ICN is hearing that the fallout from the David Shuster suspension is rocking 30 Rock. Some staffers believe Shuster was thrown to the wolves for two reasons. One, to appease the Clinton campaign and “save” the debate to be aired on MSNBC between Clinton and Obama. Two, because they can; because Shuster is a small fry, a low man on the totem pole, and expendable. The argument would be it wouldn’t have happened to someone higher up, more important, like Olbermann or Matthews.

There may be something to both points. But at the same time I believe that’s totally irrelevent to the matter at hand. When you get right down to it, what Shuster said merited punishment of some sort. Suspension may have been severe but not something that shouldn’t have been on the table. The fact is Shuster has been dancing on the edge for years now in his reporting and commentary. When you live on the edge like that for that long, eventually you’re going to go too far. Just ask Don Imus. Imus, by the way, would be a rebuttal to the point that Shuster only got a time out because he’s small fry. They fired Imus and MSNBC’s morning ratings cratered and still haven’t recovered to where they were before he got fired.

This incident does however raise an issue that concerns MSNBC of late. And when I say of late, I mean over half a year.
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MSNBC is losing its most skilled dayside news anchor and interviewer and NBC is gaining one heck of a correspondent. That should be the end of this story but I suppose I could go on…
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During the months of November and December, in the head to head matchup between dayside Monday to Friday 9-5pm newscasts, HLN beat MSNBC; the first time this has happened in over a year. Here are the numbers…

November 9am-5pm Live+SD ratings

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I think year end articles are overdone…it’s like sort of obligatory that you have to do one to wrap up the year whether it’s really warranted or not. Nontheless I decided to do one. But, what would I write about?

Well I could have written about CNN’s changes through the year. American Morning lost an hour, CNN said so long to Daryn Kagan and Carol Lin, cut back on its weekend news a bit, renamed Live From to CNN Newsroom (welcoming Don Lemon and TJ Holmes to the newscast), debuting the hi tech newsroom in New York City, bringing Zain Verjee over from CNN International first to The Situation Room and then later installing her at the State Department.

And I could have written about the changes at HLN. Glenn Beck’s show premiered and has started creeping up in the ratings, the anchor lineup during the day was changed not once, not twice, but three times which saw Kathleen Kennedy and Thomas Roberts get essentially demoted, Stephen Frasier moved to CNN International, and Sophia Choi let go (much to my consternation) while Robin & Company added an hour and Christi Paul moved from weekend tape to live news at 10 am.
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Ok, here’s what I don’t get about today’s Jossip item. According to Jossip, Jonathan Klein has his hands all over Larry King Live. But here’s the problem. This story rang old bells for me and I did a search of the blog regarding King’s show. Back in August 24th of 2005, The New York Times’ Bill Carter wrote an article about the Bob Costas no-show substitution on Larry King Live regarding a Natalee Holloway show. According to Carter’s write up, Klein is on record as saying that King’s people pick their own subjects and King has earned the right to do whatever he wants…

Nor, apparently, does Mr. Klein directly influence the content of Mr. King’s program, which has also frequently dived into the Holloway case. Mr. Klein said that Mr. King’s producers have wide autonomy.

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“Larry is sui generis,” Mr. Klein said. “Larry does what Larry does. He has earned the right to pick his own topics.”

If one reads into the above, one comes away with the conclusion that Klein has nothing to do with King’s show. But according to Jossip, the exact opposite is the case. So which is it? Both stories could be correct only if Klein changed his position regarding King’s show’s autonomy. I have no way of knowing if that’s the case or not. But the contradictory nature of the two stories raises lots of questions.

Paul Bedard’s Washington Whispers column notes the The Situation Room’s 1st Anniversary and features a mini-interview with Wolf Blitzer…

While the show is a fast-paced combination of hard news and gizmology, some worry it overexposes Blitzer, on TV at least 17 hours a week when you add in his Sunday talk show. The public’s reaction? They seem to want more: He’s much better rated than some of the programs previously in his time slots. And despite the hours, he’s still got time to phone and E-mail his family and pals during commercials and attend baseball and basketball games. “You try to have a balanced life,” he says, “and make sure you’re not just obsessed with one part of it.”

