Betty Liu Interview…

Pink’s Muriel Vega interviews Bloomberg’s Betty Liu…

PINK: How do you incorporate technology to connect with your viewers?

B.L.: We have joined Twitter and Facebook here at Bloomberg and it’s really catching on. I tweet from @bettyintheloop about guests who are coming up or big issues in the market. It’s a combination of promoting the show but also, stirring up the internet and discussing the current news. I try to keep it relevant to people who are watching the market and keeping up with regulations. A big part of the social media stint is viewers get a behind-the-scenes look so I tweet photos of us filming the show.

PINK: What’s an important lesson women can take from your book?

B.L.: When you look at your finances, you have to think also about the other aspects of your life – health, marriage, relationships. We wanted to write a book that took a holistic look at your finances. It’s not just about making a lot of money or even being at the top, it’s about having balance in your life.

Free for All: 04/07/10

What’s on your mind? Mine’s still on my computer…

An MSNBC double standard?

Mediaite’s Colby Hall pens an interesting article on the David Shuster situation…

However, the fact is that David Shuster was somehow in hot water with MSNBC because he shot a pilot for CNN (about a possible future gig) not only highlights the old-school relationships between networks and talent, but seems remarkably unfair. Mind you, had a test tape, audition or pilot been for air, of course, Shuster should have been toast in the eyes of MSNBC. But as far as we know, that didn’t happen.

Every day anchors and reporters meet with other networks to vaguely assess future opportunities. Same with their bosses. Of course they aren’t formally permitted to negotiate a deal until the end of their contract. But no one has yet suggested that Shuster, or his agent, actually negotiated a deal. Further, if that sort of clause were actually enforced? Well, there would suddenly be hoards of agents doing a whole lot of nothing. Instead, Shuster may have just been protecting himself. Looking at the way the network was responding to him, MSNBC very well might not have renewed his contract. And he would have been left unemployed (although, he may find himself there anyway.)

Update: Do read the comments for that story as Mediaite’s Rachel Sklar and Colby Hall do a back and forth about this story…

MSNBC back on Satellite Radio…

MSNBC announced that it would be making a return to satellite radio by signing with Sirius/XM…

NEW YORK, April 7 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ — SIRIUS XM Radio (Nasdaq: SIRI) and MSNBC today announced that beginning April 12, SIRIUS XM will carry MSNBC, offering millions of subscribers across the country access to the channel’s world-class reporting, full schedule of live news coverage, political analysis and award-winning documentary programming.

MSNBC will air on SIRIUS channel 90 and XM channel 120.

“We welcome MSNBC’s dynamic lineup of shows and hosts to SIRIUS XM,” said Scott Greenstein, President and Chief Content Officer, SIRIUS XM Radio. “At virtually every time of day and evening, MSNBC provides compelling and entertaining commentary and news. Now millions of listeners can stay connected via SIRIUS XM to their favorite source for news, politics, and the singular personalities of MSNBC wherever they go.”

Margaret Brennan Interview…

Talking Biz News interviews Margaret Brennan…

How is Bloomberg TV different than CNBC or Fox Business?

I don’t watch a lot of Fox, to be quite honest with you, so I wouldn’t critique what they do in comparison. I worked at CNBC for so long, so I know that best. As far as the content, I’d have to come back to the fact that here, information is paramount before the personality. That’s refreshing to me to talk to the reporters about that first, to get really well-sourced reporters on thousands of different topics on camera or on background. There’s just a different resource allocation here. And I think because of that, it allows Bloomberg to be a smart alternative to anyone else.

Plenty of people at CNBC pick up Bloomberg and read the wire service on background. But if you want tune in and hear an in-depth conversational give and take between one of the highest ranked analysts — they have strict paramaters about who you can have on air here — CEOs, investors, you’re going to have a measured, conversational tone. You’re not going to hear screaming. This is sort of my personal thing too. I don’t like jumping in and cutting people off in mid sentence. I let them finish their sentences and get across the thought that they have. It’s more about what they’re saying than the fact that I am saying it to them. That’s a different production choice, and I think that’s better for the viewer.

I think there’s a lot of context given here because of the resources — the terminal, the print reporters, the people around the world. There is a lot of that that allows you to flesh out a story a little bit more.

