC, and online at MSNBC.com. The expansion is effective today.

In making the announcement, Capus said, “Expanding NBC News’ Investigative Unit clearly demonstrates the News division’s commitment to investigative journalism, and NBC’s willingness to invest in stories that will have a major impact.” Capus continued, “For the past four years, the Investigative Unit has led the way with exclusive stories on terrorism, the government’s failings in Hurricane Katrina, and political corruption. This expansion will allow us to continue to break a wide variety of important stories on all our NBC News programs, and to further distinguish ourselves from our competitors.”
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Broadcasting & Cable’s Anne Becker writes about a new Podcast launched by CNN featuring Dr. Sanjay Gupta. (no release CNN?)

CNN launched a new podcast with video from Senior Medical Correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta. Doc Talk, which features Gupta giving listeners health advice, is currently available on CNN’s Website at cnn.com/podcasting, and for free on iTunes. In the first installment, Gupta offers advice on energy bars.

MediaWeek’s Anthony Crupi writes about the Q2 numbers…

Fox News Channel tallied its 18th consecutive quarterly ratings win over rival CNN, averaging 1.38 million viewers in prime time in the second quarter of 2006 versus CNN’s 700,000.

According to Nielsen Media Research, between March 27 and June 25 FNC was the eighth-most-watched ad-supported cable network in prime time, even as the network’s nightly audience shrank 11 percent year-over-year. CNN was down 5 percent versus the same time a year ago.

June 27
P2+ Total Day
FNC - 823,000 viewers
CNN - 475,000 viewers
MSNBC - 185,000 viewers
HLN - 167,000 viewers
CNBC - 165,000 viewers

P2+ Prime Time
FNC - 1,759,000 viewers
CNN - 805,000 viewers
MSNBC - 258,000 viewers
HLN - 360,000 viewers
CNBC - 161,000 viewers

25-54 Total Day
FNC - 212,000 viewers
CNN - 146,000 viewers
MSNBC - 76,000 viewers
HLN - 65,000 viewers
CNBC - 61,000 viewers

25-54 Prime Time
FNC - 335,000 viewers
CNN - 167,000 viewers
MSNBC - 109,000 viewers
HLN - 134,000 viewers
CNBC -90,000 viewers

Morning programs
FOX & Friends - 762,000 viewers (277,000)
American Morning - 443,000 viewers (196,000)
Robin & Co. - 156,000 (87,000)
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Johnny Dollar emailed in to note that FNC has suddenly replaced the “Fox News Alert” with “Breaking News Now”. This happening on the heels of MSNBC GM Dan Abrams’ recent comments about having the network focus more on Breaking News. The timing of this change is….interesting…

UPDATE: Had a quick moment to steal a glance at this. Also included is a banner in the upper right corner that scrolls across and repeats the words “Breaking News”….

The New York Daily News’ Bob Raissman writes about an incident on the radio where both Keith Olbermann and Dan Patrick called the owner of the Carolina Hurricanes names…

At one point in their critique, Patrick called Karmanos a “scumbag.” Shortly after that tasteless reference, Olbermann called Karmanos a “douchebag.”

I don’t know if Karmanos is aware of these over-the-top characterizations, which have absolutely no place on a sportstalk radio show airing early in the afternoon, but ESPN suits heard what Olbermann and Patrick said and were not amused.

“It’s not our policy to take cheap shots or resort to name calling,” said Rob Tobias, an ESPN spokesman. “And to that end, we will be handling this matter internally with both Dan Patrick and Keith Olbermann.”

Bill O’Reilly is in D.C today. He’s got Tony Snow on tonight. He’ll have the rescheduled John Kerry interview tomorrow…

I had noted several times recently that Bill O’Reilly had been keeping quiet in this spat with MSNBC for quite a while. I had thought he had finally figured out the only practical way to deal with Olbermann. I was wrong. Last night O’Reilly went after MSNBC again…

If you’ve read any of my books, you know I believe in karma. Do bad things, you’ll get yours eventually. Do good things, you’ll get rewarded. Recently, two bad guys got theirs:

Air America fired its president, Gary Krantz. The disastrous radio network booted him out on the heels of the removal of CEO Danny Goldberg. We believe there is major chaos at that far left concern.

There’s also major chaos at MSNBC, where Rick Kaplan has left after pretty much destroying that place. He did the same thing at CNN before he got fired over there. Closing in on its 10th anniversary, MSNBC’s ratings are lower than they were six years ago, which might be ridiculous.

You just had to do it Bill. You couldn’t leave it alone. Congratulations. You just gave Keith Olbermann’s feud with you a new lease on life…

Reese blogs on Lou Dobbs and suggests that when the illegal immigration issue fades, so will Dobbs’ audience…

The Dobbs show attracts a select audience that cares about the same issues he does. I am not sure the audience will remain when the issue pales. One of the worst mistakes that CNN made was its concentrative coverage of the OJ Simpson trial. It, too, attracted a large, select audience. But after the verdict came in the audience vanished and the core audience never returned. Before the Simpson trial CNN had a point-7 audience. After, it fell to point-5’s and even point 4’s. Immigration and job loss will unfortunately last longer than the trial but at the end CNN may find itself searching for a new 6:00 PM program.

The New York Observer’s Rebecca Dana writes in a must read about how Anderson Cooper’s name recognition and celebrity hasn’t transformed into ratings success…

Mr. Cooper squats in a giant billboard opposite Fox News Channel headquarters on 47th Street, appears on Oprah, writes a column for Details, headlines his own blog, sustains many others and in May gave the graduation speech at his alma mater. 60 Minutes found room for him, even as it was crowding out Dan Rather. There’s buzz he might inherit the World News Tonight anchor chair some day. There’s buzz he might climb the ranks at CBS, and more buzz on top of that, so much that it seems to have drowned out the little voice of Nielsen.

“I just don’t get it,” said one cable news executive. “I watch the show, and there’s nothing there for me. All of a sudden, I’m looking at the upfront for CBS, and he’s one of the faces of 60 Minutes. One of the three faces of 60 Minutes! How did that happen? It keeps rolling along, this media-sensation thing.”