Outside Cable News

Via Nieman Watchdog
by Carolyn Lewis Mug

Carolyn Lewis: “Your Money or Your Sanity: CNN’s Answer to Hard Times

Since the economy is the number one issue on everybody’s mind, I thought I’d take a look at an hour-long program called “Your Money” that CNN runs on Saturdays and repeats on Sundays. I was wondering how helpful the program might be to viewers plagued by mundane financial troubles like the threat of mortgage foreclosures, the credit card crunch, and the high cost of gas, heating oil, groceries, college tuition and health insurance.

On the day I looked in on them, hosts Ali Velshi and Stephanie Elam presided in the chirpy manner that I for one find unseemly when applied to sober topics. No matter what the serious subject on the table, they smiled a lot and spoke so fast that it was near impossible to catch the sense of what they were saying.

It soon became clear why they were in a hurry and why they were smiling. The hour was chock-a-block full of commercials, leaving hardly enough time to deal with the topics that were supposed to be the point of the show. Ostensibly dedicated to informing viewers about how to survive hard times, the hour was crammed with merchants urging already debt-ridden viewers to spend money they don’t have.

Read the rest here.

Via USA Today
By David Bauder, AP Television Writer

NBC: Bush kept off network to promote MSNBC

NEW YORK — NBC News said it was a desire to promote MSNBC as a news destination that led to its decision Thursday not to carry President Bush’s news conference on NBC.

The call to keep Bush off the broadcast network was noteworthy not just because ABC and CBS pre-empted regularly scheduled programming to cover the president, but because NBC was airing another news division program at the time — the fourth hour of Today.

“We’re trying to make MSNBC the place to go for NBC News, and the strategy is working,” said Phil Griffin, NBC News senior vice president.
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Via Poynter
By Jonathan Dube
CyberJournalist.net Publisher
ONA President

Behind CNN’s New Citizen Media Site
A YouTube for news

Most news organizations are looking for ways to tap their audiences for photos, videos and eyewitness reports. But many still struggle with how to embrace user-generated content while still ensuring accuracy and quality.

After a year-and-a-half of experience soliciting material from its audiences, CNN is embarking on a new approach worth observing.

Earlier this month, CNN launched a new site dedicated to user-generated content that is unmoderated — basically, a news version of YouTube. The site, currently in “beta” or test mode, can be viewed at iReport.com.
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Via B&C
By Marisa Guthrie

Jeff Zucker to Print Reporters: Drop Dead

NBC Universal CEO on MSNBC, NBC News, Fox Business Network, the Newspaper Industry and CNBC

The future of NBC News is not on the broadcast network, but at MSNBC and online, said Jeff Zucker, president of CEO of NBC Universal.
Jeff Zucker

“We are just living in an incredibly different world,” Zucker said during a question-and-answer session at Harvard Business School’s 2008 Entertainment and Media Conference Wednesday.

Pointing out that few people in the audience of students, faculty and media gathered there likely watch the 6:30 p.m. newscast, Zucker said NBC News is lucky to have a cable-news outlet in MSNBC, adding that more and more content will continue to migrate there and to MSNBC.com.

Read the rest here.

Via Broadcasting & Cable
By John Eggerton

CNN’s John Roberts will moderate the media-star-studded Radio-Television News Directors Foundation First Amendment Dinner in Washington, D.C., March 6.

ABC News president David Westin, NBC Universal president Jeff Zucker and PBS’ Jim Lehrer will also be on hand as the foundation hands out awards for standing up for freedom of the press.

Among the recipients are CBS’ Bob Schieffer, who will receive the Leonard Zeidenberg Award (named after the former B&C correspondent); AP president Tom Curley (First Amendment Leadership Award); NBC diversity executive Paula Madison (Service Award); and Richard Wiley, former Federal Communications Commission chairman and partner in Wiley, Rein & Fielding, who is getting a special award.

There will also be a performance by Schieffer and his country-music band, Honky Tonk Confidential.

Via Jossip

Maria Bartiromo Has Done More Than Boost CNBC Ratings

Maria Bartiromo is more than just a pretty face who takes ethically questionable rides on corporate jets. In fact, some argue that her role at CNBC has changed the way analyst information is disseminated, which might actually be making for smarter individual investors. Also, her hot lips make for easier listening to this crap.

Read the rest here.

>As most of you are aware, CNN decided to put “Financial Security Watch” in the place of Your World Today. And as you can see below, FNC was basically simulcasting their sister network Sky while CNN talked about something else entirely. Now, which news is more important?

Update: I forgot to look at HLN & MSNBC, so giving a comparison of what they were showing minutes later really wouldn’t be fair, IMO.

Via Streaming Media.com
by Geoff Daily

The Watchman: MSNBC Makes Mess of Democratic Debate Webcast

MSNBC botched their delivery of Tuesday night’s Clinton-Obama debate in more ways than one. In the first installment of this new column, Geoff Daily evaluates what MSNBC did wrong, and what a local affiliate in Ohio did right.

Regardless of format or bitrate, ad type or placement, live or on-demand, streaming or download, in the end the final measure of success for online video is the experience it enables users to have while watching.

The Watchman is a column about just that topic, giving first person insight into how the decisions content owners make regarding the presentation of their streaming media impacts the quality of this user’s experiences watching online video and how they ultimately increase/decrease my willingness/ability to keep watching.

