TV Week is doing a special feature in conjunction with its 25th anniversary. It’s looking at the 25 people and shows that inspired them. Although the TV best has a big caveat in that it’s only selecting people who are still living, FNC’s Roger Ailes, and News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch made the people list. For the 25 cable shows that stand out, CNN’s Larry King Live and FNC’s The O’Reilly Factor both made the cut.

For those who watched it, what did you think of Jim Cramer’s appearance this morning from 6-9 on MSNBC?

Cable News Ratings for May 18, 2007

P2+ Total Day
FNC – 746,000 viewers
CNN – 387,000 viewers
MSNBC – 287,000 viewers
CNBC – 170,000 viewers
HLN – 210,000 viewers

P2+ Prime Time
FNC – 1,353,000 viewers
CNN – 504,000 viewers
MSNBC – 448,000 viewers
CNBC – 144,000 viewers
HLN – 268,000 viewers

25-54 Total Day
FNC – 204,000 viewers
CNN – 124,000 viewers
MSNBC – 98,000 viewers
CNBC – a scratch with 48,000 viewers
HLN – 82,000 viewers

25-54 Prime Time
FNC – 289,000 viewers
CNN – 132,000 viewers
MSNBC – 122,000 viewers
CNBC – 53,000 viewers
HLN – 79,000 viewers

Morning programs P2+ (25-54)
FOX & Friends – 799,000 viewers (342,000)
American Morning – 373,000 viewers (131,000)
MSNBC Live (7-9 AM) – 261,000 viewers (83,000)
Robin & Co. – 222,000 viewers (100,000)
(more…)

Though there’s been a lot of news and noise made by some Democratic presidential candiates apparently opting not to appear at the CBC Institute/FNC debate, not all Democratic Presidential candidates are acting like they’re taking a hands off approach to FNC. In a taped interview that aired today on FNC, New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson gave access on the campaign trail to the network and discussed his qualifications for the job

I’m the only candidate that’s actually negotiated with other countries, the North Koreans, Iraq and in Latin America at the United Nations. I’m the only one with executive experience. I have to balance budgets. I’ve done it four times as governor.

GretaWire blogs about the show airing from the Reagan Library tomorrow and Wednesday…

Tomorrow we will be at the Reagan Library in California. We are interviewing historian Doug Brinkley at the Reagan Library because his new book — “President Reagan’s Diary” — comes out today. Mrs. Reagan personally selected Doug to go through the president’s diary and edit it for a book. Doug has written extensively about presidents (he also wrote a thorough book about Katrina. Doug was living in New Orleans when she struck.) I have a copy of the new book and it is fascinating. I don’t think there is anyone better at this than Doug (and yes, he is a friend.)

On Wednesday at the library we have another special interview scheduled… can you guess who? (And no, it is not Mrs. Reagan.)

For the past few weeks my father has been in and out of the hospital emergency room. He’s 79 and he appears to be going through a rapid decline in general. This afternoon another incident happened and he’s in the Emergency room again. When something like this happens, obviously I drop everything until things have stabilized. This of course includes blogging. The blog has been lucky in that the previous incidents have all occurred on the weekend. Today it didn’t. I suspect there will be future events like this until the “inevitable” happens. So if you see the blog stop during a weekday for no reason, that’s probably the reason (this shouldn’t be confused with my blog weekend announcements saying “blogging resumes late Sunday night”. That’s me finding a life). It’ll come alive again eventually and I’ll have to play catch up. Thank you for your consideration…

The Gothamit’s Toby von Meistersinger has an interview with former Dayside host and current syndicated morning man Mike Jerrick…

Were you in the running to replace Chris Gallus over at channel 5?

That really never came up. I would have done it because I love Jodi Applegate and again I like local television. That is a great station and I really like Good Day New York the show itself for all the reasons I just gave you. But this, Roger Ailes, my boss here, had this syndicated show idea in place before Chris ever made his move back to Canada, so it never came up.

You mention Roger Ailes. You were on America’s Talking was that how you met him?

That is how I met him.

In 1994 they decided to put together a cable network of nothing but talk. 24 hours of talk, one talk show the other another. I think he had three months to slam it together, so he looked at thousands of tapes. He saw mine and said, “I’d like to talk to that guy.” Put a meeting together and in the in the first five minutes I though this would work. So that is where I got to know him. I think it was in April of ’94 and I have know him ever since. And he even mentioned back then in 1994 that he imagined me having a morning talk show. So it took this long to get it done, but it never left his mind is the way he tells it.

Johnny Dollar has the audio from this morning’s Brian and the Judge radio show where Andres Napolitano recounts a recent encounter with Stephen Colbert…

Check out this from Page Six…

The LMU event, hosted by Fidler, drew an eye-popping array of celebrity lawyers, including Tom Mesereau (who repped Michael Jackson), Mark Geragos (for Scott Peterson) and Harland Braun (for Robert Blake) - and they all gleefully took shots at past enemies, The Post’s David K. Li reports.

Of TV legal pundits, Mesereau said: “There are some very professional legal analysts out there - but there are also some absolute monstrosities like Nancy Dis-Grace.”

Geragos also whacked Grace, calling her a “yapping, bleached blonde former prosecutor on Court TV.” He went on to remark on the undue influence of Fox’s Greta Van Susteren on high-profile cases: “Our favorite expression coming in the morning before the judge was, WWGS - ‘What would Greta say?’ No matter what the ruling was the night before, whatever Greta would say that night, we’d have to revisit that ruling if she didn’t agree.”

Variety’s Michael Learmonth writes about the latest angles in the DVR ratings controversy…

NBC U research prexy Alan Wurtzel calls the live plus three a “reasonable compromise.” “It covers about 85% of all viewing in a week, it gives the networks the ability to capture timeshifted viewing and it covers a reasonable marketing window,” he said.

While advertisers and the networks appear to be on the same page in terms of the 72-hour window, where it gets complicated is the CPM rates the advertisers will pay after the live airing. The value of some time-sensitive ads, such as for the opening of a film or promoting weekend retail, diminish rapidly after the initial airing, but creating different standards for each campaign would be enormously complex.

Nielsen will begin releasing commercial ratings to clients on May 31, including ratings back to the beginning of the month. “I think commercial ratings for the broadcast nets is a fait accompli,” said Jack Myers, editor of the Myers Report. “The buyers have drawn a line in the sand on commercial ratings and the networks have drawn a line on ‘live plus three.’”

MSNBC’s Norah O’Donnell has given birth to her twins Grace and Henry… (via FishbowlDC)