Cable News Daily Ratings for August 2, 2007

P2+ Total Day
FNC – 1,184,000 viewers
CNN – 879,000 viewers
MSNBC – 350,000 viewers
CNBC – 182,000 viewers
HLN – 329,000 viewers

P2+ Prime Time
FNC – 1,927,000 viewers
CNN – 1,322,000 viewers
MSNBC – 567,000 viewers
CNBC – 139,000 viewers
HLN – 556,000 viewers

25-54 Total Day
FNC – 397,000 viewers
CNN –350,000 viewers
MSNBC – 157,000 viewers
CNBC – a scratch with 49,000 viewers
HLN – 125,000 viewers

25-54 Prime Time
FNC – 568,000 viewers
CNN – 491,000 viewers
MSNBC – 251,000 viewers
CNBC – a scratch with 43,000 viewers
HLN – 239,000 viewers

Morning programs P2+ (25-54)
FOX & Friends –1,156,000 viewers (423,000)
American Morning – 844,000 viewers (369,000)
MSNBC Live (7-9am) – 304,000 viewers (115,000)
Robin & Co. – 248,000 viewers (92,000)
(more…)

(via TVNewser)

UPDATE: Fixed broken link. Hopefully.

The Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates, will be appearing on Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer on Sunday…

Secretary of Defense Robert Gates will appear on the Sunday, Aug. 5, edition of CNN’s Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer. In a wide-ranging interview, Gates will discuss the war in Iraq, including the status of troop increases on the ground, and Iran’s involvement in the conflict. Gates will also discuss what to expect from the highly anticipated September progress report.

Wolf Blitzer will also interview the Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai, who will discuss the fight against the Taliban, the ongoing hunt for Osama bin Laden and U.S.-Afghanistan relations in light of his meeting with President George W. Bush later on Sunday.

CNN’s rather long release on the upcoming multi-night broadcast of Christiane Amanpour’s “CNN Presents: God’s Warriors” which kicks off on Tuesday, August 21st at 9pm ET…

CNN will premiere a six-hour television event across its U.S. and international networks in August on the impact of the rise of religious fundamentalism as a powerful political force in three faiths: Judaism, Islam and Christianity. CNN chief international correspondent Christiane Amanpour traveled the world to report CNN Presents: God’s Warriors. The U.S. premiere airs Tuesday, Aug. 21, through Thursday, Aug. 23, from 9 p.m. to 11 p.m. each night (ET/PT).

“God’s Warriors is an investigation of religion, at a time when religious activism is a signature cultural phenomenon of our times,” said Mark Nelson, vice president and senior executive producer for CNN Productions. “This project’s global scope is ideally suited for the skills of someone with as impressive of a journalistic pedigree as our own Christiane Amanpour.”

For this documentary, Amanpour reports that during the last 30 years, each faith has exploded into a powerful political force, comprised of followers – “God’s warriors” – who share a deep dissatisfaction with modern society, and a fierce determination to place God and religion back into daily life and to the seats of power. Their political and cultural struggles to save the world from what they view as secular materialism, greed and sexual corruption have caused anger, division and fear.
(more…)

On Morning Joe this morning, Scarborough took aim at John Edwards over his war with News Corp. (via NewsBusters which also has video)

SCARBOROUGH: John Edwards, demanding that Hillary Clinton return money she got from News Corp. [the Rupert-Murdoch controlled company that is Fox News’ parent] because News Corp. is such a corrupt, terrible outfit. Of course John Edwards got $1,000 from News Corp. himself, so it’s sort of like being half-pregnant. You can’t be half-pregnant. You either take the money from the corrupt source or you don’t. And of course this is the same John Edwards who won’t go on Fox News, but before he decided this would resonate with primary voters, you couldn’t keep the guy off of Fox News. I mean, he was up on Sean Hannity’s every other night. Now, he is shocked and stunned. Shocked and stunned! — that anybody would go on Fox News. Here’s a guy who wants to take on the Taliban and he can’t even handle Roger Ailes. How sad, how sad.

