While going through my Tivo’s footage from today’s news I was going through Your World and up popped Bill O’Reilly to talk about Paris Hilton. Neil Cavuto changed the subject to John Edwards and O’Reilly went through the reasons he thinks Edwards is a phony. This included O’Reilly repeating the story of how a Factor crew interviewed people at a trailer park across the street from the Edwards’ house/mansion/whatever. That got my attention big time when I heard that since that story has been discredited because there is no trailer park across the street from the Edwards’ house/mansion/whatever.

So O’Reilly repeated a story that is factually incorrect. I have to wonder why he did that. Surely someone at FNC must have informed him the original story was not accurate. Surely he must know the story as he has told it is incorrect. So why repeat it? I also wonder if anyone will pick up on this and ding him again for it?

MSNBC will air a Paris Hilton special at 9pm. Dan Abrams is supposedly going to anchor it.

The Fox Report is talking about Paris Hilton. CNN’s Situation Room has Miles O’Brien talking about a possible Shuttle launch delay due to weather issues in Europe. This was followed by a report on the news out of the Defense Department’s changes with Peter Pace leaving the Joint Chiefs. MSNBC is airing Hardball but the lead story is Paris Hilton (unless they managed to squeeze in the Gates/Pace news in the first couple of minutes).

Fox and Friends had a big morning. Over 1,000,000 Total Viewers and a Demo that beat Amercian Morning’s Total Viewers.

Cable News Ratings for June 7, 2007

P2+ Total Day
FNC – 1,004,000 viewers
CNN – 516,000 viewers
MSNBC – 282,000 viewers
CNBC – 207,000 viewers
HLN – 267,000 viewers

P2+ Prime Time
FNC – 1,896,000 viewers
CNN – 914,000 viewers
MSNBC – 540,000 viewers
CNBC –284,000 viewers
HLN – 589,000 viewers

25-54 Total Day
FNC – 299,000 viewers
CNN – 182,000 viewers
MSNBC – 99,000 viewers
CNBC – 85,000 viewers
HLN – 108,000 viewers

25-54 Prime Time
FNC – 412,000 viewers
CNN – 305,000 viewers
MSNBC – 155,000 viewers
CNBC – 122,000 viewers
HLN – 224,000 viewers

Morning programs P2+ (25-54)
FOX & Friends – 1,115,000 viewers (452,000)
American Morning –416,000 viewers (133,000)
MSNBC Live (7-9 AM) – 174,000 viewers (53,000)
Robin & Co. –188,000 viewers (72,000)
(more…)

Johnny Dollar has a greatest hits package from FNC’s Shepard Smith on the Paris Hilton mess…

I was at work and blissfully ignorant of what was unfolding in today’s Paris hystrionics until I got an email saying Paris was ordered back to court instead of phoning it in. Then I started paying attention like everyone else. I fear that for the first time in 12 years we’re really on the verge of “OJ territory” with this story. Post your impressions of the highs lows and the lows, the best worst and the worst of the coverage for this very important stupid and necessary gratuitous saga here…

12:45pm Snapshot: CNN International, HLN, MSNBC…all waiting for Paris to leave. Echostar is screwing up the FNC channel so I can’t tell what’s going on there.

Meanwhile - back in the real world - MSNBC.com’s website is posting a breaking news banner that Secretary of Defense Robert Gates is replacing Joint Chiefs Chaiman Peter Pace. MSNBC TV broke the story at 12:30pm. Which story is more important for us as a country? Paris waiting for the Sheriff to come take her to court? Or the head military man being replaced with our troops in harm’s way?

I’ll get off my soapbox now and back to work…

UPDATE: To their credit CNN, FNC, and MSNBC all jumped to Gates’ announcement that he was replacing Pace. MSNBC was a tad late to it as Dan Abrams was giving Paris Hilton analysis. Update to this: ICN hears there was a technical issue that prevented MSNBC from going to the start of the presser. The delay had nothing to do with Abrams talking about Hilton.

UPDATE 2: After the presser ended, all three channels went to their military analysts/pentagon correspondents. But while this was going on the Paris “perp walk” to the car happened. This resulted in a hilarious moment on MSNBC when military analyst Rick Francona was being interviewed by Contessa Brewer inside MSNBC’s studios, but not in the main studio, and someone yelled out something in the background, about Hilton presumably, and that stopped Francona dead in his tracks and he turned his head. Brewer immediately cut off the interview and they went to a chopper shot of Hilton being taken to the Sheriff’s car. Both FNC and CNN missed the perp walk live as they were still talking about the Gates presser. FNC went to Hilton next and then CNN followed suit with Betty Nguyen literally cutting off Barbara Starr.

UPDATE 3: I was going to post it when I got home but Oliver Willis beat me to it. Here’s the video of the commotion at MSNBC during the Francona interview (bottom video)…

Forbes’ James Brady gets Roger Ailes to talk a bit about Fox Business Channel while at the Eric Briendel Journalism Awards…

I asked Ailes if he would also be heading the new Fox business news channel. “I’ll be in overall charge, but we hired a guy named McGee to run it. He was at CNBC, among other places. So if it succeeds, I’ll take the credit, and if it doesn’t, we can blame McGee.”

BusinessWeek’s Tim Catts writes about the controversies and problems that beset CNBC’s Portfolio Challenge…(via TVNewser)

The top traders are reluctant to discuss their performance. Four of the top five performers declined to discuss their trading in detail with BusinessWeek, and the fifth could not be located for comment. “I don’t want to jeopardize anything by saying something stupid,” says Joe Dondero, who was fourth in the standings on the last day for which results have been made public.

How could traders exploit CNBC’s glitch? According to several participants, the technique was relatively simple, but not obvious to all participants. A trader could go to the CNBC Web site and select a number of stocks to buy, but hold off on executing those trades. If you made the selection before the close of regular trading at 4 p.m. EST and left your Web browser open, you could execute those trades after hours and still receive the 4 p.m. closing price. For example, if a company whose stock closed at $20 a share rose to $25 in after-hours trading, you could buy the stock at $20, even though it was already worth 25% more (see BusinessWeek.com, 6/8/07, Slide Show: “How to Game CNBC’s Stocks Contest”).

The allegation is that certain traders may have used the technique with companies that were reporting earnings and other important news after the market’s close. They could select as many as 50 stocks and then execute trades for only the one or two best performers.

The Atlanta Journal Constitution’s Scott Leith writes about the rise in viewer submitted videos and the increasing emphasis networks are putting on them…

Susan Bunda, senior vice president of news for CNN/U.S., believes user-generated material will become more important for CNN. “I see growth opportunities,” she said. “I see great ideas.”

While regular folks have provided tapes and photos to news outfits for years, the latest developments are raising the bar. The trend, as with CNN and Fox, is to actively solicit help covering the news.

________________

Like CNN, Fox wants to take advantage of user-generated content. Fox’s uReport launched in March but wasn’t widely promoted until this week.

Suzanne Scott, network executive producer, said Fox hasn’t yet received any blockbuster submissions. But, over time, she hopes uReport will help Fox get a gem. “We want to be in that game,” Scott said.

CNN’s American Morning anchor Kiran Chetry is the cover story of the June 15th edition of East West Magazine. No online link to the article is available at the moment however…