CNN announced the upcoming launch of CNN Chile…

Turner Broadcasting System (TBS) Latin America, Inc., the division of TimeWarner, Inc. responsible for CNN’s commercial operations in Latin America, and VTR, a division of Liberty Global Inc., will partner to launch CNN Chile, the first 24-hour, pay television news network specifically programmed for the Chilean market. The channel is scheduled to debut this year on VTR and will be available to other pay television systems.
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The Atlanta Journal Constitution’s David Ho writtes about CNN’s new iReport.com…

Unlike CNN’s current effort, in which editors screen material before putting a selection on TV or CNN.com, the new site will have a wide-open environment akin to YouTube and social networking sites.

“We’re letting it live and breathe on its own so everybody can see all the great stuff people are sending in,” said Susan Grant, executive vice president of CNN News Services.

The new site builds on the phenomenon of citizen journalism, which is booming thanks to the Internet and technology such as cellphone cameras and wireless hand-held devices.

“Some of these folks are very passionate about covering news or particular topics or wanting to interact with us or each other,” Grant said.

People submit more than 10,000 iReport items to CNN each month, but only about 10 percent are approved for use online or on the air, spokeswoman Jennifer Martin said, largely because CNN has limited resources to review the material.

Following Wednesday’s launch and about a month of testing to fix problems and get comments, a formal rollout of the Web site is planned for March. The site’s initial address is beta.ireport.com.

CNN announced it will premiere CNN: Special Investigations Unit – The First Patient: Health & the Presidency Saturday, February 16th at 8pm ET…

Amid the 2008 campaign for U.S. president, CNN chief medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta takes a physician’s look at the health of U.S. presidents and the current candidates and how the high stress of campaigning and governing can affect health. He also reports how a president is treated for sickness or injury at the White House, on Air Force One and while traveling in the United States and abroad.
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CNN announced that Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama will debate on the network next week, February 21st. This does alter the likelihood that Clinton could pull out of the MSNBC debate with another debate in the offing so soon. But I still believe she won’t; that it would hurt her more than help her. Given the tightness of the race betweem the two she needs the publicity that a debate would generate.

CNN, Univision Communications Inc. and the Texas Democratic Party in conjunction with the Lyndon B. Johnson Foundation will host a Democratic presidential primary debate on Thursday, Feb. 21. Both Sen. Hillary Clinton and Sen. Barack Obama have accepted invitations to the debate. The program will air live from the LBJ Auditorium at the University of Texas in Austin on CNN and on CNN International from 8 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. (ET)/7p.m. to 8:30 p.m. (CT) and will air in Spanish on the Univision Network beginning at 11:30 p.m. (ET)/10:30 p.m. (CT). It will also stream live on CNN.com and will later be available on demand on both on Univision.com and CNN.com. It will also re-air on CNN and CNN en Español.
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The New York Observer’s John Koblin writes about Richard Greene leaving The Politico for CNN where he’ll be the news desk editor for CNN Wire…

The Philadelphia Inquirer’s Michael Klein writes about Carol Costello…(via FTVLive)

CNN’s Carol Costello was spotted at CBS3 last week, interviewing for the anchoring chair formerly held by Alycia Lane. A job here would put the New York-based Costello closer to her husband, Timothy Law Snyder, who last year moved from Fairfield U in Connecticut to a high-level job at Loyola College in Maryland.

Page Six notes that apparently John Edwards isn’t the only one boycotting FNC…

THE folks at Fox News Channel are magnanimous enough to put their rivals from CNN on air, but CNN isn’t big enough to return the favor. Geraldo Rivera - who has a new book coming out, “His Panic: Why Americans Fear Hispanics in the U.S.” - was booked to appear on Nancy Grace’s CNN show on Feb. 28. But then he was disinvited and told CNN had “a blanket boycott” against anyone from Fox. ” ‘The Most Trusted Name in News’ just chickened out,” Rivera told Page Six. “This reveals a corporate insecurity.” Fox has had on as guests both Wolf Blitzer and Glenn Beck. A CNN rep denied any boycott and blamed a scheduling conflict.

Scheduling conflict? How can a program have a secheduling conflict…that far in advance? If it really was a scheduling conflict, the standard procedure would be to rebook the guest at another date. Unless they really didn’t want him there…

AdWeek’s Mike Shields reveals the big mystery of why CNN would shell out $750,000 to get ahold of the domain name iReport.com.

