Outside Cable News

>Earlier: CNN’s Kiran Chetry Has A Baby Boy

Via University of Texas at Dallas
Library to Host Air Combat Expert and CNN Analyst
Author Flew Hundreds of Missions in Southeast Asia Before Serving at Pentagon

Maj. Gen. Donald W. Shepperd, a decorated combat pilot and CNN military analyst, will discuss the challenge that the Mideast poses for aviation at a public lecture Saturday at McDermott Library.

Shepperd’s presentation is titled “Double, Double, Toil and Trouble - Implications of the Modern World (Especially the Mideast) for Aviation.” The endowed lecture is presented by McDermott Library Special Collections and will be held June 21, 2008, at 4 p.m. in McDermott Library Auditorium (MC 2.410) at UT Dallas. It is free and open to the public.

A reception and book signing will follow in the Special Collections Department on the library’s third level, where patrons can meet Maj. Gen. Shepperd. He is the co-author of Bury Us Upside Down, a book about the “Misty Pilots,” who flew low-level reconnaissance in Southeast Asia. The UT Dallas Bookstore will have copies of the book available at the lecture.

Maj. Gen. Shepperd is this year’s George W. Jalonick III and Dorothy Cockrell Jalonick Memorial Distinguished Lecture Series speaker.
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Via Kansas City Star
MSNBC’s Chuck Todd and Rachel Maddow are young, geeky and hot
By Aaron Barnhart

Because primary season lasted five months instead of five weeks, I spent many nights in front of the TV watching voting results trickle in.

That’s how I got to know Chuck Todd and Rachel Maddow, the number-cruncher and the pundit who were hired not long ago to beef up MSNBC’s election coverage.

Have they ever.

>Read the rest at Kansas City Star. (3 Pages)

>Update: Just noticed this added part which wasn’t there in the 7am hour.

Editor’s Note: This story was published before the death of NBC News Washington bureau chief Tim Russert.

Via Multichannel News
Mojo HD, Dos Equis Look For Series ‘Assistant’
Show Plays Off Beer Marketer’s ‘Most Interesting Man’ Campaign
By Mike Reynolds

Mojo HD and Dos Equis have poured the precepts for an original series scheduled to bow on the network this fall.

Inspired by Dos Equis’ “Most Interesting Man in the World” campaign, Mojo HD has begun production on five episodes of MIA: The Most Interesting Assistant to premiere in September.

Hosted by media personality Shanon Cook (CNN), the show will engage the wanna-be assistants in a number of entertaining challenges, testing their intelligence, physical endurance, patience, social graces and good humor. Only then will viewers find whether the “late” Steve can ever truly be replaced.

>Read the rest at Multichannel News.

Via TVDecoder
CNN And The Weather Channel: Complementary Channels?
By Brian Stelter

Casual cable viewers could occasionally be forgiven for confusing CNN with The Weather Channel.

CNN, the cable news network owned by Time Warner, promotes itself as a “Severe Weather Headquarters,” complete with a spiffy new weather center set and a row of respected meteorologists. More than its cable news competitors, it has tried to brand itself as an esteemed weather source.

So what would happen if Time Warner acquired The Weather Channel? It is known to be a bidder. Landmark Communications, the current owner, had hoped to fetch $5 billion for the channel and its popular Web site Weather.com, but recent media reports say that $3.5 billion is a more likely sales price.

Last week John Martin, the chief financial officer of Time Warner, said that a combination of CNN and The Weather Channel “would give us a very, very interesting cross-platform play,” though he emphasized the need for “price discipline” in the bidding. He said of a potential deal: “At a certain level it might make sense,” according to Reuters.

A group led by NBC Universal is also bidding; TV Decoder wrote last week about what an NBC/Weather combination could look like.

But what about this potential marriage?

>Read the rest at TVDecoder.

>Earlier: NBCU And Partners Bid $3.5 Billion For Weather Channel: Report

Via Newsday
CNN’s Lou Dobbs won’t comment on run for NJ governor

NEWARK, N.J. - CNN’s Lou Dobbs isn’t talking about rumors that he’s thinking about running for governor of New Jersey.

