The Sacramento Bee’s Rick Kushman compiled a list of the worst shows on TV in 2007. One cable news program made his list…

5. “Nancy Grace” (CNN). Grace is merciless to every creature in her path - the accused, the victims and anyone foolish enough to speak with her. She represents every bad part of our media culture, plus Grace and CNN have shown they’re willing to do anything to anyone for ratings. CNN should be ashamed. Grace, we know, has no shame.

Lots of speculation running on the internet about the significance of all the talk about Diamonds and January 3rd by FBN’s Rebecca Gomez at the end of Friday’s Happy Hour. Cody Willard knew what it was about but he just teased the audience. Is there matrimonial intrigue afoot at FBN?

MSNBC has been airing advertising this week that is calling it “Super Week”. It doesn’t get into specifics but it sounds like starting Wednesday it will be all politics all week long.

Over on CNN, they are doing a bunch of things this week leading up to Iowa…

CNN will air three days of live political programming leading up to the Jan. 3 Iowa caucuses. On New Year’s Day, the network will capitalize on its on-the-ground resources with “Ballot Bowl,” seven hours of uninterrupted political coverage anchored by a team of CNN reporters in the field. Viewers from around the country will get to experience political events from the perspective of Iowa and New Hampshire voters as CNN follows the candidates and carries some of their significant live and recent events, not in sound bites but in long-form. CNN’s day of exciting political coverage will begin with American Morning at 6 a.m. (ET). “Ballot Bowl” will immediately follow at 9 a.m. (ET) and will air until the start of The Situation Room at 4 p.m. (ET).
(more…)

An hour ago around 1:20 pm ET, Wolf Blitzer was in The Situation Room in D.C. to interview Benazir Bhutto’s husband Asif Ali Zardari in what CNN was labeling as an “Exclusive”…

Ok, here is the list of the hottest and not hottest cable news related stories for 2007. I hope I haven’t overlooked anything. These are not prioritized by the way…

What’s hot for 2007:

The Fall and Rise of Don Imus - Don Imus’ controversial comments about the Rutgers’ women’s basketball team, either rightly or wrongly, eventually led to his ouster from MSNBC TV and CBS Radio. Imus stayed under the radar for the next several months before re-surfacing with a new radio and TV gig.

FBN launches - Rupert Murdoch’s long speculated about stab at a business news channel finally came to fruition this fall with the launch of the Fox Business Network. Which leads nicely to…

Defections and defectors - One of the first battles between the new upstart FBN and the established battle tested veteran CNBC was over talent, with FBN drawing first blood. This first manifested itself with a ridiculous battle over a “business news talent minnow” named Eric Bolling for which CNBC lawyered up big time with some high priced Manhattan attorneys to keep Bolling sitting on the sidelines and off FBN’s air until the last possible second. This however came on the heels of the news that CNBC’s “non-minnow” Liz Claman had decided to jump to FBN when her contract expired with CNBC (co-incidentally it expired within days of FBN’s launch).

So long Secaucus - MSNBC finally moved in to 30 Rock with a slick news studio. And with that came…
(more…)

24/7 Wall Street looks at Jim Cramer’s picks and predictions in 2007…

2007 was one volatile year and for now it appears that will be the norm for at least the start of 2008. Everyone’s favorite market pundit or least liked pundit is obviously Jim Cramer. If you love Cramer or can’t stand him it really doesn’t matter. He signed a new multi-year deal with CNBC recently. Here are some of his major calls this year that will still be referred to in 2008:

Here were Cramer’s TOP 9 STOCKS FOR 2007, with a call broken down for each one. Borat would say HI FIVE on some and NOT SO NICE on others, as would be expected. Cramer’s 14,582 year-end DJIA target….. Friday’s close was 13,365.87……although we did hit 14,279.96 on OCT 11, 2007. Cramer also gave a batch of price targets on most of the DJIA components:

The Washington Post’s Howard Kurtz gazes into his Crystal Ball…or is it a Rubik’s Cube?…to look at 2008…

CNN’s newest hire, Campbell Brown, will be:

a. Surprisingly competitive in cable’s 8 p.m. time slot
b. Decimated by O’Reilly and Olbermann
c. Wearing skimpy outfits
d. Deciding to spend more time with her baby