Since CNN embraced the citizen journalist movement back in August 2006 with the launch of its iReport initiative, the news organization has received nearly 100,000 news-related photos and videos from viewers, including nearly 10,000 this past January alone. Yet less than 10 percent of those submissions have appeared on CNN.com or the cable channel.

That’s all about to change. Time Warner’s CNN this week will enter YouTube territory with the launch of iReport.com, a new Web site built entirely on user-produced news. And unlike CNN’s own properties — where only iReport submissions that have been handpicked by editors and checked for accuracy ever make it online or on air — the new site will be wide open, allowing users to post whatever content they choose, CNN told Mediaweek exclusively.

The new site looks and feels much like YouTube and other video-centric destinations. Wanna-be Anderson Coopers can upload videos, photos and audio files through an easy-to-use interface. Visitors to the site can search for specific clips or sift through various news categories, such as politics or weather. Users also can rate and share clips, and even embed them on personal Web sites.

The David Shuster mess was one of the subjects discussed on CNN’s Reliable Sources with Howard Kurtz today. Transcript follows…

KURTZ: The youngest member of the Clinton family has been slimed. In a discussion of Chelsea Clinton’s role in her mother’s presidential campaign this week, MSNBC correspondent David Shuster had this to say…

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DAVID SHUSTER, MSNBC: Chelsea is out there calling up celebrities saying, support my mom. And apparently she’s also calling the superdelegates.

Doesn’t it seem like Chelsea’s sort of being pimped out in some weird sort of way?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KURTZ: Pimped out? Excuse me? What an awful choice of words.
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Colin Powell was interviewed by Wolf Blitzer this afternoon in The Situation Room regarding the 2008 elections. Transcript highlights follow…

POWELL: I will ultimately vote for the person I believe brings to the American people the kind of vision the American people want to see for the next four years. A vision that reaches out to the rest of the world, that starts to restore confidence in America, that starts to restore favorable ratings to America.

Frankly, we’ve lost a lot in recent years…I am a Republican, but I am keeping my options open at the moment. And I am in touch with the candidates.
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TV Squad’s Bob Sassone pens a letter to Anderson Cooper…

It would be one thing if Soledad O’Brien was doing it on her old MSNBC show The Site (ah, memories) since that show was about the web and technology. And I’m sure this would fit in well over on G4 too. But I don’t know if I want you or Katie Couric or Brian Williams actually live blogging while the news is going on.

You certainly don’t have time to blog anything too worthwhile (at least I hope you don’t - you must already be busy during commercial breaks), and it could just turn into some lame attempt at “interactivity.” In the comments last night, you answered a viewer’s question about Britney Spears and told us you were taking TheraFlu for a cold (that stuff is good - I took Comtrex one time and it made me feel worse). Yeah, that’s fun and all, but I just find it a bit disappointing that everything we do now has to have some “multi-tasking” aspect to it. I’d rather you do the show and then blog when you’re not on the air. It won’t interrupt what you’re doing on the show, and the blog posts will be more substantial.

The Daily Pensylvanian’s Rishav Kanoria writes about Jonathan Klein’s appearance at the Annenberg Center…

Throughout the event Klein highlighted the success and appeal of CNN’s top two reporters: Cooper and Wolf Blitzer.

Klein also stressed the importance of the 10 p.m. time slot, which he considered to be emblematic of the network. He felt the network needed to revamp its style because “the stoogey, stuck-up reporter of the past is of the past.”

Continuing to speak about Cooper, Klein called him FOX News’ nightmare, rebutting a statement by FOX’s spokesperson which had dubbed Cooper ‘the Paris Hilton of TV news.’

Then Klein addressed questions about covering the presidential elections.

With the first election in decades in which none of the front runners for the presidency is an incumbent, Klein feels that there is much more at stake for voters in this election.

He believes MSNBC takes a left-wing stance and FOX takes a right-wing stance, which leaves the vast middle open for CNN. He said that the network is committed to being “aggressively independent brokers of information.”

Anderson Cooper is FNC’s nightmare? What do the ratings say about that?

Update: I don’t have Demo data but in Total Viewers, On The Record has beaten AC 360 in Total Viewers for 69 straight months…

Correction: On the Record has been #1 in the 10pm timeslot for 69 months. But that goes back to when Aaron Brown was on the air at CNN. Since AC 360 took over that slot On the Record has been #1 in Total Viewers for 26 months.

CNN will air a special called This Week in Politics this Saturday, February 9th at 7pm ET…

A special election program called This Week in Politics, will air Saturday, Feb. 9 from 7 p.m. to 8 p.m. (ET). Anchored by Tom Foreman, This Week in Politics will analyze key moments in the race to the White House and preview upcoming caucus and primary contests.

