The AP’s David Bauder writes about the big numbers generated by the Clinton/Wallace interview…

Political combat pays: “Fox News Sunday” drew its best ratings in nearly three years for this weekend’s electric confrontation between former President Clinton and newsman Chris Wallace.

Both men’s words were being dissected in the aftermath on Monday, with a Clinton spokesman saying Fox and Wallace had attacked Clinton with “an accusation,” not a question.

“I think the interview speaks for itself,” Wallace said. “They can spin all the conspiracy theories they want.”

The Sunday talk show had its best ratings since the capture of Saddam Hussein in December 2003, according to Nielsen Media Research’s measurement of the top media markets. It even outrated the morning’s dominant show, “Meet the Press,” although the NBC show was displaced from its usual time slot by golf. (Two versions of the interview were the two most-watched clips on YouTube on Monday, totally more than 800,000 views.)

Former Dallas Morning News TV Critic Ed Bark in his blog writes about yesterday’s Bill Clinton/Chris Wallace interview…

Sheesh. Fox News Channel regularly demonstrates a conservative tilt, but Chris Wallace isn’t the guy to insult and browbeat about it. The former ABC newsman is the fairest in the land at Fox. Clinton, on the other hand, came off as churlish, childish and boorish as the interview progressed. Then he finally simmered down, and the closing several minutes became relatively collegial.

Of course, most people already have taken sides. You’re either for Fox News Channel or against it, for Bill Clinton or against him. But any objective martian would agree that Clinton over-did it on Sunday. He could have made his points concisely and forcefully. Instead he kept firing away, eventually shooting blanks.

MSNBC’s Friday Doc Block really took it on the chin. No show broke 300,000…

Cable News Ratings for September 22, 2006

P2+ Total Day
FNC - 778,000 viewers
CNN - 476,000 viewers
MSNBC - 243,000 viewers
CNBC - 140,000 viewers
HLN - 221,000 viewers

P2+ Prime Time
FNC - 1,220,000 viewers
CNN - 700,000 viewers
MSNBC - 345,000 viewers
CNBC - a scratch with 93,000 viewers
HLN - 420,000 viewers

25-54 Total Day
FNC - 242,000 viewers
CNN - 183,000 viewers
MSNBC - 107,000 viewers
CNBC - a scratch with 40,000 viewers
HLN - 84,000 viewers

25-54 Prime Time
FNC - 269,000 viewers
CNN - 176,000 viewers
MSNBC - 157,000 viewers
CNBC - a scratch with 24,000 viewers
HLN - 151,000 viewers
(more…)

On CNN’s Newsroom today was Kyra Phillips’ and Don Lemon’s first day being paired together; a fact they themselves noted at the start of the program…

KYRA PHILLIPS, CO-ANCHOR: Hello, everyone. I’m Kyra Phillips in the CNN NEWSROOM from CNN’s world headquarters in Atlanta.

DON LEMON, CO-ANCHOR: I’m Don Lemon. Thanks for joining us.

Has the Iraq war made Americans less safe? A leaked classified report reveals intel that Democrats are pouncing on and the White House is downplaying.

PHILLIPS: Andre Agassi, the tennis superstar, joins us live. We’re talking greatest moments. His inspirational father, how his wife beats him at tennis and what he’s doing now.

LEMON: And rebirth in New Orleans. The Superdome, it was Katrina’s devastating symbol of what went wrong. But tonight what’s right? The Saints march home, and the stars come out to celebrate. You’re with us live in the CNN NEWSROOM.

PHILLIPS: Unless you read the Internet and the blogs, we never really existed together. Here we are.
(more…)

Oprah Winfrey will be on Larry King Live tonight. One of the subjects discussed is that one man “Oprah for President” movement…

L. KING: And any comment on this movement to make you president?

WINFREY: Is there a movement?

L. KING: This guy’s got a movement.

WINFREY: I don’t know if that’s a movement or not.

L. KING: He’s got a website —

WINFREY: You know what I would say to him, I would say, take your energy and put it in Barack Obama. That’s what I would say.

L. KING: Is that your favorite?

WINFREY: That would be my favorite guy.

TV Newser notes that CNN’s National Correspondent Kelly Wallace is leaving the network after 13 years…

Paul Bedard has an interview with FNC’s soon to be Ex Washington Bureau Chief Kim Hume…

Paullyblog: This is a pretty big move for you, but it’s got to be a pretty big blow for the bureau.

Hume: Well, this is how I think about that. I have always been a good delegator and I have always been the kind of person who let other people make decisions. I’ve got a terrific team here, a management team, and all the journalists who work here, everybody from the person who answers the phone on up, are terrific. But the management team is completely able to take over. They don’t need me. I may be an important part of the management in the sense of leadership and guidance, direction, that kind of thing, [but] I am not an essential employee. I may be important, but I’m not essential. I think they’ll be just fine. I don’t think they’ll miss me for long.