The new Fox Business Network will be:

a. Giving CNBC a run for its money
b. So low-rated it won’t warrant an asterisk
c. Having Sean Hannity read stock prices
d. Hosted entirely by babes in bars

CNBC’s Dylan Ratigan will be in Times Square thoughout the day today. It starts with Ratigan co-anchoring “The Call” at 11am ET, followed by “Closing Bell” at 3pm ET. Then Ratigan will host “Fast Money” live from the Nasdaq street level studio in Times Square at 5pm. Ratigan will also be doing man on the street interviews from Times Square as well…

The New York Times’ Brian Stelter writes about the networks scrambling to get people in to Pakistan to cover the Bhutto assassination…

The significant time lag between her death and the arrival of Western correspondents forced the networks to hustle and improvise. NBC, MSNBC and Fox News Channel relied on phone reports from freelance journalists in Pakistan.

These freelancers, commonly called stringers, are local journalists who live in far-flung cities and are kept on retainer by news organizations.

CNN was the only network based in the United States that had a full-time producer at the site of Ms. Bhutto’s rally on Thursday. The producer, Mohsin Naqvi, spoke with the opposition leader hours before the attack and provided reports on CNN by phone throughout the day. CNN sent its anchor, Anderson Cooper, to Pakistan so he could do his nightly show from there on Friday.

MediaPost’s Erik Sass writes about coverage of the Bhutto assassination showing up on YouTube…and viewers flocking to it…

A minute-long clip posted on the site by Al-Jazeera English drew about 185,000 views by 7 a.m. EST, about 24 hours after the attack occurred. The second-most-popular YouTube clip was a reposting of news reports from Channel Newsasia, CNN, BBC that were recorded by the user simply training a camera on a TV, flipping between channels occasionally. This clip attracted over 177,000 views within the 24-hour period.

Dozens of postings attracted between 40,000 and 80,000 views. A report from BBC showing the chaos immediately after the shooting and suicide bombing attracted about 65,000 views in the same time. A clip from Fox News, involving discussion of the implications for U.S. foreign policy, attracted over 57,000 views. A CNN clip of the last footage of Bhutto, taken at the rally minutes before she was shot and killed, attracted over 38,000 views.

According to this morning’s AC 360 blog entry, Anderson Cooper will be hosting tonight’s New Year’s Eve broadcast on CNN…

Then at 11 pm…IT is New Years Eve LIVE with Anderson Cooper… So ring in 2008 tonight with Anderson!!!!

However the blog doesn’t say where Cooper will be when he’s hosting it…

Update: Apparently he’s back already as he posted a blog entry on New Year’s Eve…

As a kid I was never a big fan of New Year’s Eve. There always seemed something slightly menacing about the event. New York City streets are packed, people are drunk, it always kind of freaked me out. Then as an adult, I didn’t like it much because there was always so much pressure to have a good time, and you can never find a cab to go home in when you realize the party you’re at is lame.

Now I really like New Year’s Eve because I’m working and Times Square is actually a really fun place to be. When the ball drops, and the confetti descends I like nothing more than silently watching the explosion of euphoria. Frank Sinatra’s voice sings New York, New York. People hug each other and cheer. There really is nothing like it.

I think I finally slayed the popups. Let me know if you get any…

The Tallahassee Democrat’s Tabitha Yang has a profile of FNC Supreme Court correspondent Shannon Bream…

She landed her current job after running into FOX anchor Brit Hume while in Washington. He asked what her dream job would be, and she told him, “I’ve always dreamed of working for FOX News.”

The next thing she knew, he was telling her about a new job opening FOX had for a Supreme Court correspondent, and he asked whether she’d be interested.

“He found out I was a lawyer and he thought it might be a perfect fit,” she said.

Although Bream has been on the job only a few weeks, she thinks he was right.

“I absolutely love this job, and I love Washington,” she said. “So I’d be willing to stay here as long as they’ll have me.”