CNN correspondents and guests will discuss a wide range of topics including Saturday’s primary showdown, the impact superdelegates have on the race, whether candidates have the money to sustain their campaigns, and which of the presidential hopefuls benefit from the youth vote. Joining Tom Foreman to discuss these issues will be Donna Brazile, CNN contributor and Democratic strategist; Jeanne Cummings, POLITICO chief money and lobbying correspondent; Rich Galen, Republican strategist; Mark Halperin, senior political analyst for TIME magazine; Suzanne Malveaux, CNN White House correspondent; Bill Schneider, CNN senior political analyst; and Evan Tracey, chief operating officer of Campaign Media Analyst Group.
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The Orlando Sentinel’s Hal Boedeker blogs about Super Tuesday…

William Bennett hinted at strains in the CNN team, anyway. He voiced his unhappiness at being seated at a back table behind another group of analysts. Who could blame him? Maybe CNN should go with a two-tiered set, a throwback to “Match Game.”

CNN, however, was very good at the nuts and bolts of primary reporting. The best reason to stick with CNN was John King’s analyses of state maps, a true advance in election reporting.

Over on MSNBC, Chris Matthews and Keith Olbermann seemed locked in a contest to upstage each other. That jockeying was tiresome, too.

The most fascinating moments on Fox News Channel? Former Bush adviser Karl Rove provided analysis. He probably turned off a lot of viewers, but he riveted others with his knowledge.

CNN put out a release noting its ratings for Super Tuesday…

On Super Tuesday, CNN was the #1 cable news network, out-delivering both Fox News and MSNBC in primetime (8–11p) and throughout the network’s extended election coverage from 8p to 2a. During primetime (8-11p), CNN averaged an impressive 3.646 million total viewers, FOX News placed second with 3.493 million and MSNBC was third with 2.118 million. In the key demographic P25-54 during primetime, CNN was also top-rated with 1.526 million, FOX News had 1.094 million and MSNBC had 1.029 million.
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GretaWire takes on David Zurawik over his comments last night on Super Tuesday and Campbell Brown…

Let me be one of the first to welcome my woman competition to cable news prime time — Campbell Brown. Then let me be the very first to say - shame on you to Baltimore Sun’s David Zurawik who wrote this (and I hope that his women colleagues at the Baltimore Sun have a little talk with him):

[snippage]

What’s with this? Doesn’t this guy like the women? If this is so easy do television, why isn’t this guy at the Baltimore Sun on the air? Let me make plain: I want to beat Campbell Brown but not at the expense of jerks being unfair to her….she has gotten to where she is the old fashion way — she earned it!!….(one other thing…I guess this reporter was too busy whacking the women to notice all the stupid predictions by some of the men ….oops….)

Both MSNBC and FCN have called California for Clinton and McCain. CNN has not as of 12:23am ET…

Update: Projection times…

Clinton
MSNBC - 12:12
FNC - 12:13

McCain
FNC - 12:13
MSNBC - 12:19

Update 2: CNN calls it at 12:25

The Baltimore Sun’s David Zurawik has a blog entry saying that Campbell Brown’s appearance on CNN’s Super Tuesday coverage was not needed…

Of all the extra star power added to the political coverage on all the networks and cable channels Tuesday night, none seemed as big mistake as CNN’s Campbell Brown (left).

First, CNN had no need for another featured anchor. Wolf Blitzer and Anderson Cooper have been doing an outstanding job of keeping the political telecasts moving swiftly from one location and field reporter to another, one expert to the next. And who has more experts and field reporters than CNN?

So why add Brown to the mix in such an expanded role — one that was clearly beyond her talents? And why was she so heavily made up and dressed to look like someone headed for a cocktail party instead of an anchor chair on one of the most important nights in the history of American politics?

Ouch.

CNN’s Campbell Brown interviewed Mike Huckabee earlier tonight. Transcript follows…

BROWN: And we want to go now to Governor Mike Huckabee, who is
joining us.

Are you there, Governor?

HUCKABEE: I’m right here, Campbell. Thank you very much.
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Everyone is thinking politics tonight but that doesn’t mean there isn’t news of note going on. At 7:36pm ET, CNN transitioned from political coverage to news on the severe storms in the Super Tuesday state of Tennessee.

Update: I’ve seen MSNBC (and NBC) dip into covering the weather situation in Tennessee as well. I don’t know if FNC has or not. Channel hopping means I miss 2/3 of the coverage at all times.

