MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann is now blogging from Daily Kos.

Yeah, it’s me.

Hi.

Sure has taken me long enough. But, as you may know, I am the shy, retiring type: Hesitant to state an opinion in public and horrified to pass judgment or seem a scold.

Ok, before the Right and OlbermannWatch go ballistic…oh wait…let’s calmly examine what this really means.

I think it means nothing really. Nothing has changed.

Look, the facts are Countdown is now acknowledged externally by Olbermann himself and other MSNBC execs as having gone left. Whether you like that or not, and there are plenty of people on both sides of that battle, it’s now an established given. So what does blogging from Daily Kos do to change that? Nothing. It’s a smart move from a programming standpoint. That’s where Countdown’s audience spike over the past year and a half is coming from; from the left. So why not have Olbermann blog from one of the big hot spots of liberalism on the internet?

Daily Live+SD Ratings for January 11, 2008

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The AP writes that Dennis Kucinich has successfully gotten a court to force MSNBC to admit him to its Nevada debate. TVNewser says MSNBC will be appealing though…

Nevada judge said Monday that Democratic presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich must be included in Tuesday’s candidates’ debate in Nevada.

Senior Clark County District Court Judge Charles Thompson said if Kucinich is excluded, he’ll issue an injunction stopping the televised debate.

The judge sided with a lawyer for the Ohio congressman, who says debate host MSNBC at first invited Kucinich to take part and then told him last week he couldn’t.

A lawyer for the network said MSNBC decided to go with the top three candidates after the Iowa and New Hampshire primaries.

Update: Kucinich discussed this on FBN with Neil Cavuto on Cavuto’s program this evening as he got word of it. This was his reaction..

“Neil, I just got a note here from the Associated Press out of Las Vegas. It says ‘A Nevada judge said Monday that Democratic presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich must be included in Tuesday’s candidates’ debate in Nevada’. Holy smokes! I just found out. I have to get off the phone now. I have to make plans to go to Nevada.”

FOX News Channel will provide live coverage of the Michigan Primary on Tuesday, January 15th, beginning at 8PM/ET. Brit Hume will lead the special You Decide 2008 coverage.

FNC’s daytime and primetime coverage will include reports from a team of anchors including Chris Wallace, Neil Cavuto, Megyn Kelly, and Martha McCallum. Also reporting live will be Chief Political Correspondent Carl Cameron and FNC Correspondent Steve Brown.

Earlier ICN noted FBN’s reporting at the Detroit Auto Show. However, CNBC notes that its Auto Reporter Phil LeBeau had interviewed GM CEO Rick Waggoner at 8 am. FBN’s Waggoner interview aired at 8:18 am. It should be noted that FBN never claimed to be first.

MSNBC’s coverage notes on the Michigan Primary and its Nevada debate tomorrow night…

MSNBC presents special live coverage tomorrow night of the Michigan primary, as well as the Democratic presidential debate live from Nevada. Coverage begins with “Hardball with Chris Matthews” live from Las Vegas at 5 and 7 p.m. ET, “Tucker” live at 6 p.m. ET and “Countdown with Keith Olbermann” at 8 p.m. ET.

“NBC Nightly News” anchor Brian Williams will moderate a debate among the Democratic presidential candidates tomorrow, 9-11 p.m. ET, live on MSNBC from the Cashman Center in Las Vegas, Nevada. Sen. Barack Obama, Sen. Hillary Clinton and former Sen. John Edwards will participate. The debate is the first among the Democratic presidential candidates to follow the pivotal New Hampshire primary, and comes just four days before the Nevada caucus on Jan. 19.
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The O’Reilly Factor has launched a new thing called the “No Spin Mobile Alert” for cellphones…

The biggest guests, the hardest-hitting interviews — make sure you’re the first to know who’s going to be on “The Factor!”

Get the No Spin Mobile Alert and each weekday you’ll receive a text message telling you who is going head-to-head with Bill that night! To sign up, text the word “Factor” to FNCTV (36288). Alerts start on January 14, so subscribe now!

CNBC announced a new series of special reports regarding the economy called “The CNBC Edge”. Interesting play on words there…

With the stock market off to its worst year-to-date start since 1991 – a recession year – CNBC, First in Business Worldwide, is introducing a series of new special reports, “The CNBC Edge,” to help viewers navigate these uncertain times. The reports began airing today.

While there is debate among economic experts about whether or not the U.S. is technically in a recession – or headed into one – it is clear investors and business leaders alike have never been in more need of the fast, accurate, actionable, and unbiased information that is the hallmark of CNBC.

Jonathan Wald, Senior Vice President, Business News, CNBC, said, “The ‘CNBC Edge’ will show our viewers there is always money to be made despite the volatility of the market.”
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Blogging Olbermann notes that Playboy had some serious blowback to its Keith Olbermann interview and was openly seeking letters in response to that so the blog’s owner was one of the ones who sent in a letter to Playboy…

I’m sure you all remember the Playboy interview back in September. Shortly after the release of the magazine (and after a couple of discussions of it here on ERT) I was contacted by Playboy editor Chip Rowe via the site’s contact form.

He said that they were getting overwhelmingly negative response on the interview* - mostly for the Fox Noise remarks, though some were just general anti-KO sentiment - and that he’d like to balance that with something positive from someone with my “expertise.” (No, really, that’s the word he used. I quickly denied being an expert on a man I’d never met.) After exchanging several emails, I wrote up a couple of hundred words for him to use on the “Letters to Playboy” page. The letter appears in the January issue, along with this blog’s address.