Big Head D.C. blogs about Ron Paul’s exclusion from the upcoming New Hampshire debate Forum and how Paul’s people are blaming FNC for the exclusion…

Daily Live+SD Ratings for December 27, 2007

(more…)

Daily Live+SD Ratings for December 26, 2007

(more…)

Okay, it’s time for the 2007 edition of What’s hot/What’s not. Post your suggestions. They need to be game changers, events that fundamentally made an impact to the news cycle. I will post the final list on New Year’s Eve…

Jossip has a quote from Tucker Carlson from last week allegedly about the NBC News cuts. If Carlson was just goofing around, I doubt it was very funny to the staff. I would really like to see the full context of this quote because what’s cited really makes him look bad…

“There were these cutbacks at the network this year. Christmas hats somehow got — we‘re waiting for shipping in China.” Tucker Carlson, bemoaning the latest impact of NBC 2.0, Tucker, December 21

Uh oh…

Willard checked in with TVNewser to offer a (tongue-in-cheek) challenge to the MSNBC host: “That dude’s just jealous he can’t get Joanna Krupa booked. Tell him I’ll respond to this Abrams dude when he’s got enough guts to man up to the bar with me. Anytime.”

Tongue in cheek or not, Willard has just guaranteed himself more appearances on Beat the Press. They will be scouring Happy Hour from stem to stern each and every night looking for him to do something bad/embarassing/silly/wrong which they can throw back at him. And why? Because they know now they can get to him. (see: O’Reilly, William)

On the other hand, is Abrams punching down by taking on anyone from FBN? And is Willard in fact punching up? Could this eventually give more PR to FBN than Abrams? The theory is punching down is bad and punching up is good.

CNBC just announced that Steve Jobs had been chosen as the network’s Face of Business for 2007. The announcement came during “Closing Bell”. Here’s the release…

Jobs received an overwhelming of votes—78%–in a poll conducted on CNBC.com. between December 20 and December 26.

The other “nominees” were: Chuck Prince, former Chairman and CEO of Citigroup (who received 6.9% of the vote), the American Home Owner (4.1%), the “Google Guys” (Larry Page, Sergey Brin and Eric Schmidt) (3%), Angelo Mozilo, CEO of Countrywide Financial (2.6%), Lloyd Blankfein, Chairman and CEO of Goldman Sachs Group (1.7%), Rick Wagoner, Chairman and CEO of General Motors (1.2%), Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook (1%). Those receiving less than 1% were: Sovereign Funds, U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry (Hank) Paulson, and Steve Schwarzman, Chairman and co-founder of the Blackstone Group. The full results can be seen at CNBC.com.
(more…)

CNN’s This Week at War will air a special 2007 edition called “This Year at War” on Saturday at 7pm ET…

A special edition of This Week at War, called This Year at War, will air Saturday, Dec. 29 from 7 p.m. to 8 p.m. and Sunday, Dec. 30 from 1 p.m. to 2 p.m. (ET). Anchored by Tom Foreman, This Year at War will recap the key events of 2007 and anticipate the hotspots of 2008.

A team of CNN correspondents from critical locations around the globe will discuss topics ranging from the war in Iraq, the threat of a nuclear Iran, U.S. politics, the ongoing war on terrorism, the Middle East peace process and the impact of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto’s assassination on an already fragile Pakistan. Contributors to the special year-in-review will include: Kelli Arena, CNN Justice Department correspondent; Jim Clancy, CNN International anchor; Arwa Damon, CNN International correspondent; Ed Henry, CNN White House correspondent; Paula Newton, CNN International Security correspondent; Aneesh Raman, CNN Middle East correspondent; Nic Robertson, CNN Senior International correspondent; Bill Schneider, CNN senior political analyst; Barbara Starr, CNN Pentagon correspondent; John Vause, CNN International correspondent; Zain Verjee, CNN State Department correspondent; and Ben Wedeman, CNN Jerusalem correspondent.

CNBC’s John Harwood is going to be a busy man on Kudlow & Company today…

In the interview with CNBC’s John Harwood, candidates will discuss how they should respond to weakening economy and housing crisis, impact of Bhutto assassination, and other key themes in homestretch before nomination voting starts, among other topics.