The Hollywood Reporter’s Paul J. Gough writes about a new survey by the Pew Research Center on the news media.

There’s been no shortage of scandals to report on in 2007, from the death of Anna Nicole Smith and the subsequent custody battle over her infant daughter to the jail saga of heiress Paris Hilton. Despite the ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and a presidential campaign already under way, celebrity stories oftentimes have taken over the news. Pew found that 24% of all news was devoted to Smith at the time of her death, while 12% of all Americans said in early June that Hilton’s incarceration was their most-followed news story of the week.

The survey found that cable news is most to blame for the ongoing celebrity coverage, with 34% of respondents saying cable news had the most celebrity coverage, followed by network TV news (27%), Internet news sites (15%) and newspapers (8%).

Broadcasting & Cable’s John Eggerton writes about the role of “citizen journalism” in the coverage of the bridge collapse disaster…

Both Fox and CNN are tapping into user-generated accounts and pictures to help get some early boots on the ground and information on the air. CNN says it has received more than 45,000 such reports in its first year.

In both it is a case of “you report, we decide,” with the networks vetting the content before putting it on the air.

CNN’s coverage was frequently thrown to a voice over the cell phone, including resident Mark LaCroix, who said he saw the last moments of the collapse.

Fox says its Web site got over 16.8 million page views for its Minneapolis coverage at last count.

The Washington Post’s Howard Kurtz writes about John Edwards’ call for Democratic candidates to refuse/return News Corp. campaign donations to protest News Corp.’s purchase of Dow Jones…

Former senator John Edwards, who has been throwing punches at Rupert Murdoch and his Fox News Channel, demanded yesterday that the other Democratic presidential candidates return contributions from Murdoch’s media conglomerate.

“John Edwards will never ask Rupert Murdoch for money — he won’t accept his money,” said a statement e-mailed to supporters.

Not so fast, Murdoch’s people say. His publishing unit, HarperCollins, paid Edwards a $500,000 advance — and $300,000 in expenses — for his 2006 book “Home: The Blueprints of Our Lives.”

“We assume the senator is going to give back the money from his advance,” News Corp. spokesman Brian Lewis said.

Edwards spokesman Eric Schultz said his boss donated the book payments to charity and that the expense money went to staffers and vendors. Citing the announcement that prompted Edwards’s e-mail — Murdoch’s $5 billion deal to buy Dow Jones — Schultz said, “This is about whether or not Murdoch should expand his media empire and use the Wall Street Journal to further promote his right-wing agenda.”

The St. Paul Pioneer Press’ Amy Carlson Gustafson writes about the TV News talent that has come to cover the tragedy…

Fox News Channel’s Greta Van Susteren also arrived in Minneapolis on Thursday.

“As my eyes trailed down the Mississippi, I saw what I should not have seen: A bridge should be over the water, it shouldn’t be in the water,” said the Appleton, Wis., native and host of “On the Record,” which was to air live from the scene Thursday. “The thing that struck me most of all was that everything was a matter of seconds. If you look at that school bus, it’s miraculous that those children even survived and that the bus was upright.

“Just think, if one kid was two or three seconds late getting on that bus - that’s the difference in all these accidents - seconds.”

Thursday was Paula Zahn’s last night on the air for CNN. The farewells started at the end of The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer…

BLITZER: I want to leave you this personal note. This is Paula Zahn’s last night with us. She joined CNN six years ago. In fact, her very first day on the air here on CNN was actually on 9/11. We all remember her brilliant reporting that day in New York. And now she leaves us as CNN is covering another major breaking news story.

I know I speak for all of our viewers when I thank Paula for all her excellent work. And on a very personal note, I loved working with Paula because she is a solid reporter, a true professional, and a really nice person.

Good luck down the road, Paula. I hope our paths will continue to cross. Thanks very much.