Another “What to do about CNN” article…

And this one comes from The Chicago Tribune’s Phil Rosenthal…

For years, the potential of a partnership or merger with a broadcast network news division has been discussed. Between CNN’s troubles and economic-driven cuts and concerns elsewhere, this might be the time to pull the trigger with either ABC or CBS.

Whichever broadcaster CNN married, the two would share resources and spread out costs the way NBC News does with MSNBC. Cable would provide a place to rerun broadcast reports and reuse network reporters over the course of the day. But it’s more than just a time and money play.

The broadcaster would provide wider exposure for the best of what the cable network had to offer, post-makeover, and shows such as ABC’s “Nightline” and CBS’ “48 Hours” would provide a template for far more interesting storytelling than CNN now offers.

Sounds easy. It’s not. I really don’t like it when people bring up the MSNBC/NBC analogy when talking about CNN. Because the two are so dissimilar. It’s one thing to launch a network that’s part of your organization, give it some semblance of independence, all but abandon it for years as it loses whatever stature it had, and then start bringing it back into the fold but gut the part of its structure that made it independent while at the same time reducing your own news division’s staff and budget not once but several times as has happened with MSNBC and NBC. It’s another thing to bring in an outside, independent news organization with it’s own bigger better infrastructure and staff and a company culture and mindset established over decades and then try to somehow merge that with your own much more meager news operation which has its own culture and mindset. That’s what would happen if CNN hooked up with either ABC or CBS. It sounds good at first on paper. But I have yet to see a proposed implementation that seemed practical or realistic.

Free for All: 04/06/10

What’s on your mind? Mine’s still on my computer…

Megyn Kelly Profile…

The Albany Times Union’s Chris Churchill profiles FNC’s Megyn Kelly…

“I would say she’s got the world in front of her, that’s for sure,” said Michael Clemente, senior vice president of news at Fox. “She’s definitely a standout.”

Kelly’s path in television news has not been routine. She didn’t slog it out at small stations in Plattsburgh or Bangor. She didn’t go to journalism school. She didn’t even get into television news until she was in her early 30s.

She became a lawyer — after graduating in 1995 from Albany Law — and spent years working as a litigator. Then, she upped and changed careers, somehow managing to land a job at a Washington, D.C., television station.

“The cumulative grind got to be a bit much,” Kelly says now of her lawyering life. “I burned my entire 20s at the office, and I wasn’t prepared to burn my 30s, too.”

Liz Claman Profile…

The LA Times’ Meg James profiles FBN’s Liz Claman…

Ditching a prominent position at an established cable channel to take a flier on an upstart — even one that is a pet project of media mogul Rupert Murdoch — might not seem like a smart business move. But nearly three years ago, Claman left CNBC, her home of nine years, and bet her career on Fox Business.

“I am what some might think would be the least likely person to be at Fox — a Berkeley graduate, tree-hugging, West Coast, free-market, liberal Jew from L.A. who puts bricks in the toilet to save water,” said the Beverly Hills native with a husky laugh that would make Mae West proud. “But I like the attitude and personality of this place.”

Shuster suspended “indefinitely”…

Politico’s Michael Calderone writes that MSNBC has suspended David Shuster indefinitely…

MSNBC brass wasn’t happy when news broke this week that David Shuster had taped a pilot for CNN, and the anchor wasn’t on-air yesterday.

Now comes word of Shuster’s fate through an MSNBC spokesperson: “David has been suspended indefinitely.”

Maria Bartiromo Interview…

I’m back up. Sorta. Still have a ton of software to install though. Anyway Wowowow’s Leslie Stahl interviews CNBC’s Maria Bartiromo…

LESLEY: I’m not blaming the media, but I wonder if everybody who does what you do, and you specifically, have gone back and said, “Wow, I blew it. What do I do next time? What do I do right now?”

MARIA: I think you have to look at the situation and ask very simple, straightforward questions of yourself. Is this too good to be true? Does this seem sustainable? Home prices moving up 40 percent year over year is obviously not sustainable. I would like to think that the next time around I could be more of a contrarian, I can be more skeptical. That’s what Jim Rogers, the international investor, will tell you. Make sure you look at things and question them, and don’t always go with the herd mentality. Don’t — just because everybody says it’s true — necessarily feed into it, because nothing goes up forever and if it does seem like it’s unsustainable, it probably is. So that’s one thing that I feel like I could learn. Another thing is, look around and if everyone is doing it, investigate why. So Goldman Sachs was selling all of these packaged mortgage securities that included sub-prime. Why? Because Morgan Stanley was. Why? Because CitiGroup was, because Merrill Lynch was.

