Bloomberg TV will have Terry Holt and Stephanie Cutter as special on air analysts for the Iowa Caucuses. It will also be talking to the campaigns and economic and business leaders in Iowa. Guests will include Senators Tom Harkin and Charles Grassley and Democratic candidate Bill Richardson on a special edition of Money & Politics at 7pm and 9pm ET with anchor Peter Cook in DC and reporter Lizzie O’Leary in Iowa.

Update: Updated guest list for Money & Politics…

-Des Moines Mayor Frank Cownie
-Iowa Governor Chet Culver
-Principal Financial CEO Barry Griswell
-Giuliani Campaign Manager Mike DuHaime
-Wells Fargo Exec Mark Oman
-Presidental Candidate Bill Richardson
-Iowa Senator Harkin
-Senator Lindsey Graham, R - SC
-Senator Charles Grassley, R - Iowa

The Hollywood Reporter’s Paul J. Gough writes about the hordes of newsies invading Iowa…

“You need folks at 30,000 feet, and you need folks on the ground,” NBC News political director Chuck Todd said. Williams, Russert and others will be on the ground for NBC; MSNBC will have anchors Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews in New York.

CNN will take a page from its 2006 playbook, using the Time Warner Center studio that it used to cover the midterm elections 18 months ago. That’s also where Wolf Blitzer, Anderson Cooper and Lou Dobbs will be.

“It does not make sense for me to build entire broadcast operations in Iowa and New Hampshire,” said David Bohrman, CNN’s senior vp and Washington bureau chief. “Then where do you go for Super Tuesday, when it’s a national primary?”
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FBN’s Alexis Glick has 10 predictions for 2008…

This afternoon in The Situation Room, Wolf Blitzer and Jeffrey Toobin unveiled CNN Multi-Touch, a new technology that will be used for the networks coverage of the Iowa Caucuses. Transcript follows…

BLITZER: Here at CNN Election Center in New York, we’re planning to show you the Iowa caucuses as you have never seen them before. We have new technology designed to take you inside this quirky political process and to bring you up-to-the minute results tomorrow night.

Our senior analyst, Jeff — Jeff Toobin, is keeping us on top of all of this.

Show us this — this magic wall, as I like to call it.

JEFFREY TOOBIN, CNN SENIOR LEGAL ANALYST: Exactly.

So — so, Wolf, what I think people need to understand is that the Iowa caucuses are not an election. They are a caucus. And a lot of the rules that apply in an election don’t apply. For example, it’s not a secret ballot. Everybody tomorrow, at 7:00 East — Central time — is going to come in and they’re going to vote.
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FNC’s coverage plans for Iowa this week starting tonight…

FOX News Channel (FNC) will present live You Decide 2008 coverage of the Iowa caucus on Wednesday, January 2nd, beginning at 7:00pm ET with a special caucus preview edition of The FOX Report with Shepard Smith anchoring from Iowa. FNC will have a team of dedicated anchors covering the caucus live from various locations in Iowa, including: Brit Hume, Chris Wallace, Shepard Smith, Sean Hannity, Alan Colmes, Greta Van Susteren and Bill Hemmer.

Additionally, FNC will have a team of correspondents on the ground in Iowa, including Chief Political Correspondent, Carl Cameron; White House Correspondent, Wendell Goler; News Correspondent, Molly Henneberg; and Correspondent, Steve Brown.

The following programming will originate live from Iowa, beginning on Wednesday:
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MSNBC’s release on “Super Week” coverage 0f Iowa…

MSNBC presents special “Super Week” coverage of the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary, as the first ballots are cast in the 2008 presidential election campaign.

MSNBC will present continuing live coverage from Iowa and New Hampshire, with daily reports from correspondent David Shuster, on the ground in Iowa now. “Morning Joe” will telecast live from Iowa Thursday morning and live from New Hampshire on Friday, 6-9 a.m. ET. Tucker Carlson will anchor “Tucker” live from Iowa on Wednesday at 6 p.m. ET, and live from New Hampshire on Thursday and Friday with the John McCain campaign. On Thursday night, coverage of the caucuses continues with a special live “Hardball with Chris Matthews” at 7 p.m. ET and a special edition of “Countdown with Keith Olbermann” at 8 p.m. ET. Election results will be reported throughout the evening as they become available. Olbermann and Matthews will anchor live coverage of caucus results from MSNBC Election Headquarters in New York beginning at 9 p.m. ET, with NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams and “Meet the Press” moderator and NBC News Washington bureau chief Tim Russert contributing from Iowa and panelists including Pat Buchanan, Newsweek’s Howard Fineman, Eugene Robinson of the Washington Post and Rachel Maddow of Air America. Former NBC Nightly News anchor Tom Brokaw will also appear to provide analysis. MSNBC Chief Washington Correspondent Norah O’Donnell will provide up-to-the-minute entrance polling analysis.
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Ron Paul was on The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer about twenty minutes ago in the first quarter hour of the 5pm ET hour and he was doing everything possible to stick it to FNC over his exclusion from the Forum. He had some help from Blitzer on that score. Paul said that Fox was “in a bind” now and hinted that some body of the Republican Party in NH was threatening to withdraw support from the forum if Paul wasn’t invited. Paul also hinted that FNC would look very bad if he finished ahead of any of the current invitees tomorrow in Iowa. I think he’s referring to Fred Thompson.

Update: Portfolio’s Jeff Bercovici weighs in defending FNC…to a point.

