Tonight on Countdown Keith Olbermann responded to last night’s Factor “expose”. It’s not worth reciting except that instead of doing a rebuttal to O’Reilly’s silly assertion Arkin’s Post article ties to NBC News’ alleged leftward bent, Olbermann trotted out the “O’Reilly defended Nazis” retort again which in my opinion holds about as much water as O’Reilly’s NBC “expose”; not much.

John Gibson did a segment on Jeff Zucker’s promotion to the head of NBC Universal today on The Big Story. I thought the segment was pretty even handed. Then Gibson returned to Zucker with his “My Word” opinion piece which was less so.

I’ve said here a few times that I don’t think the Peacock Network is playing by its own rule book, and as far as I know, the rule book hasn’t changed.

At the Peacock, the network news operation is not supposed to do a few things: stage the news, manipulate the news, use the news to make personal attacks, or use the network’s newscasts to advance personal political positions. So when that has happened in the past, many of us veterans of NBC have assumed it must have been Zucker’s predecessor’s decision to let those things happen, a guy named Bob Wright.

Part of the problem is illustrated by the controversy over NBC military analyst Bill Arkin, who wrote a piece on washingtonpost.com that criticized American soldiers for objecting to the debate in the Senate about a resolution supporting the troop surge in Iraq.

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Hannity & Colmes, aided by Rudolph Giuliani’s appearance, had a strong night for FNC as did The O’Reilly Factor. MSNBC beat CNN in the Demo with a sub hosted Countdown beating Paula Zahn Now. But both networks got trounced by FNC in the Demo.

Cable News Daily Ratings for February 5, 2007

P2+ Total Day
FNC – 900,000 viewers
CNN – 455,000 viewers
MSNBC – 280,000 viewers
CNBC – 237,000 viewers
HLN – 211,000 viewers

P2+ Prime Time
FNC – 1,993,000 viewers
CNN – 570,000 viewers
MSNBC – 483,000 viewers
CNBC – 149,000 viewers
HLN – 360,000 viewers

25-54 Total Day
FNC – 283,000 viewers
CNN –173,000 viewers
MSNBC – 108,000 viewers
CNBC – 75,000 viewers
HLN – 92,000 viewers

25-54 Prime Time
FNC – 506,000 viewers
CNN – 177,000 viewers
MSNBC – 181,000 viewers
CNBC – a scratch with 46,000 viewers
HLN – 154,000 viewers

Morning programs P2+ (25-54)
FOX & Friends – 709,000 viewers (281,000)
American Morning –417,000 viewers (239,000)
Imus in the Morning– 375,000 viewers (114,000)
Robin & Co. – 185,000 viewers (97,000)
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FishbowlNY’s readers have spoken.

The Hollywood Reporter’s Alex Woodson writes about CNN’s web traffic last year…(via TVNewser)

CNN.com had the highest average monthly share among online news sites in 2006, according to Turner research utilizing Nielsen//NetRatings data. The Turner-owned Web portal finished with 15% of online news usage, beating out Yahoo! News (13%) and MSNBC (10%). AOL News finished with a 6% usage share, and the Fox News Digital Network rounded out the top six with 4%.

FNC’s new late night/Early Morning program (depending on which coast you live on) “Red Eye” premiered last night/this morning. Johnny Dollar has some clips. What did you think of the show?

Cable News Ratings for February 3, 2007

P2+ Total Day
FNC – 818,000 viewers
CNN – 535,000 viewers
MSNBC – 315,000 viewers
CNBC – 278,000 viewers
HLN – 272,000 viewers

P2+ Prime Time
FNC – 1,042,000 viewers
CNN – 485,000 viewers
MSNBC – 323,000 viewers
CNBC – 354,000 viewers
HLN – 189,000 viewers

25-54 Total Day
FNC – 265,000 viewers
CNN – 203,000 viewers
MSNBC – 133,000 viewers
CNBC – 129,000 viewers
HLN – 114,000 viewers

25-54 Prime Time
FNC – 287,000 viewers
CNN – 148,000 viewers
MSNBC – 157,000 viewers
CNBC – 157,000 viewers
HLN – 108,000 viewers

Cable News Ratings for February 4, 2007
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Bill O’Reilly held something back from his latest attack against NBC this morning on the Radio Factor. Tonight on The O’Reilly Factor, he in fact escalated it on two counts. First he added Steve Capus to Jeff Zucker and Bob Wright as the ones behind all this…

As you know Talking Points believes NBC News has taken a sharp turn to the left. It is a business decision made by three men; NBC Universal executives Robert Wright, Jeff Zucker, and Steve Capus. With their approval, elements at NBC News (Olbermann - Spud) spew out far left propoganda on a daily basis and direct vicious personal attacks on people with whom they disagree (O’Reilly - Spud). Wright, Zucker, and Capus believe this is a responsible way to run a news division but students of journalism know this kind of garbage is unprecedented at the network level.

Hmmmm…it was just Wright and Zucker last week allowing elements at NBC News to run amock but whatever…

The second prong of the new attack was aimed at GE CEO Jeffery Immelt.

Now there’s no point in confronting the NBC News people about this, they’re in too deep. They will not change course because that would expose them. But NBC’s parent company General Electric makes billions of dollars off of government contracts including military work. Its CEO Jefferey Immelt is aware of the Arkin problem and the tone of NBC News in general. It is Immelt who is responsible for this debacle because he has the power to change it.

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NBC News, General Electric, and the Washington Post will be forever tainted by this situation. Like William Arkin, they can run but they can’t hide. Enough is enough. All Americans…all Americans…should condemn this.

They may get around to it once they finish laughing at O’Reilly for turning a serious issue deserving discussion (Arkin’s views on the military) into comedy relief with this undeserved broadside at NBC and GE. I have no doubt O’Reilly is genuinely pissed at Arkin. You could see it in his face and hear it in his voice. He should stick to criticizing Arkin, where he’s on solid ground in my opinion, and drop the ludicrous NBC/GE angle as it’s a non-sequitur. The Washington Post, on the other hand, has questions to answer regarding what it allows on its website.