LESLEY: So they were making money off it?

MARIA: Yes. They were all making money off of it – until they weren’t. So all they needed was one thing to happen that would break the dominos and that was house prices started declining, and they stopped going up. And then they were all left holding the bag. But you asked why everybody did it – because if you didn’t do it, the next guy was making more money than you. So it was this vicious cycle. And then let’s not forget the regulators. Barney Frank, back in 2006, saying, “Look, everybody should own a home. This is the American dream. Let’s make it affordable.” Alan Greenspan with low interest rates, let’s make it easy to get a home. So you’ve got a lot of things that meshed into place where it just seemed like home prices – we’re looking at this euphoric situation and they were going to continue, until they didn’t.

No More Shuster?

My home system is still down but this can’t wait. Gail Shister writes on TVNewser that David Shuster may have seen his last day on MSNBC…

In the past, MSNBC reps have been downright temperate in their official reactions to Shuster’s mishaps. This time, however, they’ve taken a giant step – for MSNBC, anyway — beyond temperate. If Shuster is guilty, he will “be punished appropriately.”

At this point, “appropriately” may mean keeping Shuster off the air and eating the remainder of his contract. Anything less “sends a message from management that this is OK,” says an MSNBC executive, speaking on condition of anonymity. “It’s just ridiculous.”

Blogus Interruptus

My home PC blew up tonight during a Divx update. At this point I’m not sure what went wrong. Could be a hard drive corruption/failure. In any event, until I get this sorted out and the system rebuilt, the blog will stay down barring some major news event.

Update: It’s the hard drive. On a scale of 1 to 10 where 1 is simple rebuild and I’m off and running and where 10 is rebuild but significant permanent data loss, this is an 8.5 and I’m going to be busy the next couple of days trying to get the system somewhere near where it was. Thank goodness I printed out my tax returns before the drive blew. But I still lost a lot of stuff I probably can’t get back. Backup, backup, backup…I used to be a real hard case about that but I slipped the past few years. And it’s come back to bite me big time…

Update 2: Have corrected the original problem, replaced the hard drive. Now stuck on new problem, prepping this machine to install Windows 7. I tried three times and three times the system hung near the end of the install. Looks like I need to flash the motherboard BIOS to the latest version. Last time I did that, when I originally built the system over three years ago, I fried the motherboard and had to buy a new one. Hopefully history won’t repeat itself this time. Well it can’t since Abit went out of business…

Anyway, hang in there. Maybe I’ll be able to resume blogging tomorrow…

What’s Hot/What’s Not: Submissions…

This is going up early as I have to leave and won’t return until tomorrow night. Post your nominations for this week’s What’s Hot/What’s Not. I’ll post the finalists on Sunday night…

More Advice for CNN…

Andrew Tyndall writes about all the advice CNN is getting these days with an emphasis on Jay Rosen’s suggestions for CNN on Pressthink (also worth a read). But also Tyndall offers up another question…

Instead, this is the question CNN has to answer. What do we need to do to ensure that cnn.com is the leading site for video newsgathering ten years from now? How can we make sure that nothing we do in the short term will harm our brand’s reputation for global reach, cutting-edge technology, interactive journalism, on-the-spot videography and broad expertise? CNN’s sometimes silly fetish about showcasing the bells and whistles of its video technology fits in with the goal of trying to seem futuristic and reliable at the same time.

If the price to pay for that future calculation is current day journalism that is conventional, unpopular, bland and with a View from Nowhere it seems a price that CNN’s corporate masters at Time Warner are willing to pay while they are cashing their not insubstantial profits.

Shuster in Trouble…

The news of David Shuster’s CNN pilot test, has apparently not gone down well inside 30 Rock. The New York Times’ Brian Stelter has more…

MSNBC executives were highly displeased when they learned about his test for the competing news channel CNN through a New York Observer article Friday morning, and they are now contemplating their response.

“If true, this is unacceptable and David will be punished appropriately,” an MSNBC spokesman, Jeremy Gaines, said Friday afternoon.

Reached for comment, Mr. Shuster referred the call to his agent and said he could not confirm or deny the Observer report.

Shuster wasn’t on MSNBC at 3pm today, Contessa Brewer was. Shuster was already restricted from Twitter because of his reactions to the O’Keefe bust.

Update: This anonymous blurb Steve Krakauer relates on Mediaite is just beyond the pale…

An NBC insider tells Mediaite, “Shuster has never been a major player at MSNBC.”

What a load of utter claptrap. Shuster was on twice a day while Contessa Brewer was on only once and Monica Novotny has been pushed to the sidelines. He’s been brought in for long hours of on-air coverage of special events, most recently over health care reform voting. They sent him off to Louisiana to report on the O’Keefe bust (sending the anchors remotely is something the network almost never does anymore). They put him on the White House grounds to report on Health Care Reform. Until recently, as Krakauer noted, he’s been subbing regularly on Countdown (btw Krak it’s possible MSNBC is looking to slot O’Donnell in on his own hour and that may be why MSNBC gave him such a long run on Countdown). They even tried to frame a show around him (1600 Pennsylvania Avenue). Not a major player? Then why is the network spending so much air time on him? Some executive at 30 Rock had to want him having all that exposure. It didn’t just accidentally happen all by itself…

Update 2: The shuster.msnbc.com page is now blank. Make of that what you will…

Update 3: J$ doesn’t make much of it apparently. He put the link up and then took it off. I think he’s probably right. I’m not convinced that page was active prior to this morning.

Free for All: 04/02/10

What’s on your mind?

Erin Burnett Interview…

Vanity Fair’s Eric Spitznagel interviews CNBC’s Erin Burnett…

So you don’t feel like you’ve ever apologized for or defended the people you’re supposed to be investigating?

Listen, I’m just trying to explain how something works. There have been people who are quick to say that it’s apologizing or defending, when it isn’t in any way true, right? It’s just explaining how something works. I think maybe that’s an understandable reaction by some people, given the lack of understanding and the sort of closed doors around Wall Street. I see my job as demystifying Wall Street.

But you’ve never slipped into sympathizing with them? You’ve never caught yourself thinking, “Aw, they’re just a bunch of lovable knuckleheads?”

My job isn’t to give an opinion but to try and explain what’s happening. People can say, “I don’t like how it works, I don’t think it’s fair, I don’t think it’s right.” Which is completely legitimate. During this crisis, we found out that there were a lot of things that needed explaining that couldn’t be justified and a lot of things that needed to be a whole lot more transparent than they were.

When was the last time you interviewed somebody on Wall Street and said, “Enough of your lies, we deserve the truth goddammit?!”

I’d never use the word “goddammit” in an interview.

Rebecca Diamond suspended for script tampering?

Wall St. Cheat Sheet reports that FBN’s Rebecca Diamond was recently suspended from the network…

I’ve received word from my sources that FOX Business’s host of Happy Hour Rebecca Diamond is returning to work from a suspension. The suspension allegedly resulted after Diamond had been caught tampering with the editorial scripts of Happy Hour co-host Eric Bolling.

I reached out to FOX Business and their spokesperson said “We don’t discuss personnel matters and Rebecca remains a valued member of FBN.” So, we’ll have to wait and see if the high school sounding drama spills over to the screen or whether Diamond and Bolling can hug it out.

What a bizarre story. Why would someone tamper with the script of another?

CNN’s David Shuster?

In a must read, The New York Observer’s Felix Gillette writes about CNN taping a pilot with MSNBC’s David Shuster…

Recently, according to CNN sources, the network’s in-house team shot a pilot for a news show featuring David Shuster of MSNBC and Michel Martin of NPR as co-anchors. The pilot, we’re told, also featured medical and opinion segments, and included appearances by several current CNN contributors, including Chrystia Freeland, the U.S. managing editor for the Financial Times and Jeffrey Toobin of The New Yorker.

Reached on Wednesday night, Ms. Martin declined to comment. Ditto Mr. Shuster. Ditto CNN.

Will the project ever see the light of day? It’s a toss-up. You can bet that the CNN cupboard is well stocked with ideas like the Martin-Shuster pairing that might never make it out of TV purgatory–that well-populated land where ideas exist when they are not quite alive and not quite dead.

In Depth: Real Editing Stories with Sarah Palin…

I wasn’t planning on watching FNC’s Real American Stories with Sarah Palin. 7pm PT is usually spent elsewhere on the TV. But after reading Steve Krakauer’s semi-glib going in two directions review on Mediaite, I decided I needed to see this to make up my own mind.

I could theorize how this came about. Someone at FNC probably said, “We’ve got all this stuff in the can from two years ago which only aired on the internet. Let’s try to make some use of it on TV.” Someone else probably chimed in “Let’s get Sarah Palin to host it. It’ll draw viewers for sure.” Interesting idea. To bad the execution was so flawed. There are two ways to look at this special; technical execution and Sarah Palin’s role. I’m going to do both.

From start to finish this show felt like something that got cobbled together rather than a top down well planned and well coordinated special. There’s no cohesion between segments other than the umbrella “Real American Stories”. Though, to be pedantic, the actual title used was “Real American Stories with host Sarah Palin”. “Host”? They needed to stick the word host in there? It wasn’t self-explanatory?

Anyway, the various stories felt like they were originally stand alone stories. Which of course most, if not all, were. Some were really short. Some were much longer. Toby Keith and Jack Welch’s segments seemed out of place with some of the others. I could see why LL Cool J would feel “mis-represented” to use his happy phrase.

FBN Poll Controversy? What FBN Poll Controversy?

Daily Finance’s Zac Bissonnette writes about an alleged controversy concerning a FoxBusiness.com poll on Health Care reform and the November election…

The question itself, posted on foxbusiness.com, is straightforward enough: “Will the passage of the health-care reform bill impact your vote in the mid-term elections?”

It’s the answers that are a problem. Readers have a choice of saying that either they are more concerned about other issues, find the bill “too expensive and intrusive,” or will decide in November.

I said this was an alleged controversy because I don’t read the poll choices the way Bissonnette does and see nothing really wrong here. This is a three answer question. Your vote will either be impacted by the vote or it won’t. Or, you don’t know yet. That’s it.

The FoxBusiness poll answer choices, while tacking on some gratuitous verbiage, do follow the three choice rule. What Bissonnette wants is a “No it won’t impact my vote because I want Health Care reform” answer which would then give the poll two No vote options, and that would split the No vote. The important thing is the viewers can either vote Yes or No. Do I wish FoxBusiness.com hadn’t slanted the verbiage that followed that way. Well…yeah…it is kind of revealing that they didn’t change the verbiage of the No vote so that it was the antithesis of the verbiage for the Yes vote. But, seriously, is someone who wanted health care reform going to vote “Yes” it will affect their vote, seeing as they got what they wanted? Not likely, though I suppose you could carve out an exception for someone who wanted health care, got it, and wants to keep it by voting against anyone who wants to repeal it. But at that point, you’re getting so technical in how you parse this thing the poll question itself would need to be overhauled to take this into account.

What this whole alleged controversy does underscore is just how pointless polls and surveys are since depending on what you ask and what choices you give to answer, you can get a wide variety of percentage responses.

Olbermann/Fox and Friends Weekend mock “fallen” anchor…

The Huffington Post writes about Keith Olbermann and Fox and Friends Weekend mocking an anchor that fell out of her chair. Turns out the anchor had MS. Olbermann subsequently apologized…

The reason for Olbermann’s apology? It turns out that Lawson has multiple sclerosis, which might help to explain the incident. According to a mutual friend of both the MSNBC host and the anchor, Lawson has used a cane for years.

But it appears that MSNBC wasn’t the only cable news network to air the video. Fox News’ “Fox & Friends” also joked about the clip they called “Anchors Away” over the weekend, according to one angry viewer who wrote to media web site Houston Press :

Free for All: 04/01/10

What’s on your mind?

Nielsen planning major ratings change…

In a must read, Media Post’s Joe Mandese writes about Nielsen planning on changing the way it calculates “Reach”…

In a move that has profound implications for the way advertisers and agencies plan and buy television, Nielsen Tuesday informed clients it will make some fundamental changes in the way it calculates its so-called “average audience” ratings – long the currency of the $80 billion TV advertising marketplace. Perhaps the most significant of the changes is that Nielsen will begin including duplicate viewing to all program telecasts in its average audience ratings, a move that could undermine one of the core tenets of Madison Avenue’s media planning theory: unduplicated reach.

Nielsen said it is making the moves, effective in December, to help prepare for other big changes in the way it factors television audience ratings, including the inclusion of so-called “extended screen” viewing of TV programs viewed online. While the absolute amount of duplicate viewing that currently takes place via the Internet and various devices such as digital video recorders and video-on-demand services, currently is small, it is expected to grow over time, and potentially could dilute the meaning of audience reach.