More often than not, however, “open” debates still focus on a few front-runners, leaving the second-tier candidates desperate to get a word in. The frustration of being consistently ignored even led Democrat Chris Dodd to post a “Talk-o-Meter” on his website, tracking how many minutes each candidate was allowed to speak.
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TVNewser notes that CNN had to switch over to HLN for some unknown reason. BreitBart has the video…

Update: TVNewser says smoke was seen near the studios…

This is a real stretch if you ask me…

TVNewser scoops that Tucker is not on the chopping block. However the story as TVN has written it got my attention…

Insiders tell TVNewser that contrary to speculation, MSNBC has no plans to cancel Tucker. In early November, at least one blog reported that the Tucker Carlson-hosted 6pmET show had already been canceled.

Don’t buy the spin. MSNBC may have re-embraced Tucker now but his show was definitely on the outs late last year. I was hearing the same things from multiple sources that other sites reported. And then there’s the fact that these “insiders” took their sweet time to shoot down FTVLive’s story…like nearly two months. The story blew up all over the blogs and they wait two months to kill it? Sorry, not buying it. Where’s the other shoe? Maybe this is it…

The key in all of this was whether Carlson renewed or not (or whether MSNBC decided to renew him or not) and what he renewed at as his contract was up soon. Since there has now been a public statement, albeit anonymous, that MSNBC is committed to him, I think we can safely assume Carlson has indeed re-signed with MSNBC.

Update: There is a second scenario which I hadn’t thought of. Carlson’s contract may not be renewed and he remains with MSNBC in an at will capacity; meaning MSNBC can dump him anytime it wants. The reasons for going this route would be that it saves money. They don’t have to buy some big remaining portion of a contract if Carlson is at will and MSNBC decides to make a change. It would however mean that Carlson is free to go anywhere he chooses but doesn’t have any good options so he’s staying with MSNBC.
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The Big Idea’s Donny Deutsch rang the opening bell on the Nasdaq this morning. The Big Idea will be on the road in Las Vegas next week for CES…

The Big Idea with Donny Deutsch: Insider’s Guide to Success” (Wednesday, January 9th at 10PM & 1AM ET) — The grand finale to “The Big Idea with Donny Deutsch: Road to CES” series takes viewers on location to CES, the world’s largest tradeshow for consumer technology. Our budding entrepreneurs featured on the “Road to CES,” get their shot to make that big deal that could propel their business to the next level. “Road to CES” armed viewers with the complete toolkit for entrepreneurial success and now gives you the secrets of making that big dea, big sell and big connection that can make or break your Big Idea.

CNBC put out a release noting its coverage of the oil market as the “black gold” hit $100 a barrell at one point…

Oil broke through the $100 a barrel milestone this afternoon intraday and CNBC, First in Business Worldwide, is delivering fast, accurate, actionable and unbiased reports and analysis.

CNBC’s Sharon Epperson is reporting from the NYMEX and CNBC’s Rick Santelli is reporting from the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. These reports are focusing on how oil hitting $100 will affect consumers, stocks, the U.S. economy, the global economy and specific industries. CNBC is also reporting on the smart investments in the age of $100 per barrel oil, where the oil wealth is likely to go next, and who makes money off $100 per barrel oil.
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I happened to be channel hopping a few minutes ago around the bottom half of the hour and I happened to pause on FNC when I saw former MSNBC Editorial Director Davidson Goldin on The Live Desk with Martha MacCallum. I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall inside 30 Rock when he popped up on their monitors just to hear the reaction. Gone from MSNBC as part of the budget cuts, Goldin apparently has a column with the New York Sun now and from the little bit I saw of the broadcast he was talking about the Iowa caucuses.

Daily Live+SD Ratings for December 28, 2007

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The Motley Fool’s Doug Short writes about “Financial Porn”…(via Talking Biz News)

The program formats for these business channels feature the same basic routines. They alternate between interviews with fund managers — “What are you buying in this market?” — and showdowns between financial pundits on hot topics — “Are we heading for a recession? Is it time to nibble on financials? Will we get a January rally?”

The phrase “financial porn” was coined in 1998 by Jane Bryant Quinn, the Newsweek contributing editor for personal finance. Almost a decade later, my Google search scored more than 1,500 hits on the phrase. It even has an Investopedia entry, which carries an explicit warning: “Short-term focus by the media on a financial topic can create excitement that does little to help investors make smart, long-term financial decisions, and in many cases clouds investors’ decision-making ability.”

The Dallas Morning News’ David Levinthal writes about Mike Huckabee at an Iowa rally. There’s one small part in it that raised a big red flag…

Then Mr. Huckabee showed up with a bass guitar. And a band, with MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough on rhythm guitar. And they started playing “Sweet Home Alabama.” Mr. Norris stood to the side, hands in bluejeans pockets, bopping to the beat. The scene would be like a bad acid trip for a diehard Democrat.

What is Scarborough doing anywhere near a Huckabee rally in what can only be observed as an advocacy position? This morning Huckabee was on Morning Joe. I can just see people asking themselves whether Scarborough’s appearance with Huckabee had any bearing on Huckabee’s appearance on “Morning Joe”. It probably didn’t. But that’s not the point. The point is it gives the appearance of a quid pro quo even if none exists.

Doesn’t NBC News have some sort of firewall conflict of interest policy about that sort of behavior? If it was Sean Hannity doing that it would be all over the blue blogs about how FNC was letting Hannity run amock. We’ve already had conflict of interest charges thrown at CNN because of James Carville’s close association to Hillary Clinton and rumors that he may be advising her campaign.

Update: According to the comments, Hannity is crossing the line with regards to Rudolph Giuliani.

Update 2: Heavily modified original post to better flesh out my thoughts…