Dobbs lives on a 300-acre farm in Sussex County.

Dobbs told The Star-Ledger of Newark he’s “not going to comment.”

State Republican chairman Tom Wilson tells the newspaper the Dobbs’ buzz is circulating among GOP officials and fundraisers in New York City and Washington.

>Read the rest at Newsday.

>Update: Dobbs not running for NJ governor

Via NYT
Networks Firm Up Convention Lineups
By JACQUES STEINBERG

The cable news channels expect to offer many more hours than that, perhaps none more so than MSNBC, which is seeking to swamp the efforts of its principal competitors, CNN and Fox News, by showing 20 hours of live convention programming each of the four days that the conventions are in session. To put that figure in perspective, consider that much of the official party business is conducted over the course of about four hours a night.

For MSNBC, which has scheduled its marathon coverage from 6 a.m. to 2 a.m. Eastern time, the challenge of having enough for Keith Olbermann, Chris Matthews and Joe Scarborough, among others, to discuss during all those hours would seem to be especially formidable. As television programs, conventions long ago made the transition from smoke-filled gatherings with more suspense than a “C.S.I.” episode to gleaming, ready-made infomercials where the audience knows the ending from the beginning.

(Among those to be featured on MSNBC is John Harwood, a CNBC correspondent who also reports for The New York Times, which pools some political newsgathering efforts with NBC.)
(more…)

Via Boston Herald
Reporters seek R&R after long campaign
By Jessica Heslam

The 2008 campaign bus has finally careened to a rest stop in the wild ride for reporters covering the Obama-Clinton fight to the finish, and the press - like never before - is pooped.

Taking a breather after one of the longest primary seasons in modern history, CNN senior political correspondent Candy Crowley says her Washington, D.C., area home looks like an abandoned post office.

She’s been flying around the country, traveling to nearly every state over the past 17 months.

“It was tremendously grueling,” said Crowley, who would look at Sens. Hillary Clinton (D-New York) and Barack Obama (D-Illinois) at times and think, “How can you do this?”

But the adrenaline kept her moving. “It was just exciting,” Crowley said. “It wasn’t just that it was a close race. It was that no matter what happened it was a historic race.”

While on the road, the sleep-deprived Crowley would appear on Anderson Cooper at 10 p.m., and rise and shine for early-morning live shots.
(more…)

Via Loudoun Times
Confessions of a CNN junkie
By Betsy Allen

I’m watching my back. My time may be coming. You see, I have an addiction of my own. I haven’t seen it on the show. I don’t know if there are any treatment centers in California or Arizona that help with this kind of thing.

But the ugly truth is, I gotta have my CNN.

I admit I wasn’t that bad before the presidential primary season. There was the occasional check-in when a big news story broke, but that was about it.

But somewhere in the snows of Iowa and New Hampshire, I got hooked. The dizzying highs of the state-by-state projections! The staggering lows of the exit polls! The exhaustive dismantling and analysis of every word spoken by Hillary Clinton, John McCain, Barack Obama (and all those other guys – Huckabee, Edwards and the rest of the peanut gallery) over the last six months.

I’ve loved the Tuesday night coverage of the primaries – the blow-by-blow from Wolf Blitzer, the touch-screen run-down of each state’s voting peculiarities by John King, the sensitive post-mortem by Anderson Cooper.
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Via CNN.com/AC360
By Erica Hill

There are plenty of days when I’d love to grab a little power nap in at the office. Today is a perfect example — not exactly a solid night’s sleep chez us last night. This heat wave makes it tough for all of us to sleep because we are without A/C. We do have two air conditioners, but they’re in CT, scheduled to arrive in the City with my parents on Sunday. I thought we’d be fine with some fans until then, despite the rumors of a heat wave. I even said to my husband, “ We’ll be fine. People did this for centuries dressed in wool! Surely we can survive a few days.” That lasted about 24 hours. I don’t care about the people of yesteryear in wool; I care about my overheated brood.
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Via TVDecoder
A Ratings Coup for Keith Olbermann
By Brian Stelter

Keith Olbermann may not be going on vacation anytime soon.

