Variety’s Sam Theilman writes about how the primaries have boosted news ratings…

This time last year, the three cable news nets were filling their programming hours with missing teens, miscreant celebs and Anna Nicole Smith. This year, with topsy-turvy primary races in both parties, they’ve found gold in parsing every facet of the campaigns and the latest polling numbers.

Fox News Channel’s VP of newsgathering John Stack says you need look no further than last week’s Florida primary for why the election makes for good TV.

Stack spoke to Variety on Jan. 30, when his point was being illustrated by the day’s breaking news.

“Today you had the results from Florida, and then the speculation that (Rudy) Giuliani would drop out, and then the surprise that (John) Edwards was dropping out, and that suits the 24-hour format really well,” he says.

Political fever seems to be more pervasive than ever. MSNBC has drawn on NBC heavyweights Tim Russert and Matt Lauer to pump up its debates. CNN is opening the floodgates for a 40-hour marathon of Super Tuesday coverage. Fox’s broadcast net was even planning to showcase FNC’s Shepard Smith with a three-hour programming block in which Smith and fellow cablers Bill Hemmer and Megyn Kelly reported on politics and football before the Super Bowl on Feb. 3.

In a must read, Variety’s John Dempsey writes about MSNBC and interviews Phil Griffin.

“Are any of CNN’s on-air personalities ever having any fun?”

In barking out that question, Phil Griffin, the NBC News executive in charge of MSNBC, practically leaps out of his chair, intent on making the point that his network may be gaining on CNN for an oddball reason: Griffin provokes his star personalities — led by Keith Olbermann — to at least look as if they’re having a good time, even when they’re voicing strong opinions and tangling with their guests.

Griffin is not confusing MSNBC with the Ringling Bros. Circus, but, looking for a leg up on his all-news rivals, he says, “I want our hosts to be witty and clever, colorful and exciting.”

MSNBC needs to keep tinkering with the on-air formula, because the network is still an also-ran, lodged in third place behind the dominant Fox News Channel and steady No. 2 CNN.

But glomming onto the hottest race for U.S. president in decades, MSNBC is pulling in more viewers than at any other time since the few months after 9/11. (CNN has also made significant gains due to the election, while Fox News has benefited the least of the three.)

Ok, primetime is doing well and has been a sign of good things for the network. But daytime news is in trouble in the ratings and Variety doesn’t go anywhere near that subject. That, in my opinion, makes the article look like it comes from “The Glass Half Full” file rather than an even handed examination of MSNBC.

Update: I should also note that while Dempsey may be correct that FNC had the smallest percentage gain, it did rank as the 4th highest cable channel in January while CNN and MSNBC were 20th and 28th respectively. And that’s nothing to sneeze at…

Totally off topic post here but CBS just launched a Katie Couric channel on YouTube within the past hour (6:52pm ET). I wouldn’t normally touch this but I’m probably the first blog to note it so I’m not going to throw away a possible scoop, albeit an off topic possible scoop…

Update: Someone at CBS is playing games with the video. The above embed link went bad when the video was yanked. But I found a new version and re-embedded. If this one goes bad, email me…

FNC/FBN anchor Neil Cavuto will be part of the pre-game coverage for FOX Super Sunday, with a segment airing at 3:55 PM/EST on your local FOX broadcast station.

Cavuto will interview real estate tycoon Donald Trump and former GE Chairman Jack Welch on the business and economics of Sunday’s game – from expensive game tickets and big-budget commercials, to record sales of half-time performers, big-screen TV purchases, game merchandise and parties.

Following up on this, last night during Dan Abrams Beat the Press segment, Abrams defended Fox and Friends for getting blindsided by Montel…

MSNBC announced that Tim Russert’s MSNBC program this weekend will preview Super Tuesday…

TIME’s Joe Klein, The Washington Post’s E.J. Dionne, and Tucker Carlson, host of MSNBC’s “Tucker,” will appear on this week’s edition of “Tim Russert” on MSNBC. Just days before Super Tuesday, Klein, Dionne, Carlson, and Russert preview the races in the more than 20 states holding their presidential primaries or caucuses on Feb. 5.

