Cable News Daily Ratings for March 5, 2007

P2+ Total Day
FNC – 905,000 viewers
CNN – 538,000 viewers
MSNBC – 295,000 viewers
CNBC – 278,000 viewers
HLN – 242,000 viewers

P2+ Prime Time
FNC – 1,852,000 viewers
CNN – 864,000 viewers
MSNBC – 474,000 viewers
CNBC – 147,000 viewers
HLN – 385,000 viewers

25-54 Total Day
FNC – 297,000 viewers
CNN – 198,000 viewers
MSNBC – 118,000 viewers
CNBC – 118,000 viewers
HLN – 114,000 viewers

25-54 Prime Time
FNC – 466,000 viewers
CNN – 263,000 viewers
MSNBC – 155,000 viewers
CNBC – 69,000 viewers
HLN – 161,000 viewers

Morning programs P2+ (25-54)
FOX & Friends – 752,000 viewers (283,000)
American Morning – 392,000 viewers (184,000)
Imus in the Morning– 330,000 viewers (126,000)
Robin & Co. – 211,000 viewers (111,000)
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CNN’s Ed Henry broke the news this morning that Bob Dole and Donna Shalala would head a Presidential Commission on troop and military veteran’s health care. Transcript follows…

COLLINS: We want to pull up our Ed Henry, who has some information about the commission that will be heading up an investigation into the conditions at Walter Reed medical facility. Ed, can you hear me?

ED HENRY, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: That’s right. Good morning, Heidi.

CNN has just learned from a senior administration official that the president this morning, about an hour and a half, will announce that Bob Dole, the former Republican Senate leader, and Democrat Donna Shalala of the Clinton administration will co-chair this new commission that the president revealed on Saturday. He announced that it would be formed. They will be investigating the abuses at Walter Reed, other Army, as well as veterans hospitals all around the nation.

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ABC’s Bob Woodruff will be Greta’s guest tonight 10 pm…

Everyone is trying to get a name for the post Libby verdict analysis tonight. MSNBC had a lower third up for a long time during coverage this afternoon noting that Joe Wilson will be on Countdown tonight. TVNewser notes that Wilson will also be on Larry King and AC 360 tonight.

UPDATTE: King has a lot more than Wilson according to FishbowlDC which got the guest list…

Chris Matthews weighs in with a blog entry on the verdicts.

Heidi Collins and T.J. Holmes talked with Jeffrey Toobin abuot a Presidential pardon for Libby…

HOLMES: You’re telling me essentially he just needs to hold on in hopes of getting that pardon? He can actually stretch this thing out? And do we have any reason to think certainly the president will give him that pardon?

TOOBIN: Well, we don’t know. His father, the first President Bush, pardoned several people involved in the Iran-Contra affair during the lame duck period, 1992, before President Clinton was inaugurated in January 1993. President Clinton issued a number of very controversial pardons, including of the fugitive Marc Rich, during that period after the Gore-Bush election and before he left office in 2001.

So certainly that timing is going to be very important. And even today … we heard that [defense attorney] Ted Wells was trying to delay the sentencing past June. So running down the clock is going to be a big strategy fo the defense here. .

Brian Kilmeade blogs about the contest to be a guest host on Fox and Friends. He also notes how things had been the past couple of days with Page Hopkins subbing for a vacationing Gretchen Carlson. I haven’t seen today’s show yet (Tivo’d it. I’m on the west coast after all). But if it was anything like yesterday’s…Kilmeade also gets a plug in for his new book.

It was also Day 2 of our Breakfast With “FOX & Friends” Sweepstakes — your chance to win a trip appear on our show and win a cutting edge phone that has MobiTV. Just sign on at www.foxandfriends.com — I truly hope you win.

Page Hopkins did a wonderful job filling in for the great Gretchen Carlson and, in a fun way, we found out waaaay too much about her. Something about our set I guess makes you more comfortable talking about your personal likes/dislikes. Short description: She was a lot of fun and at one point jumped on my lap.

Final note: My new book, “It’s How You Play the Game: The Powerful Sports Moments That Taught Lasting Values to America’s Finest,” is due out May 1. If you’d like to pre-order a signed copy please go to www.briankilmeade.com and make it happen. It’s a book that I hope helps kids, parents and players at all levels acquire values and ethics by using pros, grassroots greats, hall of famers and historic figures’ experiences in sports.