My name is Geoff Daily. I’ve been a contributing editor for StreamingMedia.com for the past three years writing about the business of online video, and now I’ll be sharing with you the chronicles of my journey into a world where the only video I watch is that which has been delivered over the internet.

Last night I had my first moment of regret over having recently canceled my cable service in order to rely solely on Internet video.

I was eagerly anticipating tuning in to what was likely the last presidential primary debate between the Democratic frontrunners. I had done the same for last week’s debate on CNN.com and had a great experience watching live video for over an hour. This week did not deliver on that promise.
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Via Beacon Journal
By Jim Carney

Broadcaster Allen Saunders dead at 84

Veteran of Akron radio the first voice of CNN when cable network went on the air in 1980

Allen Saunders was the first voice of CNN.

Born Alvin L. Steinwedel but known professionally as Allen ‘’Al'’ Saunders, he was a well-known fixture in Akron radio for nearly two decades.

His rich, deep voice was used for CNN identifications and promos when the all-news cable network was founded in 1980.

Mr. Steinwedel, 84, died Tuesday at Akron City Hospital following a brief illness.

A native of Baltimore, Md., he came to Akron in 1961 as vice president and general manager at WHLO Radio and Susquehanna Broadcasting.

Read the rest here. (2 pages)

>Now, where are the people saying news networks never report anything “good” out of Iraq?

Via Real Clear Politics
By David Paul Kuhn

White Men Seen All Wrong

>Excerpt, click here for the rest.

In effect, the largest swing vote in this race has been talked about the least. Representation is not conversation. Simply because white men are talking on television doesn’t mean white men are being discussed. A Nexis search of the past two months of news transcripts from CNN, MSNBC, and Fox News showed Hispanics or Latinos came up 851 times in the context of the names of Clinton and Obama. In that same context and time span, white male or white men came up 127 times.

Via South Bend Tribune
by JEFFREY M. McCALL

Diet of TV news is bad for country’s democratic health
MICHIANA POINT OF VIEW

>Excerpt, click here for all of it.

The Center for Media and Public Affairs analyzed 481 election stories aired October through December on the evening news shows of the big three networks and Fox News Channel. The CMPA study showed that more stories were aired about the candidates’ campaign strategies than about candidate policy positions. More than a third of all stories focused on polling and the horse-race angle of the campaign.

Via 13WHAM

J-Mac on Larry King

(Rochester, N.Y.) — Rochester’s own basketball phenom Jason “J-Mac” McElwain has met President Bush and other celebrities. On Wednesday night, he appeared on television with the king of talk.

J-Mac, 20, who has autism, talked about his new book “The Game of My Life” on CNN’s Larry King Live.

He appeared with his mom and some celebrity parents who have child with autism, including former Buffalo Bills quarterback Doug Flutie and actress Holly Robinson Peete.

Peete said J-Mac is a hero to her young son.
“I just I can’t speak highly enough what Jason represents to people with autism, and for children with autism…” she said. “He really gave [my son] a lot of inspiration.”

A movie based on the book is also in the works.

McElwain scored 20 points in four minutes during a Greece Athena High School basketball game in February 2006.

Via The Swamp
by Jim Oliphant

Feed your hunger: Count the delegates

Dev Null is counting delegates and waiting for another shot at prime-time.

Admit it, American public, you’re obsessed. The item below about the ratings that MSNBC enjoyed with last night’s Democratic debate in Cleveland proves it. No one’s watched MSNBC like that since Soledad O’Brien did the news with a cartoon barista. (His name was Dev Null and he is pictured above. This is probably no longer listed on O’Brien’s resume.)

Now, the good people at Slate have unveiled a tool you can use to explore all the possible scenarios in which Hillary Clinton could overtake Barack Obama and secure the nomination. Feel free to post your theories here — conspiracy and otherwise. (There’s always that obscure Guam-North Carolina scenario, which sounds a bit like a first-round matchup in the NCAA tournament.)

Believe us, the Clinton campaign is doing a version of this every hour of the day. You might as well try it too.

Via CJR

It’s The Man Show — on MSNBC!
Stick to your knitting, ladies
By Liz Cox Barrett

Watching MSNBC this morning I was reminded of a cop-out line from one of Maureen Dowd’s recent harshing-on-Hillary New York Times columns (headline: “A Flawed Feminist Test”):

“But Hillary is not the best test case for women. We’ll never know how much of the backlash is because she’s a woman or because she’s this woman…”

How many bigoted assertions can you safely stash behind the “it’s not women, it’s this woman” cover? Quite a lot, if MoDo’s columns are any measure.

But to hear the talking heads of MSNBC this morning, it could be that for some people it is, actually, women. Or, at least, that their feelings about this woman can’t really be untangled from their feelings about women in politics, generally.
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>After the jump it says, “Fox News Channel got 160,000 text messages after a recent presidential debate, which is one of the preferred methods of communication by young people.”

Via The Courier-Journal
by Tom Dorsey

Cable hopes election coverage lures young viewers

This presidential election year may be historically different, and I’m not just talking about a woman or black man running for the job.

Voting results from the big Super Tuesday primaries earlier this month showed turnout among people under 30 quadrupled in Tennessee and doubled the usual averages in Massachusetts, Georgia, Missouri and Oklahoma, according to The New York Times.

Meanwhile, the number of viewers on cable news and broadcast networks skyrocketed that night. CNN, which has maintained a full-court press for months covering the candidates, has been rewarded with big ratings in prime time with huge increases in viewers under 50.
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