What happened to CNN last night? Paula Zahn Now: 378,000 and Larry King Live: 638,000 (less than the 7pm Situation Room)…

Cable News Ratings for May 16, 2007

P2+ Total Day
FNC – 801,000 viewers
CNN – 438,000 viewers
MSNBC – 264,000 viewers
CNBC – 186,000 viewers
HLN – 225,000 viewers

P2+ Prime Time
FNC – 1,624,000 viewers
CNN – 574,000 viewers
MSNBC – 468,000 viewers
CNBC – 239,000 viewers
HLN – 380,000 viewers

25-54 Total Day
FNC – 219,000 viewers
CNN – 140,000 viewers
MSNBC – 96,000 viewers
CNBC – 57,000 viewers
HLN – 90,000 viewers

25-54 Prime Time
FNC – 393,000 viewers
CNN – 180,000 viewers
MSNBC – 175,000 viewers
CNBC – 78,000 viewers
HLN – 129,000 viewers

Morning programs P2+ (25-54)
FOX & Friends – 804,000 viewers (324,000)
American Morning – 398,000 viewers (136,000)
MSNBC Live (7-9 AM) – 255,000 viewers (60,000)
Robin & Co. – 200,000 viewers (75,000)
(more…)

The New York Times’ Stuart Elliot chronicles the latest news in the struggle to account for DVR and other time delayed usage in the TV ratings system, and agreemen on “Live+3″…

Nielsen Media Research, the ratings arbiter, measures viewership through methods ranging from live through live plus seven days, counting playback within a week of recording. Under the standard of live plus three, the broadcasters and advertisers are agreeing to count viewers who watch a show live or within 72 hours of its original appearance.

Recently, the networks wanted to adopt the live-plus-seven standard. The advertisers wanted the live standard because, they contended, many commercials have limited shelf lives — like spots that promote a movie opening on a certain weekend or a sale that lasts just 24 hours.

The compromise on live plus three was discussed yesterday by executives of CBS at a news conference to introduce their prime-time schedule for 2007-8. Executives at ABC, who presented their schedule on Tuesday, also said they believed that live plus three would become the common currency for upfront negotiations.

Senator Barack Obama was interviewed by David Gregory on MSNBC this morning. Transcript follows (apologies in advance for the bad formatting…

DAVID GREGORY: Coming up a little bit later Jerry Seinfeld and Chris
Rock from Cannes, France. But we’re very pleased right now to have
Senator Barack Obama, candidate for president of the United States and
the senator from Illinois, joining us by phone.

Senator Obama, good morning.

SEN. BARACK OBAMA: David, I’m a poor substitute for Chris Rock and Jerry
Seinfeld from Cannes.
(more…)

MSNBC’s release on Tamron Hall’s hiring…

Tamron Hall joins MSNBC as dayside anchor and reporter. The announcement was made today by MSNBC General Manager Dan Abrams. Hall will begin at MSNBC this summer.

Prior to joining MSNBC, Hall spent 10 years at WFLD in Chicago. Most recently, she was the host of the three-hour “Fox News in the Morning” program. Hall began at WFLD as a general assignment reporter and was promoted to consumer reporter and fill-in anchor in 1999. Beginning in 2000, Hall began anchoring the weekday mornings and in 2001 took on the role as noon anchor. Before joining WFLD, Hall spent four years as a general assignment reporter at KTVT in Dallas. She began her broadcasting career at KBTX in Bryan, Texas as a general assignment reporter.

The Chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus, Rep. Bennie Thompson, wrote a letter that was published in today’s edition of The Hill regarding the CBC Institute debate with FNC.

As chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus Political Education and Leadership Institute, I feel compelled to set the record straight on certain misleading statements and misperceptions noted in The Hill’s April 25 article, “CBC is split over quitting debate on Fox.”

This article stated, “Members of the CBC are pushing their leadership to withdraw from an agreement with Fox News to sponsor a Democratic presidential primary debate on Sept. 23 in Detroit.” This statement is inaccurate in that there is no agreement between the CBC members and Fox News. The CBC institute plans, sponsors and manages these debates. The institute has not been approached by any member of the CBC requesting it to withdraw from the debates on Fox.
____________________

The article noted there were liberal activist groups objecting to a Fox News telecast of the debates, citing Fox’s conservative bias as their primary concern. We understand their position and are sympathetic to their concerns. Our response to that concern is that, as the debate sponsor, the CBC institute will control, and be responsible for all critical decisions pertaining to the debate format, including the journalists invited to serve as moderators, the panel of questioners and other pertinent matters (for example, the airing of commercials during the broadcast).

