The Hollywood Reporter’s Andrew Wallenstein interviews NBC Universal President and CEO Jeff Zucker…

THR: Rupert Murdoch could acquire the Wall Street Journal. If he integrates that with Fox Business Channel, what does that mean for CNBC?

Zucker: If this were two years ago, I would be far more concerned. CNBC has transformed itself into a strong and thriving operation under Mark Hoffman’s leadership. We feel very comfortable with where CNBC is at today. We don’t take any new competitor lightly. We’re not going to make the same mistake CNN made when Fox News Channel came along a decade ago. We’ll be strong and aggressive and continue to prove what makes CNBC by far the leading financial news broadcaster in the world. With all due respect to the success that News Corp. has had in many different places, just because Rupert Murdoch wants to launch something, it doesn’t mean it’s an automatic success. I think there is a degree of irony that the company that broke the story that Rupert Murdoch wanted to buy Dow Jones was CNBC.

Big Head D.C. rains on the Mika parade for no apparent reason as far as I can tell…

The Politico’s Anne Schroeder blogs that Jacki Schechner’s contract at CNN wasn’t renewed…

MSNBC beat CNN in primetime Total Viewers and the Demo and also beat it in the Total Day Demo. MSNBC’s Dock Block came out big for the network with all three docs doing better than 600,00 viewers. Headline News beat CNN in the Primetime Demo as well. Morning Joe scratched in the Demo as did Prime News with Erica Hill (6pm hour).

Cable News Daily Ratings for July 27, 2007

P2+ Total Day
FNC – 817,000 viewers
CNN – 433,000 viewers
MSNBC – 327,000 viewers
CNBC – 241,000 viewers
HLN – 253,000 viewers

P2+ Prime Time
FNC – 1,341,000 viewers
CNN – 600,000 viewers
MSNBC – 627,000 viewers
CNBC – 215,000 viewers
HLN – 478,000 viewers

25-54 Total Day
FNC – 236,000 viewers
CNN –126,000 viewers
MSNBC – 131,000 viewers
CNBC – 82,000 viewers
HLN – 101,000 viewers

25-54 Prime Time
FNC – 266,000 viewers
CNN – 144,000 viewers
MSNBC – 278,000 viewers
CNBC – 75,000 viewers
HLN – 197,000 viewers

Morning programs P2+ (25-54)
FOX & Friends – 873,000 viewers (353,000)
American Morning – 306,000 viewers (131,000)
MSNBC Live (7-8am) – 155,000 viewers (a scratch with 44,000)
Robin & Co. – 233,000 viewers (113,000)
(more…)

Tonight on Special Report with Brit Hume, FNC’s Greg Palkot will interview Alastair Campbell, media and political advisor to former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair…

Campbell provides behind-the-scenes perspective on Blair and his relationship with President Bush on the eve of his book debut in the U.S. This exclusive interview also comes during the first visit by new British Prime Minister Gordon Brown to Camp David.

NBC announced this afternoon that it would collaborating with the New York Times for coverage of Campaign 2008…

The New York Times and NBC News/msnbc.com announced today that they will collaborate on coverage of the 2008 presidential election, drawing on both news organizations’ strengths in political journalism. Effective today, the two entities will work together to showcase each other’s journalism on their web sites, in video and in print, and to broaden and deepen their coverage of the campaign for viewers and readers.

As part of this collaboration:

–Msnbc.com will publish premium national political content from NYTimes.com on its award-winning website that reaches 28 million monthly unique users. (Source: Nielsen//NetRatings).

–The New York Times will have access to NBC News’ premium political video content for streaming and publishing on NYTimes.com.

–NBC News will have first access to breaking news and enterprise reporting from New York Times journalists on the campaign trail for all its on-air and online platforms.
(more…)

The New York Post’s Jamie Schram writes about the death of Eric Wishnie…

An award-winning NBC news producer who was married to correspondent Dawn Fratangelo was killed near his Manhattan home early this morning by a hit-and-run driver, police sources said.

