Inside Cable News

June 30, 2006

Greg Kelly…Elvis Impersonator…

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)

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Anderson Cooper 360 to air Gulf Coast Special

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)
(more…)

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King scores for Jones interview…

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.

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MSNBC recycles Jones too…

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.

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CNN re-runs King/Jones interview in daytime…

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.

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Opinion: More MSNBC Breaking News Goofiness….

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…

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Adam Housley profile…

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.”

Behind the cancellation of Live & Direct…

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.

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Shuttle Countdown…

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.”

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