ZAHN: Oh, that is so generous of you. And this is such a small world. I’m sure our paths will cross again. We have witnessed some extraordinary things together, some of the most important political events of the last six years, and I too salute your professionalism, your sense of fairness, and your camaraderie.

(more…)

The Hartford Courant’s David Lightman writes about last night’s showdown on FNC…

O’Reilly asked Dodd why he wouldn’t distance himself from the cartoon. Dodd said he was “stunned” that O’Reilly went after the Daily Kos because of what a few people may have posted. “You ought to be far more candid with your viewing audience here and tell them your real objection here is the ideology of Daily Kos,” the senator said.

O’Reilly called the cartoon “vile.” Dodd shot back, “There’s a lot of things you say are vile on a daily basis in my view.”

“What about the cartoon, Senator? What about it?” O’Reilly asked.

“No, no, no, listen,” Dodd said, his voice rising.

“What do you mean, no, no, no. It’s been up there for a year,” O’Reilly replied.

The two were almost stepping on one another’s words. An increasingly angry Dodd said that of course he didn’t like the cartoon, but “that’s not the issue.”

“Of course that’s the issue,” said O’Reilly. “That’s what they do. That’s what they do on the site. They do that hate stuff all the time.”

The New York Daily News’ Richard Huff writes about some of the on air reactions to the tragedy…

The TV coverage has gone from shocking, to heartbreaking, to frightening as the cable news networks all struggled to tell the story, analyze what’s known and talk to survivors.

The coverage also moved from repetitive images culled from the first hours to first-person accounts of what it was like to be there, and what it’s like to search for loved ones.

It’s stories like this where TV, for all its faults, can convey the drama like no other. When you watch a family talk about a missing loved one and see the tears well up, it’s impossible not to get emotionally involved.

“To even hear her cries, her whimpers, I felt relieved she was alive,” Jack Reynolds, whose daughter Olivia was one of those trapped on a school bus, told Fox News’ Bill Hemmer.

The Minneapolis Star-Tribune’s Rohan Preston writes about the TV News people who have come to the city to report on the tragedy…

The elements at play — including the randomness of the catastrophe; the demographic sweep of its victims and the spectacular images of mangled steel, buckled concrete and cars tossed about like toys — created an irresistible lure for national and international media, said Jane Kirtley, a media-ethics professor at the University of Minnesota.

“The national coverage rightly picks up on the idea that this is symptomatic of a much bigger problem,” she added.

Of course, it’s the human drama that plays most strongly on TV. “For me at least, you see these lives changing in an instant, this panic, these incredible efforts by Minnesotans to save strangers, all of that draws you,” said CNN correspondent and anchor Randi Kaye, who formerly worked at WCCO-TV in the Twin Cities. “And it affects all of us because it could happen to any one of us.”

Thursday afternoon Greta Van Susteren joined FOX affiliate KMSP to get an aerial view of the damage to the bridge and surrounding areas…

The TV does very much to telling the story, but there’s nothing like your bare eyes. And when you sit in this helicopter and you look down at this carnage, it is like something you’ve never seen before. You see how a matter of seconds, whether you sped up past a car ten minutes earlier, could make a difference whether your car is in the river and whether you are dead or alive.

Broadcasting & Cable’s John Eggerton writes about John Edwards calling for Democratic candidates to refuse/return contributions from News Corp. because it’s acquiring Dow Jones…

A News Corp. spokesman was not available for comment, but Brit Hume reported on the Edwards’ statement during FNC’s Special Report Thursday night.

Hume quoted Edwards as saying “the time has come to stop pretending we’re friends with the very people who demonize the Democratic party.” Hume said it appeared to be a jab at Hillary Clinton, who he said had received more than $20,000 from News Corp. executives. According to OpenSecrets.org, Clinton has also received $78,650 from News Corp., one of her top 20 donors.

Hume went on to say that no candidate had received as much money as Edwards. He pointed to the $500,000 advance and $300,000 in expenses News Corp. says it paid Edwards, though its Harper Collins subsidiary, for his book, Home, which was published last fall.