CNN announced this morning that it will premiere “CNN: Special Investigations Unit - Grady’s Anatomy” with on Saturday March 24th at 8pm ET…

The experiences of Dr. John Carter on E.R. and Dr. McDreamy on Grey’s Anatomy might make for fascinating television drama, but the lives of actual young doctors are even more exciting. The personal dramas and life-saving work of medical residents are the subjects of a new documentary, CNN: Special Investigations Unit – Grady’s Anatomy, which will premiere on Saturday, March 24, and Sunday, March 25, at 8 p.m. and 11p.m. All times Eastern.

More than 900 medical residents practice at Grady Memorial Hospital, one of the busiest Level 1 trauma hospitals in the Southeast. Based in the bustling southern city of Atlanta, Grady offers non-stop action, and physicians-in-training have to be prepared for almost anything.

Four Grady residents – and CNN’s Dr. Sanjay Gupta – allowed CNN to shadow them as they juggled their professional and personal lives. An experienced attending neurosurgeon at Grady, Gupta also serves as CNN’s chief medical correspondent, reporting from conflict zones and natural disasters around the world. In an emergency situation, he once operated with a Black and Decker drill while reporting from the battlefront in Iraq.
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Johnny Dollar has the video of Judge Andrew Napolitano discussing the possibility of a new trial for Scooter Libby…

Cable News Ratings for March 3, 2007

P2+ Total Day
FNC –733,000 viewers
CNN – 487,000 viewers
MSNBC – 334,000 viewers
CNBC – 351,000 viewers
HLN – 292,000 viewers

P2+ Prime Time
FNC – 932,000 viewers
CNN – 506,000 viewers
MSNBC – 398,000 viewers
CNBC – 480,000 viewers
HLN – 296,000 viewers

25-54 Total Day
FNC – 196,000 viewers
CNN – 191,000 viewers
MSNBC –127,000 viewers
CNBC – 147,000 viewers
HLN – 139,000 viewers

25-54 Prime Time
FNC – 176,000 viewers
CNN – 158,000 viewers
MSNBC – 143,000 viewers
CNBC – 186,000 viewers
HLN – 116,000 viewers

Cable News Ratings for March 4, 2007
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I was watching MSNBC when Chris Jansing interrupted a Ron Allen remote to break news that a verdict had been reached in the Scooter Libby trial. I jumped over to FNC and they were in the middle of a remote segment on this special US military video from Iraq that the network has been exclusively showing all day. After the segment ended, E.D. Hill noted the Libby trial news. CNN was in a commercial break during all of this. When it came out of the break Heidi Collins led with the story. So according to my reckoning, it was MSNBC first, FNC about a minute later, and CNN seconds after that.

UPDATE: MSNBC also ended up being first with the verdicts. MSNBC had Kelly O’Donnell stationed live outside the courthouse and had the verdicts relayed to her via an earpiece from a producer in the courtroom. CNN was next to have the verdicts. FNC was third.

UPDATE 2: MSNBC interrupted coverage briefly so that Jansing could anchor an NBC News special on the verdicts which lasted only a minute or two. Then Jansing returned to the story with Dan Abrams discussing the split verdict (4 out of 5 charges guilty). FNC had Catherine Herridge inside the courthouse and Jim Angle outside covering the story.

UPDATE 3: TVNewser notes that CourtTV beat MSNBC with the announcement that a verdict had been reached…

UPDATE 4: Break in times…
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In case anyone was wondering where Keith Olbermann was last night, well…it’s Spring Training. The Hartford Courant’s Jeff Goldberg has an Olbermann sighting in Florida as Olbermann was a dugout guest of Boston Red Sox Manager Terry Francona. MSNBC viewers might recognize that last name. Francona is the cousin of MSNBC military analyst Rick Francona.

Rick is a military analyst for NBC and a frequent guest on “Countdown With Keith Olbermann.” Which Francona is better on TV? “I’ve won more games,” Terry said. “He knows a little more about the Mideast. Probably him.”

USA Today’s Peter Johnson writes about the growth of “agenda reporting”…

After 9/11, Olbermann says, the mind-set within many news organizations was, ” ‘We’ve got to support the nation, we’re a vital part of the communications system, we can’t rock the boat.’ If you said ‘The government is screwing up,’ that was going to be seen as unpatriotic.”

Those days are gone, Olbermann says. “It ain’t the age of Aquarius, but I think we have a new liberation from ‘Oh, you can’t be too critical.’ ”