The Atlanta Journal Constitution’s David Ho writes about CNNMoney.com’s new web video push…(via TVNewser)

Further blurring the line between television and the Internet, Time Warner Inc.’s CNNMoney.com plans a major push into online video starting Tuesday, with an array of original business and financial news clips posted daily.

Executives and editors are betting the site’s new look and a dedicated video team will better serve users, attract lucrative online ads and even take on financial TV networks such as CNBC and the new Fox Business Network.

Caleb Silver, executive producer for video at CNNMoney.com, discusses a story from the Nasdaq Market Site reported by anchor Poppy Harlow. The site plans to move beyond producing one or two original video pieces per day to 15, or even more.

“The future of business television is online,” CNNMoney.com Editor Chris Peacock said. He said his site will soon go from producing one or two original videos each day to 15 or more.

“The audience for business and finance information migrated online very quickly,” Peacock said. “They’re at their desks. They’re an at-work audience. We have a footprint to reach more people through our distribution than I think the classic cable networks can.”

FBN’s Jeff Flock is at the Detroit Auto Show this week and is providing live updates every hour on FBN. Earlier Flock interviewed General Motors Chairman and CEO Rick Wagoner that featured Wagoner walking around the show floor and commenting by the hybrid version of the Malibu, the Chevy Equinox fuel cell vehicle, and the new Hummer concept car HX.

CNN announces a daily Campaign 2008 program airing at 8pm called CNN Election Center. The program will run through Super/Tsunami Tuesday…

CNN starting today will dedicate the 8 p.m. hour each weekday to the latest election news coverage from the campaign trail in a new program, CNN Election Center. Building on CNN’s successes and ratings wins from both the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primaries, CNN Election Center will be anchored by members of the “Best Political Team on Television” from the New York-based CNN Election Center and on the trail by CNN anchor John Roberts.

The program combines CNN’s unrivaled field reporting and analysis with all of the technology that CNN demonstrated on recent primary election nights. Each evening, CNN will report on substantive issues of concern to the American people with policy-oriented questions that will go beyond the minutia of the horse race and Beltway conventions.
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The Hollywood Reporter’s Paul J. Gough profiles Carl Cameron…

For Cameron, returning to New Hampshire is a lot like coming home. He has spent thousands of hours with candidates here since the 1988 election, and it was here where he started his broadcast career in 1983. He rose to the political director position at WMUR, the state’s top TV station, before he joined Fox in 1996.

That means he knows much more about the Granite State than most reporters. “It’s fun to have home-field advantage,” Cameron says.

But he’s more than a one-note reporter. He has crossed the country too many times to count with every major candidate since the 1980s, and earlier this decade he was chief White House correspondent at Fox News before moving back to politics.

In a journalism business of go-getters, Cameron sets the pace. Colleagues and competitors marvel at how he never seems to stop moving.

Cameron acknowledges that last year was pretty busy. He was on the road for 42 weeks in 2007, logging more than 80,000 miles on the campaign trail.

The AP’s David Bauder writes about criticism being leveled at Chris Matthews after the New Hampshire primary…

He’s become the target for critics who think a backlash against the media played a part in Hillary Clinton’s surprise win in New Hampshire. Chris Matthews laughs off that idea, and insists he has a lot of respect for her.

The MSNBC “Hardball” host had more explaining to do after Clinton’s victory when he said that the reason Clinton is a candidate for president “is that her husband messed around.”

“I do like the fact that ‘Hardball’ is a heat-seeker,” the rapid-fire political commentator told The Associated Press. “My job is to provide excitement and to bring it into the show and have people argue about things that they would normally argue about.”

Matthews was the focal point for the anger many women felt at how Clinton’s candidacy seemed to be written off with lightning speed following a loss in Iowa and foreboding poll numbers in New Hampshire. He is a man and he is ever sure of himself.

He also had a history: The liberal watchdog Media Matters for America counted more than eight negative remarks Matthews made about Clinton for every positive one during September, October and November.

The Baltimore Sun’s Kevin Cowherd complains about the graphical clutter infesting cable news…

What is the deal with these shows? Are they trying to drive people crazy?

Can they possibly cram any more information on the screen at one time?

Here is what greets me the other day on CNN as the death-march on the treadmill begins: a split-screen, with a news anchor and reporter blabbing to each other.

The word “Live” is in the upper left-hand corner.

Under that is the big CNN banner and this headline: “BREAKING NEWS: TERROR IN PAKISTAN.”

Under that is the “crawl”: “Florida’s I-4 closed with deadly fog and smoke … update expected today on sole survivor of plane crash in Panama … Iranians dispute U.S. version of incident in the Straits of Hormuz …”

In the lower right corner of the screen is the time.

Under that is the weather and temperature in various U.S. cities.

OK, tell me: Who can possibly absorb all this without going insane?

MSNBC’s Chris Jansing appeared again on WNBC this morning for their 5-7 morning program. ICN has heard this will continue through at least Wednesday. However, an emailer wrote in to say that she announced that she’ll also be on MSNBC at 1pm today.

Update: Richard Huff in the New York Daily News has more…

Thalia Patillo, last seen on WPIX/Ch. 11, turned up as a freelancer at WABC/Ch. 7 last week. MSNBC anchor Chris Jansing filled in on WNBC/Ch.4’s “Today in New York” Friday, which prompted the blogs Inside Cable News and TVnewser to ask if her appearance was more than just subbing vacationing anchor. Not so, said a station spokeswoman, adding Jansing would sub today, tomorrow and Wednesday. “We’re doing synergy with the network,” she said, noting that Jansing was filling a schedule opening…