The Washington Post’s Paul Farhi writes about CNN’s Video Wall technology…

The device will get its biggest workout of the election season tonight with the Super Tuesday primaries and caucuses — 24 states, hundreds of delegates and a river of numbers.

“It’s a stupendous way to explain a lot of complicated data,” says David Bohrman, chief producer of CNN’s political coverage. “Fundamentally, our job is to explain things to people, and we need to do it visually. This lets us do it naturally, without a keyboard or mouse getting in the way.”

CNN has been counting on The Wall to add a little sizzle to its election coverage, typically a visually dry TV-news account. The cable network first deployed The Wall in early January for the Iowa caucuses and has used it for every primary contest since. CNN eventually plans to employ the device for other types of coverage.

Bohrman spotted The Wall last fall while trawling the aisles of a Texas trade show for government and military-intelligence contractors. A demonstration, he said, “stopped me in my tracks. Once you see it, you get it instantly.”

CNN announced that it will be doing a live event on Super Tuesday from the Time-Warner Center in New York at 12pm ET…

CNN and TIME magazine combine the expertise of their top political correspondents in front of a live studio audience for “CNN-TIME America Votes 2008” as Americans vote on Super Tuesday, the most important primary day of the 2008 election.

“CNN-TIME America Votes 2008,” airing on Feb. 5 at noon (ET) will feature CNN’s Emmy Award-winning political lineup as well as top members of TIME’s political team as they examine the presidential candidates and the issues facing 2008 voters as they head to the polls. The special will broadcast from the Time Warner Center in New York City as part of the “Time Warner Conversations on the Circle” series.
Anchored by Campbell Brown, the program will feature three panels:
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CNN announced its coverage plans for Super Tuesday…

Building upon growing viewership and unrivaled coverage to date, CNN’s Best Political Team on Television goes around the clock with 40 hours of non-stop political programming and employs the most innovative presentation of election results in history for its coverage of Super Tuesday.

Based at the CNN Election Center in New York and with top political correspondents and analysts positioned in key battleground states across the nation, lead political anchor Wolf Blitzer, joined by Lou Dobbs, Anderson Cooper, Soledad O’Brien and Campbell Brown, will guide the network’s special coverage, along with CNN’s team of political analysts and reporters. In addition, the CNN Election Center undergoes its biggest test of the election season to date as voters in 24 states head to the polls.
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On the heels of CNN’s big broadband video initiative push for CNNMoney.com, January was a record setting traffic month for the site. Records were set in the following key metrics (based on Omniture data):

- Monthly Unique Vistors – 27.7 Million (up 15% versus the previous high)

- Monthly Page Views – 422 Million (again up 15% versus the previous high month)

- Video Streams – 8 Million (over 5x greater than the previous high)

(From today’s print edition of The New York Times, page C1)

Memo to the Times: Joe Klein was the author of Primary Colors. Jonathan Klein is the President of CNN. But at least the Times is being consistent. The web version has the same gaffe…

First James Carville and Paul Begala were sidelined from the analyst ranks by CNN because of concerns by the Obama campaign about the pairs ties to the Clintons. Now questions are being raised about another CNN analyst; Bill Bennett. The Huffington Post’s Nico Pitney writes about the story…

Following Wednesday’s GOP debate in Los Angeles, Bennett exclaimed on CNN that he “had three hours of calls this morning of people angry at me because I was defending John McCain.”

“I don’t have a candidate,” he protested. “I haven’t endorsed anybody.”

In fact, on December 31, 2007, Bennett contributed the maximum amount, $4600, to McCain’s campaign. [See Bennett’s fundraising details on Huffington Post’s FundRace.]

Informed of the donations, a CNN official said that Bennett also gave an unspecified amount to Mitt Romney’s campaign in January 2008, which would not show up on the latest campaign filings.

Last month, Talking Points Memo reported that James Carville and Paul Begala had been suspended from CNN until after the Democratic primary because of their support for Sen. Hillary Clinton. The CNN official said Bennett’s situation was different since he had given to more than one candidate.