“Tim Russert” features interviews with the country’s most intriguing policymakers, authors, journalists and others, and provides in-depth discussions on politics, entertainment and the media.

Tim Russert is host of “Tim Russert.” Barbara Fant is the executive producer.

CNBC has already put up a special page on CNBC.com for the Microsoft attempted aquisition of Yahoo! which contains a round up of everything that’s happened today…and a lot of video clips of CNBC broadcasts.

Olbermann Watch notes that Bill O’Reilly will be attacking NBC News in general and Steve Capus in particular, apparently because there was an NBC camera crew at the so called veteran protest event.

I don’t think O’Reilly has much of a case with Capus. The chance that Capus would be in a position to know; that he’s that much of a micro-manager that he could know, seems pretty thin to me. That’d be like holding Roger Ailes accountable for O’Reilly getting in a tussle with an Obama staffer at a rally. “Ailes should know what his staff is up to at all times and is responsible for their conduct and he should have prevented O’Reilly from creating a spectacle.” Yeah, right. O’Reilly is responsible for his own actions just as whoever ok’d that camera crew was.

If O’Reilly wants to criticize someone sending a camera crew to document an event that wasn’t, great. That’s fine. I think the question deserves to be asked why an NBC crew was tipped to this event and what their motivation was for being there, though it seems pretty damn obvious to me what the answers are and who was in the loop. But lay the blame where it belongs, with the guys who knew this was happening and authorized it.

As usual when O’Reilly and elements at NBC News are involved, facts and reality take a backseat to propaganda and talking points. On both sides of the battle.

Big Head D.C. notes that Media Matters has started a Chris Matthews monitoring program…

Tim Armstrong, President of North American Advertising and Sales for Google, gave FBN’s Peter Barnes his company’s first reaction to the potential deal between Microsoft and Yahoo. Armstrong said:

“I think we compete against both of those companies. We also partner with both of those companies so we’re as interested as anyone in what the outcome will be.”

When asked if Google is nervous about the potential deal, Armstrong said, “I don’t think so. We had our quarterly results last night. We feel the Internet is a big, healthy environment for us and I think we feel confident in our business and the decisions we’re making. We’re more nervous about making sure we stay focused ourselves.”

TV Guide’s Anthony Layser has an interview with Bill Hemmer…

TVGuide.com: The debates seem to be getting a lot of viewers, and record turnout has been reported in many of the early primaries. To what do you attribute all this interest?

Hemmer: I think there’s a lot on the line. We have a situation where a sitting president is not eligible for the White House. You have a number of candidates. Still, today we have Romney, McCain, Huckabee, Obama and Clinton. That draws in large cross-sections of the public.

TVGuide.com: Well, it’s officially a two-horse race for the Democratic nomination and it’s basically down to McCain and Romney for the Republicans. You’ve been keeping a close eye on the race. Did you foresee things shaping up like this?

Hemmer: I don’t think anyone would have been able to predict how this would shape up. They might’ve guessed, but I don’t think anyone could’ve nailed down the nuance and the strategy involved. I was in Des Moines the night Mike Huckabee won. His campaign staff was calling all over town to get a stage for their candidate to stand on to make his victory speech. It was a stunner. I don’t know anyone who could’ve predicted that.

FOX News Sunday has booked both Hillary Clinton and John McCain - the two frontrunners for the Democratic and Republican nominations for President – for this coming Super Bowl Sunday, February 3rd. Fox News Sunday will be the only Sunday program to feature both candidates…

And here are your Shepard Smith interviews for the day.

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel’s Tim Cuprisin…

The broadcast berth may open Fox’s news product to a new audience, and Smith is happy about that prospect.

“There’s a perception out there that we have a horse in the race, that we’re the right-wing channel,” he says. “You know, man, I work here. Hannity’s right-wing and he’s proud of it, and we have some conservative viewers, but our news is just the news . . . or I wouldn’t be able to sleep at night.”

The Houston Chronicle’s David Barron…
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