Paullyblog: It’s the business, isn’t it?

Hume: Yes.

Paullyblog: So you are staying through the 10th anniversary of Fox?

Hume: Yes, I’m going to be here through the end of November. This is kind of funny, but I promised that I would work on Thanksgiving so that my deputy, who is now going to be the acting bureau chief, can have Thanksgiving off. So I’m going to be here through Thanksgiving.

Johnny Dollar has a montage of screen caps and video from the premiere of FNC’s The Live Desk…

CNN announced this morning the launch of CNN Political Ticker, an online roundup of the latest policital news…

With mid-term elections on the horizon, CNN’s commitment to providing unparalleled political coverage takes on a new dimension with the launch of the “CNN Political Ticker” on CNN.com, it was announced today by Sam Feist, political director of CNN/U.S., and Mitch Gelman, executive editor of CNN.com.

The CNN Political Ticker combines the reach of CNN.com with the resources and experience of “The Best Political Team on Television.” Correspondents, producers and editors will contribute from the field and give readers an unprecedented view into the day’s political stories that are not reported elsewhere.

“If it happens in the political world, it will appear on the CNN Political Ticker,” Feist said. “The Ticker will provide a constantly updated source of political news from our award-winning journalists. It will be a true destination for political junkies to bookmark and get their fix throughout the day.”
(more…)

This TVSpy thread on MSNBC possibly moving to 30 Rock contains a lot of interesting information in it, some of which echoes things I’ve been hearing. Pay very close attention to the Union angle as this story develops (if it develops) because it is one of the bigger problems NBC will have to deal with in moving the network to Manhattan and could cause an exodus of people from MSNBC…

The Philadelphia Daily News’ Jonathan Last writes about the last “true” news anchors of the TV media; one of which is Brit Hume; but apparently not Anderson Cooper, Shepard Smith, Brian Williams, Bill Hemmer, and others…

Whatever else you want to say about the recently departed generation of anchors - Brokaw, Rather, and Jennings - they were archetypes, direct descendants of Frank Reynolds, John Chancellor and Howard K. Smith. Even the anchors of the first era of cable news were of that vintage: Bernie Shaw and Judy Woodruff could coif-and-stick with the best of them.

The only true anchors left working today are Brit Hume, Jim Lehrer and Charlie Gibson. (Aaron Brown was another throwback, but he was sacked to make way for Anderson Cooper, whose sensitive, New Age emotionality makes him more Alan Alda than Eric Severeid.) These three stalwarts are now, sadly, lengthening in the tooth. Eventually, they’ll go on to that Great Green Room in the Sky, and then what will we do?

There is no rising generation of young anchors. We don’t make them like that anymore. Consider the new crop: Bill Hemmer, Matt Lauer, Shep Smith, Brian Williams, John Roberts, Anderson Cooper, Katie Couric. As anchors, they’re a different species. Pretty. Fluffy. Pleasant. Boyish. Girlish. Or both. They’ll do fine reading the news Monday to Friday, but if I were a network executive, I wouldn’t have wanted any of them in the chair on Sept. 11.

USA Today’s Peter Johnson looks at how ranting in Cable News is paying off in the ratings and examines the rants of some of the industry’s bigger ranters…

On cable news, objectivity works well during the day.

But as the sun begins to set, programmers have learned that viewers like some edge. And ranting helps.

Fox News Channel was first to tap into this a decade ago when Bill O’Reilly began to sound off about his pet peeves. He is now the most popular talk-show host on cable.

Others have since joined in, and their ratings have increased.

The New York Daily News’ Rush and Molloy dish…

Last year, Hyperion published Grace’s book “Objection! How High-Priced Defense Attorneys, Celebrity Defendants, and a 24/7 Media Have Hijacked Our Criminal Justice System.”

Grace was happy to hype the book, which spent five weeks on The New York Times best-seller list. She was less eager to draw attention to the fact that she’d lifted huge, verbatim passages in the book from that newspaper.

TVWeek editorializes on the Nancy Grace/Melinda Duckett interview…

The next day, Ms. Duckett killed herself. Ms. Grace refused to apologize. “If anything, I would suggest that guilt made her commit suicide,” she said on ABC’s “Good Morning America.”

That comment displayed an undeniable lack of class and sensitivity. Those kinds of gaffes are not indictable in TV today, unfortunately. But the decision by Headline News and Ms. Grace to televise the interview after the woman’s death was dumpster diving of the lowest sort.

The sad fact of life is that ratings grabs are natural when a show isn’t at the top of its heap competitively. We hope that next time, someone in authority will intervene before Ms. Grace can disgrace herself-and the network-again.