Eric Wishnie, 45, a senior segment producer on “NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams” was found at the corner of 6th Avenue and 10th Street at 2:51 a.m.

UPDATE: The Post story is in error but it’s not The Post’s fault. WNBC says that Police now believe Wishnie fell off a roof…

The Louisiana Weekly’s Edmund W. Lewis interviews CNN’s T.J. Holmes regarding New Orleans…

“I don’t know what I was expecting,” he admitted. “I got pretty much the experience that a lot of the folks in the visitors’ bureau want visitors to get, which is that of a thriving New Orleans, and you do see that when you come down and just stick around in downtown New Orleans… That’s the impression you get and that’s the impression they admittedly want people to have. …Of course, people around the country see stories about the murder rate and crime in New Orleans, but they want the visitors to keep coming…That’s the experience that I got. I got very much what New Orleans officials want people to have, the image of a thriving New Orleans that is doing well and is safe.

“I didn’t go too much outside of downtown New Orleans,” he added. “I saw a couple of hard-hit areas that received damage from Katrina but I certainly didn’t go to some of the worst areas.

“I got the impression of a thriving city, a comeback city, a city that can handle guests, that can handle big events and is a party town.”

Back in Atlanta, Holmes joked about the Crescent City’s notoriously high summer temperatures last week. “Even the rain was hot,” he recalled. “Everything is hot. That threw me off. They say you all deal with it day in and day out, but a shower will move in and go away and the wind and rain are going sideways. That threw me off, how the showers could come in and go (so quickly). …It’s some strange stuff going on down there in New Orleans weather-wise.”

Eat The Press’ Rachel Sklar forced herself to sit through it so you didn’t have to…

The New York Times’ Adam Nagourney writes about the CNN/YouTube Democratic debate…

Here is what you missed watching it on television, starting with some fluff.

Anderson Cooper is taller than he looks on television. He also was wearing a much nicer suit than any of the men on stage who wanted to be president. (If you are now looking for some carping about Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton’s fashion sense, you have come to the wrong place: turn the page or click the link, or whatever it is one needs to do these days to move on.) Mr. Cooper is also rather funny, in a droll sort of way, as was clear during the moments he bantered with the audience in those expectant moments leading up to the debate.

“We really have no idea if this is going to work,” he said.

“Take a deep breath!” someone yelled from the audience.

If you were wondering why the audience seemed so pumped, that is because the producers assigned someone to pump up the crowd. “Five minutes until we are live on the air!” he announced. It reminded me of what I saw many years ago – many, many years ago – while attending a taping of the Ed Sullivan Show in New York City.

Vantiy Fair’s Michael Wolff writes about the News Corp./Dow Jones saga (Note to Vanity Fair: Really bad Photoshop job guys)…

At News Corp., no one, to say the least, opposes Rupert. As a C.E.O. he’s an entirely sui generis figure—not a replaceable manager, not even an iconic entrepreneur, but more like a giver of life. For most of News Corp.’s history, Murdoch himself was the only power—the company was his instrument. And yet, quite naturally, as Murdoch grows older, and the company ever larger, it has become a more ordinary corporate enterprise. And, within it, it was suddenly possible to detect if not objections then questions about what in bloody hell Rupert was doing. What was the point—inviting all this bad press, this negativity and opprobrium? Why risk it? And for a declining business—and to pay almost twice the market value for a declining business? Was this really the best use of News Corp.’s time and capital?

Peter Chernin, the company’s president and C.O.O., a larger and larger figure within the company (and not, as a Murdoch insider recently explained to me, necessarily “a believer” in all things Murdoch), stayed remote from the deal, in fact was concerned primarily with a much larger transaction—a potential deal with Yahoo involving MySpace, which News Corp. owns, for as much as $10 billion. Nor was Roger Ailes, the powerful executive who runs Fox News, and who will direct the new cable business channel for which, presumably, Murdoch was buying the Journal, much involved. Even James Murdoch, Rupert’s 34-year-old son, who runs SkyTV in the U.K. (in this dynasty-fixated family, his brother, Lachlan, 36, and sister, Elisabeth, 39, while still deeply engaged in family business matters, had themselves both quit their jobs in their father’s company—to his chagrin), was getting a little testy about all the bad press.