Mr. Olbermann, the host of “Countdown” on MSNBC, cancelled his vacation plans for this week when it appeared likely that his program, which debuted five years ago as a distant also-ran to its counterparts on Fox News Channel and CNN, may beat Fox in the 25- to 54-year-old demographic for a full week for the first time.

And sure enough, “Countdown” did displace “The O’Reilly Factor,” hosted by Mr. Olbermann’s arch-nemesis Bill O’Reilly, last week in that demographic.

>Read the rest at TVDecoder.

Via IHT
Broadcaster warns of security threat in proxy fight
By Andrew Ross Sorkin

Lou Dobbs, wearing an American flag pin in his left lapel, introduced a segment on his CNN program last week with his trademark outrage: “Tonight, there is a new threat to national sovereignty and security: A foreign hedge fund trying to take control of CSX.”

Doing his best imitation of Howard Beale’s “I’m mad as hell” line - but with no sense of irony - Dobbs said of the foreign hedge fund, “Who the heck do they think they are?”

At one point he proclaimed, “This has to go immediately to CFIUS,” a reference to the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, as he contended that CSX “is without question a national security asset.”

Dobbs, a vocal opponent of Dubai’s attempt to buy six American ports, is not the only one up in arms. Six members of the U.S. Senate Banking Committee are raising red flags, too.

CSX is one of the largest railroad companies in the United States. And given all the hubbub, you would imagine that the hedge fund was based in the Middle East. But the hedge fund is - wait for it - based in London. Yes, London. The British are coming!

>Read the rest at IHT.

Via LAT
CNN hopes to capitalize on its primary numbers
By Matea Gold

NEW YORK — Sens. John McCain and Barack Obama aren’t the only ones courting swing voters as the 2008 campaign shifts into its next phase. The ferocious battle for cable news viewers is moving into its own general election mode — and CNN is striving mightily to keep its primary winning streak going.

The cable news network was the biggest beneficiary of the drawn-out Democratic primary, averaging 1.11 million prime-time viewers this year, a 50% boost over the same period last year. It’s the best performance by the channel since the invasion of Iraq in early 2003.

In all, CNN gained an average of 368,000 prime-time viewers through June 1, compared with Fox News’ 190,000 and MSNBC’s 224,000, according to Nielsen Media Research.

But even as its ratings swell, the network faces a rising challenge from MSNBC, which is riding high on the sharp-edged opinions of hosts such as Keith Olbermann, an outspoken Bush critic. And it still has not caught up with dominant Fox News and its popular right-leaning commentators.

To maintain its momentum, CNN is trying to seize the middle ground and distinguish itself from its rivals’ opinion-laden programming, even with the outspoken Lou Dobbs on its schedule.
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>Thanks to an emailer.
>Via USA Today
Anderson Cooper says subbing for Regis is fun
By Lorrie Lynch

Like many of my readers, I think Anderson Cooper (at right) is an outstanding reporter. That’s why I chose to feature him in this weekend’s print Who’s News column. Unfortunately, we didn’t have room for all the interesting answers he wrote to our e-mailed questions (it was the one way we could get him quickly), so I’m sharing here.

Q. We’ve seen you subbing for Regis Philbin on Live with Regis and Kelly. How do you like that? Could you see yourself doing a talk show in your future?

Sitting next to Kelly Ripa is one of the funnest jobs I’ve ever had. She and Gelman, the whole team over there are a joy to work with. My favorite part of the show is the fifteen minutes of chat in the beginning. It’s all unscripted, but Kelly is so smart and funny she makes it seem easy. She is a major talent. As for doing something like that in my future? I should be so lucky.

>Read the rest at USA Today.

Via NYT
Wearing CNN’s Quirkiest Headlines
By BRIAN STELTER

As if it’s not hard enough to summarize a story in six or seven words, CNN.com has a new test for editors: is the headline witty enough to be worn on a T-shirt?

CNN.com’s T-shirt store, opened in April, offered two last week. After Barack Obama’s victory speech on Tuesday, “Obama Makes History” became the site’s top-selling T-shirt.