GretaWire talks about the Democratic Presidential candidates ducking FNC’s debate…

I thought — what a great opportunity for one of the candidates. If I were running for president on the Democratic ticket, I would pick up the phone and call the head of FOX and say, “I am not afraid of you, your network or your questions. I want tough questions, even from those with whom I think I might disagree. If a president can’t take questions from those with whom you disagree, can you take them from North Korea? When I am president, I am going to represent ALL Americans — I am even going to represent those with whom I might have some disagreements. So, have at it! Pick a date, pick your interrogators… and I will be there!”

Can you imagine being the sole candidate to show up and stand behind the podium for 90 minutes taking the questions? No campaign could afford such great advertising!

As mentioned in this item from yesterday, the authors of this study respond to Bill O’Reilly in the L.A. Times…

At the risk of sounding like dry academics, here is unspun information in response to the May 10 Blowback piece by Ron Mitchell (senior producer, The O’Reilly Factor).

Mr. Mitchell accuses us of methodological bias. Ironically, the procedures we used for the study are scientific practices to guard against the bias that Mr. Mitchell is so concerned about. Perhaps it will ease his concern to know that prior to publication, the study went through two rounds of anonymous peer review, passing rigorous inspection from the social science community.

The mischaracterization of how we counted name-calling could be cleared up by reading the study [pdf]. We did not count “liberal, conservative, centrist” as name-calling unless they were linked to a derogatory qualifier. O’Reilly’s reference to “kool-aid left” is an example of what we counted as name-calling. Or is the reference to folks of a particular political persuasion as a cult on a suicide mission fair and balanced reporting?

The Caucus Blog’s Adam Nagourney blogs about Rudi Giuliani calling on Democrats to debate on FNC…

“The Democrats should debate on Fox,” Mr. Giuliani said in an interview. “I think they would get a good chance to explain themselves. If the Republicans candidates are willing to debate on MSNBC and CNN, the Democrats should be willing to debate on Fox. I don’t think they’d want us to look like the bolder group of candidates.”

Fortune’s Tim Arango writes about the costs of doing Fox Business Channel and why acquiring Dow Jones would be a boon to the channel…

While News Corp. envisions leveraging the Wall Street Journal brand and journalism to buttress the new cable network, how much they would be able to combine the two entities is something News Corp. lawyers and executives are debating. Dow Jones and CNBC currently have a deal in place through 2012 in which CNBC pays an undisclosed fee for access to Dow Jones’ content and its reporters for on-air commentary. That deal is exclusive - meaning, for example, that Journal reporters cannot appear on another business network.

News Corp insiders believe they could use the Wall Street Journal name for the new channel, but acknowledge they probably wouldn’t be able to have Journal reporters appear on air until the deal expires in 2012.

Beyond that, the CNBC/Wall Street Journal deal has significant wiggle room for News Corp, according to a source who was involved in negotiating the pact. “There’s no real bite in terms of how much resources The Wall Street Journal has to contribute,” said this person. “Murdoch couldn’t take those resources and devote them to his own franchise but he could wean them from CNBC. He could create deadlocks for Dow Jones and CNBC.”

The Chicago Tribune’s Phil Rosenthal writes that MSNBC will announce today that Tamron Hall will join MSNBC as a daytime anchor. Well, MSNBC already has more anchors that it knows what to do with based on the current rotation so this begs the question: who is leaving? Or perhaps Hall is going to fill the void on Early Today/First Look that was created by the departure of Kristine Johnson last year? Since Johnson departed, MSNBC/NBC has had an inconsistent rotation where one anchor would anchor Monday and Tuesday and another Wednesday through Friday.

MSNBC plans to announce Thursday that WFLD-Ch. 32 morning news reader Tamron Hall is joining the cable network this summer as a day-side anchor.

Her exact MSNBC shift has yet to be determined, but her last day at Channel 32 will be June 22.

The LA Times Opinion LA’s Tim Cavanaugh blogs about the latest volley between the paper and The Factor…

Fox News Channel’s no-spinmeister Bill O’Reilly continues his Diana Ross-level hissy fit over Rosa Brooks’ recent column “Sweet Jesus I love Bill O’Reilly!” You’ll recall that we generously afforded Wild Bill’s producer an opportunity to respond to Brooks’ column, but the powerful elite-media insider fumed that our forum was too small to contain the kind of Rumpelstiltskin rages that have made him a superstar. Now O’Reilly puts the ad in ad nauseam by, um, raging about it again: