Outside Cable News

Via Washington Post/Inside Cable News
A Clintonite’s Choice
By Howard Kurtz

Fox News’s newest contributor, to be announced today, may surprise the liberal crowd: former Clinton White House lawyer Lanny Davis.

>Update: Press Release

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 WSJ
McCain’s Night on the Town (Hall)
By Elizabeth Holmes

John McCain held a televised town hall meeting at Federal Hall here Thursday evening, the first opportunity the Republican presidential candidate has had in the general election to showcase his stump speech to a national audience.

The event was originally intended to be a joint appearance with Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama. Although his opponent declined the invitation, McCain forged ahead making only a nod to Obama’s absence.

The event was billed as bipartisan. But afterward, a Fox News anchor Shepard Smith clarified the makeup of the audience. “I reported at the top of this hour that the campaign had told us at Fox News that the audience would be made up of Republicans, Democrats, and independents. We have now received a clarification from the campaign and I feel I should pass it along to you,” he said. “The McCain campaign distributed tickets to supporters, [New York] Mayor [Michael] Bloomberg … and other independent groups.”

>Read the rest at WSJ.

Via Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
As her television debut looms, Ingraham blogs about radio show issues
By Tim Cuprisin

Just as Laura Ingraham is about to start something new on Fox News Channel, the conservative talker is having some troubles in her current radio gig.

Ingraham’s syndicated radio show usually airs in the 2 to 4 a.m. weekday slot on WTMJ-AM (620), although Milwaukee radio listeners can hear her from noon to 2 p.m. on Chicago’s WIND-AM (560).

But the show has featured replacement hosts of late, and she posted this on her Web site:

“Due to contractual obligations, for the present I am unable to reveal why I am not currently hosting (the show). Rest assured, this absence is not of my choosing, nor is it health or family related.”

Ingraham battled cancer a few years back.

Her post, since removed from www.laura ingraham.com, closed with a call for listeners to contact Talk Radio Network, which syndicates the show.

The word floating around is that she’s expected back on the air by the end of the month, if not sooner. But the break may give her time to ease into her new 4 p.m. weekday slot on Fox News.
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Via TVDecoder
Coldplay Lyrics Take a Swipe at Bill O’Reilly
By Brian Stelter

Coldplay’s new album comes out today, and one of the songs on it was inspired by an unusual source: Bill O’Reilly, the Fox News Channel host. Not surprisingly — given the source — the tune isn’t exactly an endorsement of the conservative commentator.

It is, however, the first single on the new album, “Viva La Vida,” and thus will soon be in heavy radio rotation. Some of the lyrics go like this: “When the future’s architectured by a carnival of idiots on show, you’d better lie low.” (The gist of the song, however, is love, not punditry; singer urges his beloved, “If you love me, won’t you let me know?”)

>Read the rest at TVDecoder.

Via Baltimore Sun
Fox News: ‘Obama’s baby mama’
By Katie Fretland

A Fox News anchor faced backlash recently for characterizing Barack and Michelle Obama’s fist bump as possibly a “terrorist fist jab.” Now during a segment the network has displayed a screen referring to the wife of the presumptive democratic nominee as his “baby mama.”

The screen was displayed beneath a segment in which anchor Megyn Kelly interviewed Michelle Malkin, a conservative blogger. The segment discussed a conservative group’s planned anti-Obama documentary.

“Outraged liberals: Stop picking on Obama’s baby mama!” the screen read.

For more about Michelle Obama, see this article in The Swamp.

For more about Michelle Obama and Fox News, see this article by Salon’s Alex Koppelman.

>Check out the video at Baltimore Sun.

>Related: Was It a Slur?

>Update: Fox addresses baby mama drama: Producer used ‘poor judgment’

Via Observer
Michelle Malkin: Slate? Salon? Whatever.
by Matt Haber

Yesterday on Fox News—America’s Election HQ!—Megyn Kelly interviewed Fox News contributor and New Yorker profile rejecter Michelle Malkin about potential First Lady Michelle Obama. During the course of her echo chamber-like criticism of Ms. Obama (that’s not a metaphor: someone should’ve checked Ms. Malkin’s mic before putting her on air), Ms. Malkin said, “it’s not just Republicans who are criticizing some of her comments, but also statements have been made in the left-leaning blog Salon about her comments.”

That darn Salon!

Not so fast, Ms. Malkin. Alex Koppelman, Salon’s War Room blogger, searched his site and couldn’t turn up “anything like what Malkin is talking about.” After posting a clip of her appearance and emailing Ms. Malkin, he solved the mystery:

Malkin responded to my e-mail; she says she misspoke and that she meant to refer to Slate, not Salon.

Let’s call it the narcissism of minor differences.

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.)
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Via Business Wire
ServiceBench to Host Retail, Manufacturing Leaders at Service World 2008

FAIRFAX, Va.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–ServiceBench, a subsidiary of N.E.W. Customer Service Companies, Inc. (NEW) and the leading provider of web-based service management solutions, today announced Service World 2008 will be held Aug. 20 to 22 at the Grand Hyatt Washington in Washington, D.C.

Chris Wallace, veteran broadcast journalist and host of Fox News Sunday, will give the keynote address on the morning of Aug. 21. He’ll provide his unique perspective of current political affairs and the leadership skills needed to attain the highest office in our country. A dinner event on Aug. 21 will be held at the newly opened Newseum.

>Read the rest at Business Wire.

Via Broadcast Engineering
FOX News acquires fiber transport links

FOX News in New York City has acquired 50 MultiDyne HD-1500 HD-SDI fiber links for HD fiber transport.

The links will help FOX News meet its changing broadcast requirements for HD. FOX News announced in May that it had begun offering an HD version to Time Warner customers in select regions. Last fall, FOX also rolled out the FOX Business Channel in HD.

The MultiDyne HD-1500 provides looping, equalized, reclocked inputs and dual outputs. The product provides for fiber-optic transport and distribution of nearly any digital signal of 5Mb/s-1.5Gb/s. Supported standards include SMPTE 292M 1.485Gb/s, SMPTE 259M with operation of 143Mb/s-360Mb/s, SMPTE 310M 19.4Mb/s, M2S or DVB-ASI 270Mb/s, SMPTE 344M 540Mb/s and SMPTE 305M SDTi rates. The systems will transparently pass any embedded audio and data. Audio and data must be embedded and extracted separately.

For more information, visit www.multidyne.com.

Via Above the Fold
Henderson still at Fox4 — for now
By Ed Bark

Good Day co-anchor Megan Henderson has another weekend Fox & Friends stint behind her, but is still non-commital about any possible future with Fox News Channel.

“I had a great time filling in,” she said of her June 7-8 guest host appearances on the Manhattan-based waker-upper. “It’s a very friendly and comfortable place and I really enjoyed the opportunity.”

There’s otherwise “nothing new to report,” said Henderson, who reportedly is being wooed by the network and met with FNC executives during her second trip to Fox & Friends in two months.

Henderson has co-anchored Fox4’s Good Day with Tim Ryan since August 2003. The show ran in a statistical dead heat with WFAA8 in the May “sweeps” total homes Nielsens, with just three-hundredths of a rating point (730 homes) separating the two stations. But Fox4 dipped to a second-place tie with NBC5 in the key 25-to-54 demographic after winning that competition in the February sweeps.

>Earlier: Megan Henderson returns to F&F

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.

>TVNewser has some info on changes at FNC. Looks like I finally got my wish and ED HILL has been issued a good riddance! Alright, that’s a joke but close enough, eh? Oh and head on over to TVDecoder for the part about the 5pm hour… (Laura Ingraham)

Via New York Daily News
Sean Hannity is talking new contract
By David Hinckley

Sean Hannity could be leaving ABC Radio for a new syndicator on Thursday - a move that might or might not make much difference to listeners.

Hannity, who Talkers magazine puts close to Rush Limbaugh as the country’s most popular talk host, has a contract window that lets him leave ABC within a year of the company’s sale.

That date is Thursday, and Hannity is talking with the new owners, Citadel, about reupping - presumably at a higher number with a healthy signing bonus. He reportedly makes $5 million a year from radio, compared to some $30 million for Rush.

The trade mag Taylor on Radio-Info says Hannity had a personal meeting with Citadel chief Farid Suleman last week. Clear Channel is also a contender, but even if he jumps there he could continue to be heard on WABC (770 AM) - because WABC is the country’s most important talk station and Clear Channel doesn’t own a talk station here.

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.
(more…)

Via CJR
How Are You Feeling?
Healthy candidates, tired reporters
By Marc Siegel

Two weeks ago, Fox News asked me to fly out to Phoenix and join a group of nineteen journalists to review more than 1,100 pages of Senator John McCain’s medical records, stretching back over the past fifteen years.

It was supposed to be a tightly controlled process, with the pool of reporters given only three hours to make notes on the documents without Xeroxing or removing any of them. Yet by the time we arrived in Phoenix, they had already been leaked, and I knew that there were would be no major secrets. But after a night spent looking out over the miner-red hills, thriving cacti, and deep purple mountains in the Arizona distance, I joined the others at a long oval table in a room, just off the Copperwynd Resort restaurant at 7:30 a.m. the following morning.

>Read the rest at CJR.

>No mention of said injury to Ainsley Earhart! So, would that qualify as keeping herself out of the story? Or a little hype from Hannity?

>If the video box is blank, try this link.

>Part two after the jump.
(more…)

Via B&C
MOLLY HENNEBERG Primarily, Fox General Assignment Reporter Covers Politics
By Marisa Guthrie

Molly Henneberg is one of the many political reporters whose lives have been hijacked by the runaway train known as the 2008 race for the White House.

Not that she minds the pace.

“I love it! I know everybody says it’s crazy and everybody is ready for it to end. But I’m not!” she said, just prior to the Montana and South Dakota Democratic primaries in which Sen. Barack Obama was able to secure enough delegates to make him the presumptive party nominee.

By all accounts she’s held her own covering the fractious primary campaigns, and her coverage has gotten her the kind of attention that young reporters need to graduate up the ladder at their news organizations.

Henneberg, 34, has been a general assignment reporter at Fox News since 2002, having paid her dues at far-flung local stations including WHAG Hagerstown, Md.; WPBN Traverse City, Mich.; and WBRE Wilkes-Barre/Scranton, Pa.
(more…)

>I received an email tip about this so went and yanked it off the trusty Red Lasso. Anyway, Hannity shows a clip of Earhart parachuting and says something about her being slightly injured.. suppose to update it tomorrow on Hannity’s America.

>If the video is blank, try this direct link.

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.

>Earlier: Ed Bark weighs in on Henderson & Friel

Via NY Daily News
Finding happy news in local news
BY RICHARD HUFF

Greg Kelly was a good fit on WNYW/Ch. 5’s “Good Day New York” this week. Kelly is the son of the NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly and is a Fox News staffer. And at the start of this week, he was in the seat left vacant when Ron Corning was cut.

During his run, Kelly bounced between serious and not-so-serious news. He admitted at one point he’d seen the “Sex and the City” movie, but added that he couldn’t tell the difference between Manolos and Keds.

That’s good, no?

Later in the week, Kelly took part in a segment on Father’s Day gifts.

“I used to cover the White House,” he said on the air. “Now I’m modeling flip-flops.”

Now that he’s come to terms with that drastic career shift, he should be given the job full-time.

Ch. 5’s Christina Park, as always, had just the right thing to say. After a series of segments built around Anne Craig’s wedding preparations, Park said to Craig: “Thanks for participating in our bridal booty camp - and your booty looks beautiful.”

>Read the rest at NY Daily News.

Via Slate
Fox News 1.0 Revisiting TVN, Roger Ailes’ first stab at running a TV news operation.
By Jack Shafer

Decades before Roger Ailes birthed the Fox News Channel for proud papa Rupert Murdoch, he had already played a role in creating a national conservative television news network—Television News Inc.

In Dark Genius, a new biography of Ailes, Kerwin Swint revisits the dawn—1973—and early demise—1975—of the news service funded by conservative brewer Joseph Coors to counter the “liberal” TV networks. Coors, a profligate donor to conservative candidates, causes, and institutions, thought the media needed an ameliorating conservative voice, too.

>Read the rest at Slate.

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.
(more…)

Pat Buchanan has been on FNC 3 times, from what I’ve seen, in 2 weeks. What’s up with that? I thought he was a MSNBC contributor. I know he’s promoting a book, but I thought employees from other cable news networks can only go on other cable news networks once, to promote their product. I guess I was wrong, or am I?

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 Baptist Press
‘Fox on Faith’ podcast available
By Staff

NEW YORK (BP)–A new podcast from Fox News Radio provides in-depth coverage of religious stories that have not necessarily been addressed by the network’s mainstream reporting.

“Fox on Faith,” hosted by former Baptist Press assistant editor Todd Starnes, launched in April and is updated every other week at foxnewsradio.com. The goal of the podcast, which offers a free subscription, is to explore how faith intersects the public arena.

Starnes is a news anchor and reporter for Fox News Radio, and the Fox on Faith podcast is one of about a dozen free podcasts the network offers.

The segments, ranging from five to 10 minutes, move along quickly from topic to topic, and they also include extended interviews with people like Grammy winner Steven Curtis Chapman, who spoke to Starnes just weeks before his youngest daughter was killed in a tragic accident.

>Read the rest at Baptist Press News.

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…)