“It was a moment that people wanted to celebrate,” Andy Mitchell, the vice president of interactive marketing for CNN, surmised.

Maybe the T-shirts, part of a promotional campaign for the Web site’s videos, are a 21st-century way to save headlines, the same way people save the front pages of newspapers.

More likely, they’re a way to get a laugh. Some CNN.com headlines have long been ripe for self-parody. The site’s second-top-selling T-shirt is “Anderson Cooper, ‘you’re not my boo.’ ”

That headline also emerged on Tuesday as Mr. Cooper, the CNN anchor, pressed the Democratic superdelegate Donna Brazile for details of her recent conversation with Mr. Obama.
(more…)

Via Tradeshow Week
CNN Correspondent to Emcee TSW Fastest 50

The sixth annual Tradeshow Week Fastest 50 event will take place the weekend after the Nov. 4 presidential election, meaning this year’s master of ceremonies may have plenty of news to share with the participants.

Carol Costello, a CNN News correspondent and contributor to the cable news network’s “The Situation Room,” will emcee the gala dinner that is the highlight of the Nov. 7-9 weekend of activities in Baltimore.

Along with covering the 2008 presidential election, Costello has been instrumental in CNN’s coverage of Hurricane Katrina, the tsunami in south Asia and the shootings at Virginia Tech University last year.

“Carol Costello’s a well-known face on CNN,” said TSW Editor-in-Chief Michael Hart. “We’re fortunate to have another wonderful news professional with national credentials serve as our master of ceremonies.”

Last year’s TSW Fastest 50 in Atlanta was emceed by another CNN news anchor, Erica Hill.
(more…)

Via LAT
Is Olbermann’s snide act on MSNBC the future of TV news?
By Howard Rosenberg

Former Times Television Critic Howard Rosenberg, a Pulitzer Prize winner for criticism in 1985, will be writing occasional commentaries about news on television and the Internet.

It seems like a couple of centuries since His Holiness Pope Walter reigned as God’s deputy on the airwaves. Even longer if you think about leave-’em-laughing funnyman Keith Olbermann.

The leer, the smug histrionics, the relentless needling, the shameless self-puffery, the accusatory rants excoriating Bushies and other Republicans as well as cable competitor Fox and its temperamental bully, Bill O’Reilly. And, of course, the comedy.

“Countdown With Keith Olbermann” is the bean ball between “Hardball With Chris Matthews” and “Verdict With Dan Abrams” in MSNBC’s weekday lineup. This trio has spent the election season heckling Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton from deep inside Sen. Barack Obama’s hip pocket and hammering Sen. John McCain since Day One.

>Read the rest at LAT.

Via Daily Herald
Minority journalists to ask McCain, Obama questions
By David Beery

Minority journalists meeting in Chicago for a convention this summer will question presidential candidates in a nationally televised primetime forum.

UNITY, an alliance of four associations representing minority journalists, had been planning to conduct its forum on the afternoon of July 24. But CNN now plans to telecast the two-hour event that same day at 7 p.m., a timeslot that could draw more than 2 million viewers.
(more…)

Via MediaWeek
CNN Puts Up Big Numbers on Final Primary Night
According to Nielsen Media Research data, CNN last night averaged 3.52 million total viewers in prime time
By Anthony Crupi

Exactly five months after the Democratic presidential primary race officially got underway with the Iowa caucuses, the historic battle between Sens. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama finally came to an end Tuesday night, as the junior senator from Illinois became the party’s presumptive nominee. And as has been the case throughout the primary season, CNN drew cable news’ largest audience during the Montana and South Carolina returns.

According to Nielsen Media Research data, CNN last night averaged 3.52 million total viewers in prime time (8 p.m.-11 p.m.), beating out MSNBC (2.63 million) and Fox News Channel (2.39 million).