It’s been nearly a year since the space shuttle Discovery last launched. I’ve said this before but it bears repeating. I’m a space junkie. I live for this sort of thing. Sometimes if nothing interesting is on TV I’ll switch over to the NASA Channel just to see what’s going on in space.

Last time I was looking at this as a two network race between CNN and MSNBC/NBC’s teams. However the aborted launch threw everything out of whack and when the shuttle finally did launch, NBC opted not to throw everything at it a 2nd time and it showed.
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There’s been a lot of news lately about what’s going on with The Demo in Cable News. But what do the numbers really say? Well if you look at what has gone on this year so far, the early trend, and I emphasize the world “early”, suggests that CNN is trending down in the Primetime Demo while FNC and MSNBC are mixed with both having gone up and down.
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Bill O’Reilly came alive last night to try to lay the ratings smackdown on CNN and MSNBC…

The ratings for April are in, and here at “The Factor,” we improved our total audience over April 2005. A nice achievement since the pope died last April, and there was huge interest in that story. We thank you all very much.

But if you read some of the FOX-hating print press, you’d never know how well we’re doing, actually, because the writers in The Los Angeles Times and Rocky Mountain News, among others, want to prop up our competition.

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This morning MSNBC ran a half hour special on the Oklahoma City bombing which featured a rebroadcast of a Rita Cosby interview with Josh Nichols. I assume this special will get repeated later on today at some point, as the previous specials this week have.

A pattern is starting to emerge here with these specials. It seems that MSNBC is centering these specials around stories that aired on their primetime shows. So far the specials have relied heavily on material which aired on Live & Direct and The Abrams Report. Though the specials and their subsequent re-airing later on in the day certainly could look like a budget cutting move because it means one hour less of live news to produce, this may be something else entirely. Namely, this could be another way of trying to promote primetime in the daytime.
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Yesterday I noted MSNBC’s format change from Noon to 4 pm ET and how it was more or less a carbon copy of Headline News, though I’m sure MSNBC and NBC News Executives would vigorously deny or reject any direct comparisons. I was rushed yesterday when writing it up because the Blogsome servers have been really bad the past few days as they’re migrating to a distributed system so I didn’t really take time to say why I think this format is a bad move in a way that accurately expresses my points…

The fundamental issue here, as it has been since MSNBC’s beginning, is a question of purpose. What is MSNBC’s purpose? Is it a news channel? Is it a headline channel? Is it a talk channel? Is it to compete with CNN and FNC? Is it to compete with HLN? Therein lies the problem because MSNBC is sending mixed signals.
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Being at work I don’t get to watch wall to wall cable news coverage so I only caught bits and pieces of MSNBC’s format change today. It wasn’t until I got home and checked the ReplayTV that the full extent of MSNBC’s changes became apparent.

Today MSNBC more or less became CNN Headline News from Noon to 4 pm ET, only slightly more stagnant than HLN is (and that is a tall order). The usual HLN traits were all there for you to see…
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Interesting what popped up on TVNewser today from a “CNN employee”….

Anderson Cooper did not just have a good run reporting from the field on one story and get his own show like Ashleigh Banfield. Cooper has anchored a weekday program for over a year and weekends for a year before that. He has delivered real ratings and has a real following…not something imagined or speculated about as in the MSNBC case. The comparison is a sham and should be off the website.

