TVNewser scoops that Maria Bartiromo has trademarked the term “Money Honey”.

I have a feeling this was a defensive move and not a promotional move. The notion that Bartiromo would trademark it because there are plans to use it in her work strikes me as unlikely. I think it’s far more likely that it was trademarked to keep others from using it derogatively when applied to her or to prevent others from using it in a way to capitalize on her name.

Daryn Kagan started a blog on Wednesday. Kagan’s first entry was about the late Dan Young, CNN’s Chief Videographer, who inadvertently helped Kagan with the video part of her website…after he had passed away.

Shortly after our trip to Africa, Dan was promoted to CNN Chief Videographer. Management. Grand Poobah. Big Cheese. In charge of every CNN videographer. No matter. Didn’t change him a bit. Still the great guy that anyone could always ask for help.

I had that in mind as I was formulating the ideas for DarynKagan.com. I knew there was a special way to shoot video so that it can be edited into a slick looking piece. “I know, ” I thought. “I’ll ask Dan for shooting lessons!”

Great idea. It never happened. Last summer, three weeks before I left CNN, Dan suddenly came down with leukemia. A week later he died. There are no words to describe how shocking it was. Vibrant, healthy, energizer bunny Dan dead at 47? It devastated the network. This wonderful man and friend who spent more than half his life working at CNN was gone way too soon.

Dan’s funeral was standing room only. And that was in the extra spillover room. There was no church that could hold all the love that showed up for Dan that day.

O’Reilly was big for FNC last night with 2.7 million viewers…

Cable News Daily Ratings for January 25, 2007

P2+ Total Day
FNC – 974,000 viewers
CNN – 500,000 viewers
MSNBC – 315,000 viewers
CNBC – 256,000 viewers
HLN – 250,000 viewers

P2+ Prime Time
FNC – 1,974,000 viewers
CNN – 907,000 viewers
MSNBC – 509,000 viewers
CNBC – 411,000 viewers
HLN – 515,000 viewers

25-54 Total Day
FNC – 282,000 viewers
CNN –176,000 viewers
MSNBC – 130,000 viewers
CNBC – 109,000 viewers
HLN – 99,000 viewers

25-54 Prime Time
FNC – 456,000 viewers
CNN – 301,000 viewers
MSNBC – 194,000 viewers
CNBC – 160,000 viewers
HLN – 232,000 viewers

Morning programs P2+ (25-54)
FOX & Friends – 892,000 viewers (383,000)
American Morning – 322,000 viewers (129,000)
Imus in the Morning– 387,000 viewers (162,000)
Robin & Co. – 197,000 viewers (100,000)
(more…)

Mika Brzezinski was seen doing an MSNBC News update this evening. Brzezinski was on MSNBC from 1999-2001 before joining CBS News. I haven’t seen anything official announcing her return so she may just be freelance.

UPDATE: She’s freelancing…

John Gibson this afternoon on The Big Story went off on GE and NBC about their standards in the wake of the Maria Bartiromo/Citigroup scandal. Oh, and he manages to work in a shot at Olbermann, et al. as well…which is probably why the audio clip is on Olbermannwatch and not Johnny Dollar’s place…

FishbowlNY is doing a poll on whether Maria Bartiromo committed an “ethics violation” or not…

The Wall Street Journal’s Brooks Barnes and Monica Langley write about CNBC circling the wagons around Maria Bartiromo in the wake of the Citigroup scandal…

Inside CNBC and NBC Universal, according to executives and reporters for the channel, there is a feeling that the channel and Ms. Bartiromo have been caught in unfair crossfire from Citigroup. These people say Citigroup was concerned that Mr. Thomson might be leaking Ms. Bartiromo information — particularly after the anchor broke the news that former chairman Sanford Weill planned to leave the company — and therefore didn’t distance her from the Thomson imbroglio. A Citigroup spokeswoman declined to comment.