The Hollywood Reporter’s Paul J. Gough writes about TV Newsies getting ready for the Iowa Caucus…

Blame the accelerated primary season in a month that will blow harder than a blizzard in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, or Manchester, N.H. Iowa’s early start gives only five days until the New Hampshire primary January 8, followed quickly by South Carolina, Michigan and Nevada ahead of “Super Duper Tuesday” on February 5, when 20 states including California and New York will hold voting.

That’s something new, said CNN senior political correspondent Candy Crowley.

“In years past, you had a little breathing room,” she said. “This year, you don’t.” For Crowley, that meant buying gift cards for loved ones this year and rushing to figure out what to do about Christmas dinner for her grown children in the few days she had at home before the holiday.

Not that anyone’s complaining much. For political journalists such as Greenfield and Crowley, this is it. Greenfield said the 2008 campaign has been one of the most interesting he’s ever covered.

The Hollywood Reporter’s Paul J. Gough writes about today’s coverage of the Bhutto assassination…

Suddenly, Pakistan — where there are only a handful of employees for the U.S.-based networks — pushed U.S. campaign news off the cable news channels as the networks struggled to bring the developing story to American viewers. CNN was the first network to confirm the story, working off legwork from producer Mohsin Naqvi, who broke the story at 7:21 a.m. EST after attending the rally and hearing an explosion.

“He was right on it from the start to the end,” said Parisa Khosravi, CNN International senior vp newsgathering.

Naqvi isn’t alone. ABC News’ Gretchen Peters is stationed in Pakistan for the network, which also is sending other correspondents, including “World News Sunday” anchor Dan Harris. NBC is sending correspondents Michelle Kosinski from New York and Ned Colt from London. Both hold current Pakistani visas, which NBC News newsgathering vp David Verdi said is a traditional precaution for hot-button regions.

My Fox Memphis says that Shepard Smith will be broadcasting The Fox Report tonight from Memphis, TN (though it gets Studio B confused with The Fox Report)…

‘Studio B’ will air from 6:00pm to 7:00pm. If you’d like to take a behind-the-scenes look at the broadcast, you can watch live streaming video from the Memphis studio’s “roof-cam” by clicking HERE or on the link to your right.

CNN will be re-airing a CNN Special Investigations Unit documentary on Pakistan tonight at 11pm ET…

CNN Special Investigations Unit - Pakistan: Terror Central will air at 11 p.m. (ET). In this one-hour documentary, Nic Robertson reports that al Qaeda and the Taliban are alive, well and building their base of operations in Pakistan. President Pervez Musharraf is balancing a fine line between keeping his allies happy in the “War on Terror” while convincing his people that he puts Pakistan first. The U.S. and Britain depend on Musharraf and his Army to hunt down the Taliban and al Qaeda, but critics wonder if he’s playing a double game. In an exclusive interview, Robertson spoke with Mullah Abdul Rashid Ghazi, who shared Osama bin Laden’s ideology of jihad before he was killed in the Red Mosque terror attack in July 2007.

Today’s edition of The Situation Room is coming from the Time Warner Center in New York City. I mention this not so much because of the change in location but because The Situation Room looks just so much better from the Time Warner Studios than the regular D.C. digs. They may have run the show from the TWC before, but it’s the first time I’ve seen it. And the upgrade in technology between the older D.C. set and its newer Manhattan sibling is really noticeable in how the show looks when comparing the two versions of the program now that I’ve seen it air from both locations.

Update: CNN has been noting throughout the day that Wolf Blitzer was sent an email back in October that was to be noted in the event that Bhutto had been killed. The Huffington Post has the video of one of the segments. (via TVNewser)

Alan Colmes blogs about having his blog blogged about (say that five times fast!)

I Was Hoping To Do This Quietly to see if I even like posting, before we fold it in to what will be a redesigned alan.com and link it to an enhanced talent blog section of foxnews.com. I always thought it would feel like having an extra job, but it really doesn’t. In fact, it is part of my show preparation and gives me an opportunity to interact with radio listeners both when the radio show is on and during non-show times. Now, we’re getting attention from both Inside Cable News and TV Newser. Thanks, I think.