As the returns came in, CNN delivered 1.42 million members of the core 25-54 demo, topping MSNBC’s 1.05 million, and FNC’s 739,000.
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Via Die Jüdische

The Israel Project Launches TV Ad Campaign to Increase Pressure on Iran and Stop Rocket Attacks on Israel

Ads to Air as Thousands Expected at National Mall to Celebrate Israel’s 60th Anniversary

WASHINGTON, D.C. - The Israel Project (TIP) is launching a major TV ad campaign to highlight Iran’s sponsorship of terrorism and encourage enhanced pressure on Iran to peacefully end its illegal nuclear program.

The ad campaign consists of two 30-second spots that will begin running Sunday (June 1) on CNN, CNN’s Headline News, MSNBC, CNBC and FOX News Channel in Washington, D.C., Maryland and northern Virginia. The TV ads will air hundreds of times until June 5.

>Read the rest at Die Jüdische.

Via AMEInfo FN
CNN anchor wins Zayed award

CNN anchor Anderson Cooper will receive a special recognition from the Zayed International Prize for the Environment for his outstanding contributions to investigative journalism and reports on the CNN news show Anderson Cooper 360°. Cooper traveled around the world with Sanjay Gupta, a chief medical correspondent, and Jeff Corwin, a wildlife biologist and Animal Planet host, for Planet in Peril, the statement said. The trio investigated the current state of the planet, focusing on four major areas: global warming, overpopulation, deforestation and species loss.

>Related: Emmy Award Winning U.S Journalist to Receive Special Recognition from Zayed Prize

Via OJR/Poynter
What journalism students hate about local and cable news
Online Journalism Review

Robert Niles writes: “My students complained about the titillation — fear-mongering crime reports, salacious coverage of the entertainment industries, reporters and anchor people glammed up to look like models. And when TV reports covered more serious issues, including politics, they result as little more than propaganda — talking points served up from two sides, with no analysis testing the claims, beyond petty insults.”

>Read the rest at OJR.

Via TVDecoder
Season Finale: CNN’s Ratings During Obama Speech Are a Milestone
By Brian Stelter

It is extremely rare for a cable news channel to draw higher ratings than the broadcast networks, but CNN apparently managed to pull it off on Tuesday night, when its telecast of Barack Obama’s victory speech attracted 4.73 million viewers, according to Nielsen Media Research.

Only one broadcaster, ABC, interrupted its entertainment programming for the speech. While ratings for the special report are not yet available, ABC never topped four million for all of prime time on Tuesday, according to Nielsen. Another 3.45 million viewers watched the speech on MSNBC.
(more…)

Via MarketWatch
I don’t understand Anderson Cooper’s appeal
By Jon Friedman

NEW YORK (MarketWatch) — Yes, CNN’s Anderson Cooper has heart. He oozes empathy. He’s clearly a good-hearted fellow and, by all accounts, as likeable as all get-out.

And yet I have this Cooper-related conundrum.

Can you please explain to me how the host of “Anderson Cooper 360″ seems to have become the most trusted name in news at Time Warner’s CNN?

I may have just answered my own question. I suspect that people tune in to Cooper because they like him, and that’s no small feat for a television personality. If more people liked Katie Couric, she probably wouldn’t be in danger of getting shoved out of the “CBS Evening News” anchor chair.

>Read the rest at MarketWatch.

Via Baltimore Sun
Getting the story first, or getting it right
By David Zurawik

The most-watched presidential primary season in TV history ended yesterday with a wild roller-coaster ride of conflicting news reports, updates, “knockdowns” and delegate countdowns that left even veteran media executives scratching their heads.

“It was exactly one year ago that we televised our first debate, and it’s been an incredible ride straight through to today,” CNN political director Sam Feist said last night. “And what a last day for the primary season! We had one development after another - and more breaking news banners today on CNN than during any other day in recent memory.”

Typical of the topsy-turvy times, 24/7 cable TV news channels like CNN and upstart Web sites like Politico.com served as the media of record yesterday, while the Associated Press, one of the nation’s most respected sources of news, was the institution needing clarification - if not correction.
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Via B&C
Democratic Rules Committee Boosts Cable News Ratings
CNN, Fox News Channel, MSNBC Draw Viewers
By B&C Staff

The Democratic Rules Committee meeting last weekend gave cable news a big bump Saturday.