NBC Universal executives say they gave approval last spring for Ms. Bartiromo to tape a portion of a Sundance Channel series examining the intersection of the environment and business. But the format of the series soon changed and by last July Ms. Bartiromo was no longer a formal host, although plans still called for her to appear. NBC Universal owns a minor stake in Sundance Channel.

The January/February 2007 issue of Selling Power Magazine contains a Roger Ailes profile by Lisa Gechwandtner under the headline “Mr. Media: How FOX CEO Roger Ailes Revolutionized Cable News”. (sub. req.)

I can’t make up my mind what to highlight; the “Speak Up and Shut Up” section on staff interaction (“I always tell [my employees] that when I was down there I used to think the ’suits’ were upstairs plotting some way to screw me.” he says. “So, I thought, if I ever get in a position of power, I would come down and let everybody at me for a while, make sure you ask whatever question you want and I’ll try to answer.”), the “Talent Management” section on handling staff which included a tidbit on the early days of The O’Reilly Factor when the show wasn’t doing so good (“I told him, ‘Bill, I actually think the reason it’s failing is my fault. I put you in the wrong time period.’” Instead of shutting down the show, Ailes gave O’Reilly the best time slot on the network, 8 p.m. Not only was O’Reilly grateful, he was bolstered by Ailes’ confidence in him. “He said to me, ‘You know, whenever I’ve been in trouble in my life, nobody every promoted me and gave me a better time period.’”), or any number of Ailes anecdotes. Like this one…

Ailes admits that he’s tough. You can’t be a wallflower and run a major news network, after all. Although he is often asked about his aggressive manner, he insists that he never throws the first punch. What about the 2003 billboard in Atlanta, the one saying “Connie, Come Back. CNN Needs You”? (this was a dig at Paula Zahn’s faltering show on CNN, after she left FOX to replace Connie Chung.) Ailes considers that funny, not antagonistic. Plus, the occasional grand gesture promotes solidarity within the ranks.

“[That billboard affected] CNN’s morale a little bit,” Ailes told Broadcasting & Cable. “How our guys feel and how their guys feel are key. Morale is key in these operations. I do understand the psychology of running an organization.”
(more…)

The LA Times’ Matea Gold writes about what Hannity’s America will be airing this Sunday…

Fox News does not have ABC’s permission to broadcast the unaired footage, but an attorney for the network said officials there believed that the newsworthiness of the material put it under the fair-use exception to the copyright statute.

Finley said the footage merited exposure because the original miniseries provoked such strong debate.

“It was a story that was so controversial at the time,” he said.

“We here at Fox — and myself personally — feel the American people deserve both sides. We have the opportunity to show the viewers what they missed in September, the full story of the controversy surrounding the scene. We think people should see it and judge for themselves.”

Johnny Dollar has the audio from this morning’s Brian and the Judge radio program where “24″ Producer Joel Surnow talks about that program and the big mystery comedy program FNC is working on which Surnow called “It’s like a Daily Show for the Fair and Balanced”…

The Washington Post’s David Segal has an interview with HLN’s Glenn Beck…

Beck has the disarming habit of candidly discussing his foibles, not to mention the agonies and mistakes of his past and his lengthy bout of self-loathing and depression. He is not just a recovering alcoholic (”two glasses a day — but tall glasses, and all Jack Daniel’s”) and not just a former pothead (”every day for 15 years”). He is a recovering jerk.

“Honestly, I was just a despicable human being,” he says. A self-described radio gypsy who was raised in a town near Seattle, Beck skipped college and at 18 started bouncing around to different stations in ever-larger markets across the country, usually as a morning radio host.

As he rose to prominence, he was shadowed by the signal tragedy of his life: the suicide of his mother when he was 13 years old. For that and other reasons that he is still sorting through, success did not make him happy; it made him insufferable.

“By the time I was in my mid-20s, I was making $300,000. C’mon, scumbag alcoholic with money and modicum of fame?” He shakes his head in a way that suggests you didn’t want to know him then.