Keep in mind Anderson has not just been a show anchor — he anchored WEEKS of War Coverage during the breaking news overnight period when ALL the news was unfolding from the field and he was virtually flawless. There is no tougher anchor role than that. That was when he earned his stripes and got his own weekday program. Since then he’s not only risen as an anchor but in subsequent stories from the Tsunami, to Schiavo, to the Pope’s death, to the Iraqi elections, to the famine in Niger, to the hurricanes. He dwarfs Banfield in every way…even longevity ALREADY

I quote this in full because it deserves examination. Clearly the sudden Banfied references being applied to Cooper in two different columns on both coasts of the U.S. simultaneously, which were subequently picked up on by all the sites, is a monkey wrench that CNN had neither anticipated nor wanted thrown into their carefully coreographed rollout of the the new CNN primetime lineup. One wonders how high up in the CNN chain this comment came from.
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Ok, I may not be the fastest on the uptake. But something is up with how MSNBC is handling promotion of its Ethical Edge series. I have noted in the past about the way MSNBC has buried its weekend programming specials with little or no advance promotion. The only off network mention the last installment received as far as I could see came from my Q&A with the show’s host.

But this time something different has happened. Although there has still been little or no TV advertising of this Sunday’s special so far, which is still a big problem in my mind, there has been a noticeable uptick in print promotion in the form of newspaper articles. Yesterday, blurbs appeared in the Wall Street Journal and in a syndicated AP article that I’ve seen in the Jackson Hole Star Ledger and the San Francisco Chronicle. And both were positive.

Now, today Linda Stasi in the New York Post devotes a full article to the show that is positively glowing (though Father Thomas Williams might be a wee bit embarrassed by Stasi’s characterization of him)….
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Although completing a last second video project forced me to not blog this weekend, I was able to watch a lot of the coverage from the cable channels. Of my impressions of the coverages of the three networks, the thing that stood out to me the most was how FNC really stepped up this time, to an extent that matched CNN in terms of the A level talent in the field. Smith, Van Susteren, Rivera, Hemmer, and McCallum were all on location throughout the south. Even their meteorology department kicked it up big time with the Titan Nowcasting service. In the past I could fault FNC for not delivering the kind of visual forecast that CNN and MSNBC could deliver. But not this time. Titan may not be NBC Weather Plus’ 3D:Live, but it was good enough.
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FOX News announced some Saturday coverage changes due to the hurricane disaster…

FOX will present a two hour live special of “Cost of Freedom” on Saturday from 10-12 am EST. Hosted by Neil Cavuto, the business program will go in-depth to examine the financial effects of Hurricane Katrina on the U.S. economy. Cavuto will discuss the impact of Katrina on the stock market, how the booming housing market will recover from the destruction, and what this will do to oil and gas prices. He will look at the jobs and businesses lost to Katrina and the affects on workers in the area and the nation’s job market. Additionally, Cavuto will offer tips on protecting one’s money and assets from future natural disasters. Special guests and business block contributors Steve Forbes, Jim Michaels, Tobin Smith, Scott Bleier and Jonathan Hoenig will join Cavuto.

On Saturday night at 8pm EST, FOX will air a three hour live special, “America’s Challenge” that will include breaking news updates from locations impacted by Hurricane Katrina. Anchored by Alan Colmes and Sean Hannity, the program will feature coverage by Greta Van Susteren in Houston, Texas and on-site reporting from Geraldo Rivera.

Fox News Radio will also be presenting a three-hour special program on Saturday from 9-12 am called “Hurricane Katrina: America on the Rebound” and hosted by John Gibson with live reports from correspondents and anchors on location in areas impacted by Katrina.

Ever since CNN lost the Cable News lead in the ratings to FOX News Channel, the network has gone through a succession of overhauls and makeovers (along with several network Presidents) in an attempt at regaining that lead. The latest “makeover” has been in progress since Jonathan Klein took over running CNN. While the overhaul is still a work in progress and more time is needed before the new format can be fully realized, enough has happened to see the direction CNN is going in.
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On Monday, Rita Cosby’s new MSNBC program “Live and Direct” will premiere. There’s a lot riding on this show for MSNBC. The Situation was bumped to 11 pm EST to make room for this show and it is a given that MSNBC hopes that Live and Direct will perform much stronger than that show did in the 9 pm timeslot. ICN believes that the show will either live or die based on two things…
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TVNewser says he’s hearing NBC News is facing a 50 million dollar cutback. ICN first blogged on the potential trouble NBC’s 600 million shortfall (at the time…it eventually wound up being 800 million) in projected ad rates issue back in June. Back then ICN suggested that NBC News would be targeted for cutbacks. 50 million is a large number though. What gets cut?
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Tomorrow the July numbers will be out officially. ICN decided to get a sneak peak out today and spent some time flexing our Excel muscles and practicing data entry.
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MSNBC fired off the first volley tonight in tomorrow’s Shuttle re-launch coverage wars with their (postponed from Sunday due to the Hurricane) special titled “Return To Flight”. And judging by the show, MSNBC (and by extentsion NBC) threw down the gauntlet at CNN, and to a much lesser extent FOX News, to match it.