Broadcasting & Cable’s Ben Grossman notes various aspects of CNN’s Democratic debate in L.A…

During the filming of The Situation Room in front of a massive and rambunctious audience, CNN staffers were desperately trying to quiet the crowd. I suggested to one that next time they needed to borrow those “Quiet Please” signs from PGA Tour golf events. Then one CNN volunteer grabbed a Barack Obama sign and wrote “Quiet Please” on the back. I quietly suggested a CNN staffer probably didn’t want to be carrying around an Obama sign in public right before the debate, and that experiment ended pretty quickly

Post your reactions to CNN’s Democratic Debate here…

CNN announced that Rafer Weigel has joined Morning Express as a sports anchor…

Rafer Weigel will be joining Headline News’ flagship morning program, Morning Express with Robin Meade, as a sports anchor, it was announced today by Ken Jautz, executive vice president of CNN Worldwide. Weigel’s first day on the air will be Monday, Feb. 4, when he provides insights about Sunday’s Super Bowl.

“The addition of Rafer to our Morning Express team gives our audience yet another reason to tune in every morning for all the news they need to kick off the day,” Jautz said. “Rafer’s breadth of experience and enthusiasm for the arena of sports news make him an ideal fit for the high-energy morning lineup. We’re happy to welcome him aboard.”
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The Huffington Post’s Danny Shea blogs about an unfortunate situation that Kyra Phillips created for herself today. With video…

Gerri: Alright Don, you come too.
Kyra: We could bring him along with the girls.
Gerri: Come on!
Kyra: He’s paying! Thanks, Gerri.
Don: A little sandwich!
Kyra: Ooh!
Gerri: Whoa, I have to go now!
Kyra: Yeah, good time. You don’t want to talk about the reverse oreo!

Willis was visibly embarrassed by Phillips’ joke, though Lemon seemed to enjoy it, laughing out loud and announcing, “Oh, she said it! I’m glad she said it.”

There’s one part of CNN’s January numbers release that has me scratching my head and asking questions…

During the 10:00 p.m. time period (M-F), CNN delivered the most viewers in the key demographic P25-54, with 485k viewers, while FNC posted 466k and MSNBC had 338k. In a head-to-head program comparisons, Anderson Cooper 360 was the top-rated program at 10pm throughout January with 382k viewers while FNC’s On the Record with Greta Van Susteren placed second with 360k. This represents CNN’s first monthly 10:00 p.m. time period and program wins in the key demographic P25-54 since November 2001.

Ok, I get that at 10pm CNN had more viewers than FNC in the Demo. But this program name stuff is confusing me because there were chunks of time when On The Record was not on the air but Debate/Primary coverage was. So when CNN says AC 360 beat On The Record, are they factoring out the times when On The Record wasn’t on the air?

Conversely there were times when AC 360 wasn’t officially on the air during primaries and debates but they still flashed the AC 360 bug in the lower thirds, something I already noted, as if to say it was AC 360 even though it would be hard to argue it as such in my opinion. So in addition to factoring out On the Record’s non appearances at 10pm, are they also factoring out AC 360’s non-appearances at 10pm?

If the answer is no to either of those questions, a third question is raised: how can CNN say AC 360 beat On The Record for the month of January then?

I would like to see some better sourcing of exactly what CNN is considering as AC 360 time and what it isn’t. I don’t have this issue with regards to FNC because it’s plainly obvious when On the Record is on the air and when it isn’t.

CNN announced this morning that Scott Zamost had joined the networks Investigative Team as an investigative producer…

Scott Zamost, an investigative journalist who has won nearly every major broadcast journalism award for his hard-hitting reports, has joined CNN as an investigative producer, it was announced today by Mark Nelson, vice president and senior executive producer of CNN Productions. Zamost will be based at the network’s world headquarters in Atlanta.

“For more than 15 years, Scott has maintained a reputation as one of the most astute and accomplished investigative journalists in the country,” Nelson said. “So when we learned that he was seeking new opportunities to expand his investigative efforts, we were not surprised that many networks and news stations actively sought him out. I’m pleased to say we won.”
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The Motley Fool’s Rich Smith notes Geri Willis’ appearance on The Daily Show and then accuses Willis and Stewart of misinterpreting something that Jeff Macke said on Fast Money…

The real irony here is that Stewart actually managed to prove his point, albeit accidentally. Despite having hours, perhaps days, to parse “bald guy’s” statement, he ultimately came up with gibberish. That’s probably forgivable in a comedy host, but I’m amazed that CNN’s “Personal Finance Editor” could listen to the same statement — twice! — and still wind up getting it 100% wrong.

Kind of makes you wonder whether the talking heads on TV are a case of the blind leading the 20/20-sighted. But it does give us a pretty clear answer to Stewart’s question: Can these networks help us understand what’s going on with the economy?

Answer: Nope. Not if they can’t figure it out themselves.

Update: This incident was brought up Monday on Fast Money…
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