Big Head D.C. notes that FNC will be carrying a Republican candidate forum in New Hampshire on January 6th, though only the top 5 have signed on. Chances are after Iowa the rest will have thrown in the towel anyways…

On FNC, Shepard Smith will be anchoring The Fox Report, Laura Ingraham will sub on the O’Reilly Factor, and Greta Van Susteren will anchor On The Record. On Hannity & Colmes, Bhutto advisor Husain Haqqani will be appearing according to Colmes’ blog…

On MSNBC, Keith Olbermann will be on tonight to anchor Countdown.

On CNN, Anderson Cooper will be anchoring 360 tonight…

Update: CNN put out a release for its coverage plans…

CNN is marshalling its extensive global resources for prime-time coverage on the assassination of former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto on Dec. 27, 2007. Wolf Blitzer guides the network’s prime-time coverage beginning at 4 p.m. (ET) with the latest analysis and insights and CNN will offer special editions of The Situation Room, Lou Dobbs Tonight, Larry King Live, Anderson Cooper 360 and CNN Special Investigations Unit - Pakistan: Terror Central.
(more…)

Several people sent me links to this last night which refers to this note in The Politico.

RELEASE OF THE DAY, from the Center for Media and Public Affairs at George Mason University: “TV election news has been hardest on Hillary Clinton this fall, while Barack Obama and Mike Huckabee have been the biggest media favorites, according to a new study. … The study also found that Fox News Channel’s evening news show provided more balanced coverage than its counterparts on the broadcast networks.”

I didn’t like the way this release read as it was lacking in specificity so I hunted down the full PDF file release. That’s when I started seeing problems with this study.
(more…)

Variety’s Michael Schneider provides more granularity to the NBC Agency restructuring story…

Lipsius has been with NBC since 1995; he was most recently senior director of operations.

Nicholas, meanwhile, will focus on finding new ways to make money on the NBC Agency’s work. He’ll also continue as creative director for MSNBC. He’s been with NBC Agency since 1997.

Nicholas reports to Bill Hartnett, senior veep of NBC Agency East Coast.

Also adding stripes: Chris Meador has been named senior director, brand strategy; Skip Stuart is exec producer-senior director of special projects; Adam Kessler has been bumped to director of on-air promotion, East Coast; Jon Accarrino is manager of digital marketing; and Bill Platt has joined as senior writer-producer.

Daily Live+SD Ratings for Saturday Dec 22, 2007

Daily Live+SD Ratings for Sunday Dec 23, 2007
(more…)

All the cable nets are swarming over the Benazir Bhutto assassination story. MSNBC even jumped to Matt Lauer on Today at one point. Unfortunately I did not have time to ascertain why MSNBC was simulcasting Today for because I had slept through my alarm clock this morning and had literally one minute to channel hop between all the channels before I had to leave. Post your coverage reactions here.

Update: Break-in times…

CNN – 7:21am
FNC – 7:24am
MSNBC – 7:29am

Update 2: CNBC is also covering the story. During “Squawk Box” 8:30am ET half hour, it was airing reports from Nadeem Malik, CNBC’s Islamabad bureau chief. Subsequently it has been airing reports from Sri Jegarajah, CNBC Asia correspondent in Singapore.

Update 3: The networks are all trying to leverage their A talent early. Greta Van Susteren phoned in to Fox and Friends this morning. Van Susteren had interviewed Bhutto. Ann Curry was in the MSNBC studio with Tamron Hall since she too had interviewed Bhutto. Wolf Blitzer was on CNN from Washington New York City to provide analysis.

And the politicians are getting featured heavily. FNC carried a Hillary Clinton webcast stump speech live for any comments regarding the assasination. On MSNBC, Rudi Giulliani phoned in to Tamron Hall. This was immediately followed by Arlen Specter who was supposed to meet with Bhutto tonight.
(more…)

I had heard about this ad for a few weeks but had never seen it until now. HLN is running an ad claiming that more people tune in to it per month than either MSNBC or FNC. The sole stat it mentions is that in 2007 25 million people per month, of the P25-54 Demographic, watched HLN, which is more than either MSNBC or FNC. Sounds like HLN is taking a page out of its mother network’s playbook and is tossing out CUME numbers to make itself look good.