Hosted by Chris Jansing and benefitting from a last second accident similar in style to what caused Columbia to disintegrate on re-entry two years ago and which threatened to postpone tomorrow’s launch until a survey revealed the damage was repairable, the show was sharp and very informative; going into painstaking detail of what NASA did to address previous problems and what the mission of Discovery will be. The shuttle will be primarily testing a wide array of new methods to diagnose and analyze the shuttle in the case of damage. Tonight’s broadcast included new 3D animations of the various maneuvers the shuttle will perform while in space. These will undoubtedly get heavy rotation in the days to come. NBC and MSNBC clearly think they have the edge on this story with a team of space journalism veterans led by Jay Barbree and Robert Hager, who came out of retirement for this story. They’ve also brought in meterologist Sean McLaughlin who will be providing half hour weather updates throughout tomorrow from the Cape with specialized equipment that graphically illustrates the “No Launch Zone” where any cloud cover within a certain radius will stop the launch from happening. NBC is going to be relatively light on the coverage tomorrow so most of the resources will be aimed squarely at MSNBC.

MSNBC’s primary competition on this story will be coming from CNN. CNN will have Miles O’Brien anchoring the coverage. O’Brien was this close to being named the first journalist in space when the Discovery disaster permanently derailed those plans. CNN will have its own array of experts to provide color to the mission. CNN’s special Return To Flight web page is impressive. It’s chock full of stats and information including a breakdown of the shuttle misson by day, a bio page for each crew member, and a countdown clock and a lot of free video links. MSNBC.com has its own dedicated shuttle page with many of the same things as CNN’s but the layout isn’t as compelling in ICN’s opinion. It will be interesting viewing to see which of the two networks will be more authoritative and whether MSNBC will be able to maintain the high level of coverage it started tonight once the shuttle gets off the ground.

For FOX the challenge is to prove that it can offer the same level of detail that their rivals can easily muster with their deep benches and strong technical background. This isn’t exactly FOX’s strong suit. It would be safe to say that FOX’s natural strong suit is issues of the Heartland, politics, and The War on Terror and not pure science stories. FOX doesn’t have a dedicated science team of journalists like CNN and MSNBC have at their disposal. But that may not be as big an issue as one might think in the end if the launch progresses smoothly and doesn’t get bogged down in technical problems where having a large group of veteran space analysts would become a plus. The one big advantage FOX has going for it is it has won the Perception War and ICN expects more viewers will tune in to FOX first because the conventional wisdom has become that FOX is where the news is as evidenced by their consistent ratings dominence over the past few years. The question that is not yet resolved is whether FOX’s apparent weakness in the science background will cause viewers to switch over to the competition. But FOX will be sure to give it its best shot and an attempt to provide a compelling broadcast.

UPDATE: In the battle of the scale models, the early winner is CNN. The scale model that was used tonight on MSNBC (and is pictured above) is about 8 inches long. During Anderson Cooper 360, Miles O’Brien was holding a large scale model ICN estimates to be 18″ long. Will MSNBC or FOX be able to counter tomorrow?!?!?

Yes, ICN’s tongue is planted in its cheek…

UPDATE 2: This is a shot of O’Briens scale model which comes from WHAC…

TVNewser had a brief conversation today with CNN’s Jonathan Klein and the subject of FOX News’ hurricane coverage came up…

“They’re just so far outclassed in an event like this,” he said, and news events like Hurricane Dennis demonstrate “vividly that they’re not a news organization. It is like night and day…They’re just not built to cover important news.”