Yesterday, Greta Van Susteren was in Iowa to experience the “Mitt-Mobile,” the campaign RV that is driven by the Romney sons to gain support for their dad’s bid for presidency. Greta interviewed the boys with behind-the-scenes access to the campaign that will air tonight during IOn The Record with Greta VanSusteren at 10 pm ET…

YouTube has footage from the interview…

AdAge’s Ken Wheaton blogs about MoveOn.org’s “campaign” against FNC…

Funnier still is that MoveOn, until now, has been unable to get much media coverage — unless one counts The Huffington Post and DailyKos as the sort of media that’s going to move the masses. Both of those, by the way, are part of this little coalition of speech police, so that’s kind of like getting recognized by your parents for a job well done.

Now the coalition, unable to accomplish much on a national level, has gotten media attention for declaring its intention to monitor local businesses that advertise on Fox News.

That will really hit Fox where it hurts.

Never mind the complexities of buying ads on cable TV — note to the coalition, local cable buys aren’t show specific so attacking Joe’s Deli for advertising on “O’Reilly” might be a little more than silly.

Gail Shister has an interview with Mika Brzezinski…

After her on-air Paris snit, “I was hoping I didn’t come off as a train wreck,” says Mika B., a regular on Joe Scarborough’s Morning Joe and host of her own 10am ET hour. Suddenly, “my BlackBerry and phone were ringing off the hook. It was outrageous. I think I touched a nerve; that people were sick of this crap. Within the next couple of weeks, I got my own show and NBC was firming up a contract.”

Washington Whispers’ Paul Bedard notes that it has been almost a year since the time Olaf Wiig and Steve Centanni were kidnapped in Gaza…

It’s been almost a year since Fox News Channel reporter Steve Centanni and cameraman Olaf Wiig were seized in Gaza and held for 13 days. But with the exception of fresh falafel and a big story, they aren’t eager to return to the Palestinian territory. “It’s really not a good time to go back,” says Centanni, who was seized with Wiig August 14 and held until August 27. Besides diplomatic reporting, Centanni now works to free other reporters held captive around the globe. About the falafel, he says his captors some times ordered out for their prisoners. “It’s hard to believe it was a year ago.”

FNC’s Greg Kelly will be featured on tonight’s Extra as part of the show’s “New York’s Most Eligible Bachelors” series this week. Kelly was getting all sorts of grief yesterday on Fox and Friends Sunday for this…

The Washington Post’s Howard Kurtz has an interview with Campbell Brown…

Brown’s move raises two intriguing questions: Why are only two other women (Greta Van Susteren of Fox and Nancy Grace of Headline News) on the air as prime-time cable news hosts? And is it possible to succeed with an 8 p.m. show built on news and interviews — as Zahn tried to do — when up against the ultra-opinionated likes of Bill O’Reilly and Keith Olbermann?

Zahn was pushed to try several different formats, from politics to magazine-style reports. She concedes the constant changes hurt her ratings, but she also won plaudits for tackling such difficult subjects as race in America. Still, despite some gains with younger viewers, she sometimes slipped into third or even fourth place (behind Grace).

“Looking at the success of the opinion-driven shows, we tried to counterpunch as best we could, and we never sacrificed our objectivity or our quality,” Zahn says.

Brown now inherits a similar challenge. “It’s an incredibly difficult time slot,” she says. “I can’t obsess over that or I’ll make myself crazy. . . . I’m not Bill O’Reilly. I’m not Keith Olbermann. I’m not going to do opinion. That’s not who I am.”