Howard Kurtz in the Washington Post…

Maria Bartiromo, CNBC’s star business anchor, has been thrust into the spotlight by the disclosure that her friendship and travels with a top Citigroup executive played a role in his ouster.

Now it turns out that Bartiromo made nearly 50 appearances last year for corporations, trade associations and other groups, with three of them involving Citigroup in such far-flung locales as London and Hong Kong.

CNBC executives say they approved and paid for each trip, and reimbursed Citigroup for the corporate flight. But the time and distance involved raise questions about how close Bartiromo has gotten to some companies she covers and whether she has become more of a celebrity journalist than the Wall Street workhorse of her earlier years.

The Hollywood Reporter’s Kimberly Nordyke writes about this Sunday’s Hannity’s America airing a cut scene from the ABC 9/11 movie that concerned the Clinton Administration.

Fox News recorded video of the unedited scene during a January 19 speech given by “Path” writer-producer Cyrus Nowrasteh at California State University, Channel Islands, in Camarillo, where he explained his side of the story and screened the footage. Because it was a public event, Fox News said, it was able to record the video and the speech.

“Hannity’s America” senior producer John Finley said Fox News captured about 2-1/2 minutes of unedited footage and plans to show the scene, said to be of good quality, in its entirety as part of a roughly 15-minute segment centered around the scene itself. During the segment, Sean Hannity will interview Nowrasteh as well as Michael Scheuer, the former CIA agent who created and advised a secret CIA unit for tracking and eliminating bin Laden.

Page Six gleefully rips CNN execs for being in the tropics while the network loses to MSNBC in the demo the night of the SOTU and gives FTVLive more publicity in one day than it’s gotten in a year…

Nearly 100 honchos at the ratings-challenged cable network jetted off to the Bahamas for some fun in the sun this week - much to the chagrin of other CNN rank and file who were left behind. TV gossip site FTVLive.com reports that among those hitting the beaches at the exclusive Atlantis resort on Paradise Island are Jim Walton, president of CNN Worldwide, and Jon Klein, president of CNN/U.S.

But the timing couldn’t be worse. As the CNN elite splashed in the blue-green sea and relaxed in 84-degree sunshine, the network suffered a jolting third-place finish among cable-news channels in its coverage of President Bush’s State of the Union address. While Fox News was way out in front in the crucial age 25-54 demographic with 1.17 million viewers, the usually last-place MSNBC was second in the category with 751,000 viewers, followed by CNN’s 668,000.

Marketwatch’s Jon Friedman thinks the Bartiromo/Citigroup plane scandal has damaged CNBC’s credibility and blasts the network for its head in the sand approach to covering the story…

This saga goes beyond being titillating gossip. This is news. It encompasses a shake-up at one of America’s most important companies, business and journalism ethics — as well as, ultimately, CNBC’s credibility and image.

Apparently, CNBC’s damage-control strategy is to hope that this unwanted intrusion will play itself out and simply go away. The network may not be so lucky, in this age of blogs.

Anyway, CNBC bills itself as The Worldwide Leader in Business News. Bartiromo is a legitimate TV star. Those two factors alone make the story worthwhile and compel CNBC to report on it.

The New York Times’ Geraldine Fabrikant writes about the latest news from the Maria Bartiromo Citigroup plane scandal. I can call it a scandal now because twice in one week The Times and the WSJ have written about this story.

According to one of last year’s guests at Davos, Ms. Bartiromo made the trip back to the United States on the Citigroup private jet on that occasion as well. She appeared at a Citigroup-sponsored awards event in London in 2005, as co-host of the event with another CNBC anchor, Simon Hobbs. Mr. Thomson represented Citigroup at the event.

One executive representing CNBC said that Ms. Bartiromo had made “no more than two” trips on the Citigroup jet. CNBC executives would not agree to be quoted by name because they said they did want to be seen as adding anything to what they considered an illegitimate inquiry.

CNBC also denied that Ms. Bartiromo had involvement with Citigroup more so than other businesses. In its statement, CNBC said, “In 2006 alone, she made 46 public appearances on behalf of CNBC.”