CNN averaged 762,000 viewers (236,000 in the 25-54 demo) in total day, followed by Fox News Channel (728,000 viewers, 166,000 in the demo) and MSNBC (538,000, 212,000).

For CNN it was an increase of more than 50% in total day in both total viewers and the demo compared with year-to-date Saturday average.

In primetime, Fox News averaged 1.17 million viewers (177,000 in the demo) compared with CNN’s 960,000 (293,000). MSNBC averaged 426,000 viewers and 186,000 in the demo.

Via MLive
CNN analyst Jeffrey Toobin lifts the veil on the Supreme Court for a Matrix:Midland event
by Janet I. Martineau

Did Matrix:Midland hear it first on Monday night?

“Barack Obama will be on the U.S. Supreme Court someday,” said CNN senior analyst Jeffrey Toobin of the current Democratic presidential candidate. “It needs that kind of person, that kind of mind.

“It needs public officials — not nine judges, as it has now, who were all federal appeals court judges before being appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court. We need a mix, some who were public officials with a legal background — like Obama, and your present governor (Jennifer M. Granholm).”

And he wasn’t done with his predictions June 2 at the Midland Center for the Arts.

Asked what monumental decisions face the U.S. Supreme Court in the next few months, Toobin said one of the two big ones “is a gun control case out of Washington, D.C. Since the 1930s the court has not tried to interpret the Second Amendment, which is the least grammatically correct of all our amendments.

“Washington, D.C., bans the possession of hand guns, which (the court) is likely to strike down. But then they have to decide how far to go with it — we don’t want to end up with surface-to-air missiles sold out of K-Mart, or tanks. That’s the hard part of the case.”
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Via Detroit Free Press
Political insiders to speak today in Troy
By KATHLEEN GRAY

On the last day of presidential primary contests, Republican Andrew Card and Democrat Paul Begala will talk about the extended contest at a meeting of Inforum, formerly known as the Women’s Economic Club.

The meeting will be held at noon today at the Troy Marriott on Big Beaver.

Card was the White House Chief of Staff to President George W. Bush until 2006. He also served in the presidential administrations of George H.W. Bush and Ronald Reagan.

Begala is a Democratic strategist and former adviser to President Bill Clinton. He appears on CNN’s news program “The Situation Room.”

Via Reuters
Cable networks thrived on lengthy primary campaign

NEW YORK (Hollywood Reporter) - If the long Democratic nominating process does in fact end this week, one couldn’t have asked for an odder weekend of coverage to top off what has been a surprising six-month run.

CNN and MSNBC provided more or less constant coverage of the Democrats’ panel to decide the fate of the Michigan and Florida delegates, an event that seemed better suited to C-SPAN.

“You’re asking for a fair reflection of a flawed primary,” Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., told Clinton advocate Harold Ickes on Saturday afternoon. Not exactly Ronald Reagan’s “I am paying for this microphone, Mr. Green!” in the annals of political history.

Sunday’s sole primary, in Puerto Rico, didn’t provide much more drama. The contest evaporated quickly, leaving the networks to declare Hillary Clinton the winner by a 2-1 margin soon after the polls closed at the odd time of 3 p.m. EDT.

>Read the rest at Reuters.

Via Time Warner Newsroom
CNN Digital Network Maintains No.1 Position for 10th Consecutive Month

The CNN Digital Network maintained its No. 1 ranking in total minutes for the month of April among all News and Information properties, ranking ahead of Wikipedia, Yahoo! News, MSNBC Digital Network and Weather Channel. This is a distinction CNN Digital has achieved for the last 10 months.

In April, CNN.com’s award-winning reporting and multimedia storytelling again kept the site’s users informed and engaged about not only what is happening on the global stage but also in their own communities. News events in April that kept users with CNN.com longer than any other news and information site on the Web range from the dramatic Democratic presidential primary race to the housing crunch and escalating gas prices. Additionally CNN.com provided extensive coverage of stories of personal travail and triumph related to events including the war in Iraq and World Autism Day.
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