What’s Hot

FNC’s New Hampshire Debate - This week FNC scored the highest rated debate of 2007 so far when it came to New Hampshire Wednesday…

The CNBC/FBN skirmishing continues to heat up - Fox Business Network still hasn’t launched and CNBC is showing signs of paranoia. This was exemplified by the highly unusual Eric Bolling injunction the network sought using high powerd Manhattan attorneys and was subsequently denied. All for a part time contributor. A tad heavy handed don’t you think?

I thought CNBC was going to be playing this cool since this is really CNBC’s battle to lose as far as I’m concerned and FBN has everything to prove, Roger Ailes’ and Rupert Murdoch’s somewhat dismissive comments over the past few months regarding the Peacock business network nonwithstanding. But CNBC sure doesn’t seem to be acting very cool or very secure right now. This is not a good sign.

Cable News getting re-infected with Anna Nicole syndrome - Rita Cosby and her Anna Nicole book caused an unusually public case of pushback between the various parties involved. And it all played out over the various news nets throughout the week.

What’s Not

Cable News getting re-infected with Anna Nicole syndrome - Her son is dead. She’s dead. The custody battle has been decided. It’s over people. Stop pandering and drop it already! Sheesh…
(more…)

A wee bit late, but Fosters.com reviews the FNC Republican New Hampshire debate today…

Wednesday night’s Republican debate on Fox News did what such events are designed to do. It made candidates squirm under tough questions. It brought striking contrast to the differences among candidates over controversial issues. It hammered away when candidates tried to obfuscate.

In short, unlike the recent YouTube debate and some earlier forums, the FoxNews event gave voters sum and substance in addition to fiery and fiesty entertainment.

The success of the debate, held on the campus of the University of New Hampshire in Durham, rested largely on the in-depth preparation of moderator, Brit Hume, and fellow questioners Chris Wallace and Wendell Goler.

I guess some people don’t read ICN. Sigh…

FNC was advertising all morning that General David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker will be interviewed by Brit Hume live at 9pm ET on Monday in an exclusive. This will be following their testimony to Congress…

Being heckled by protestors (via Johnny Dollar)

The Kansas City Star’s Aaron Barnhart writes about the new ratings system. Longtime readers know I’ve been blogging on this developing story the best I can for the past year but Barnhart distills down what’s going to happen into its most important parts. Which qualifies it for must read status for neophytes not connected to the industry…(hat tip to TVbytheNumbers.com for emailing me the link)

The formal name for the new measuring-stick is the “live-plus-three-day commercial rating,” and it departs from the current ratings in two ways:

•It will measure, minute-by-minute, viewership for the commercial breaks, as opposed to the entire program. Networks have agreed to transmit an audio code (you won’t hear it) whenever there is a break. This tone will signal to the electronic meters used by Nielsen that the next 60 seconds are to count toward the commercial rating.

•It will measure all viewing of a particular program over a three-day span, beginning with the live broadcast time. The live-plus-three rating thus becomes the first widely accepted benchmark in American TV to acknowledge the growing use of digital video recorders.

Read the whole thing. Because the ratings they are a changing…