There is some truth to this but also quite a lot of spin. Yes, FOX had some troubles today. A lot of satellite disruptions occurred on FOX. And it is true that FOX didn’t have the number of reporters in the field that CNN had and it didn’t have the weather technology that MSNBC had (neither did CNN though). In ICN’s opinion, today was not FOX’s best effort.

But “They’re just not built to cover important news.”?????
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CJR Online lends a skeptical eye to the concept of Citizen Journalism in its Spin Buster article yesterday.
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Ohhhhhhhh…the spinning and crowing is in full bloom and you need a scorecard to keep track of the flying smack of who said what about whom. The Q2 Ratings are out and it’s time for the dueling press releases. TVNewser already has CNN’s release info posted and note the tone…
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Sunday’s numbers are out and despite a stronger than usual primetime offering, with a re-airing of Rita Cosby’s interview with Michael Jackson’s mother, Katie Couric’s Runaway Bride interview (also a re-airing), and Lester Holt hosting “Coming Home” (repeated from the previous weekend), combined with the premiere of Chris Jansing’s “The Ethical Edge”….MSNBC came in as a distant also ran in primetime and scratched in the 25-54 demo. FOX beat MSNBC nearly 8:1 in no small part due to Geraldo Rivera live in Aruba. CNN beat MSNBC nearly 4:1 with canned programming.
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When FOX overtook CNN in the ratings early in this decade, CNN continued to put forth the notion that they were still the network to go to when news really mattered. In the run up to the Iraq war CNN was angling to own the coverage as they had during the first Gulf War, only it turned out that FOX showed that it could indeed mount a credible overseas operation for an extended period. While MSNBC, CNN, and FOX each brought their own unique tools to the table and to get the best coverage one had to be a channel hopper (MSNBC using the live anywhere anytime “Bloom mobile” nick-named after David Bloom who tragically died while on assignment there, CNN with its huge international organization and resources, FOX with its gutsy, aggressive reporters using satellite phones), FOX maintained its dominance in the ratings.
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Axis Of Logic has an interesting breakdown of 16 hours of cable news courtesy of Columbia Journalism Review Daily. (via What’s Happening At CNN)

Susan Estrich pens a passionate defense of FOX News in the Christian Science Monitor. However there is one thing Estrich gets wrong in her piece…
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When she was hired as an MSNBC only employee I wondered how NBC and certain shows and those shows’ hosts would react to MSNBC getting exclusives first. Well today we sort of learn the answer to that question as NBC issued a release yesterday about Rita Cosby getting an exclusive interview with Michael Jackson’s mother that will appear today on the Today Show and not MSNBC first.

Last week MSNBC issued a release about an exclusive Cosby interview with two of Jackson’s brothers which appeared on MSNBC first. But I guess if the scoop is really big MSNBC will lose out to NBC even though Cosby isn’t an NBC News Employee, which explains why the release this time is from NBC and not MSNBC.

But you have to wonder how certain people will react to having someone else get the scoop but still having it air on their NBC program? In many ways this is potentially an even more dangerous “upsetting of the apple cart” than the exclusives landing on MSNBC first scenario. Remember the Sawyer/Walters turf wars that went on at ABC? Well, we could wind up with “get wars” now breaking out not only between NBC and MSNBC but also internally at NBC.

Zogby released a poll showing that “Good Morning America” is preferred over “Today” and “Fox and Friends” is preferred over “The Early Show” (hat tip: TVnewser) But what does this really mean?
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I missed this last week. And it’s important to MSNBC and NBC News for all sorts of reasons
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TVNewser has all the numbers. One has to wonder how much longer NBC will put up with this before shaking up management? Not that that is necessarily the answer but it gives the appearance that steps are being done to address the situation….
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The Sky is Blue, The World is Round, and now there’s another story about FOX News having a conservative bias.
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TVNewser has some insider dirt on Tucker Carlson’s “The Situation”.
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That’s the angle from the New York Times today. The speculation is that Shapiro is jumping before being forced out. This raises some interesting questions…
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