MSNBC Profitability…

Under the general theme of MSNBC’s profitability The Washington Post’s Howard Kurtz interviews NBC News President Steve Capus and NBCU President Jeff Zucker in an article that’s as much a profile of Capus as it is a review of MSNBC. It’s a must read for some of the quotes in the article. Like this back and forth concerning MSNBC and FNC. Kurtz managed to snag an ultra rare Brian Lewis quote!!!

Fox News, he adds, is “trying to brand us” as a liberal broadcast network because of MSNBC. “It’s a classic political tactic–they don’t like Keith Olbermann, they’re going to come after us. It’s annoying.”

Fox Executive Vice President Brian Lewis responds that “NBC, and especially MSNBC, is not even a blip on our radar screen. We don’t care what they do. Capus must be confusing us with CNN” as a close competitor. (Fox host Bill O’Reilly, for his part, regularly describes NBC as a left-wing network, at one point slamming “Capus and his character assassins.”)

Dan Abrams may bristle at this sentence though…

Capus attributes the turnaround to the channel branding itself “the place for politics,” giving it a long-sought focus after so many short-lived programs with the likes of Alan Keyes, Phil Donahue, Dan Abrams and John Hockenberry.

Update: Eagle eyed Fritz3 notes in the comments that Abrams’ name has been scrubbed from the above sentence! The new sentence…

Capus attributes the turnaround to the channel branding itself “the place for politics,” giving it a long-sought focus after so many short-lived programs with the likes of Alan Keyes, Phil Donahue and John Hockenberry.

What’s Hot/What’s Not: 09/19/10

What’s Hot:

Brian Wilson out at FNC – Wilson has apparently been permanently suspended from FNC. The reasons for the suspension are not clear. The unofficial-official version, aka the leaked version, is that Wilson had anger management issues and one incident cited involved Wilson chewing out a staffer and kicking a chair. But according to FishbowlDC Diane Brandi of FNC’s legal wing was brought to DC to handle the situation. That seems like an awful lot of firepower for an anger management issue. Another tidbit: The Hotline’s On Call wrote that FNC PR confirmed that Wilson “resigned”. Resigned? If it’s an anger management issue you don’t need them to resign. You probably have enough cause to terminate without having to go through the negotiation process. Unless there’s more to this story than has been publicly revealed; something nobody wants revealed. Is this possible? I can safely say yes, it is possible. Very possible. If I sound cagey here it’s because I have to be. But I’m not buying the unofficially official version of Wilson’s departure. And we’ll just leave it at that…

Disharmony on Amercian Morning – FTVLive was the first to report stories that Kiran Chetry and John Roberts weren’t getting along. Now this story has gone public after Roberts chewed Chetry out on the air. It will not be long before one or both are gone from the program now…

Dennis Kneale – Kneale’s days at CNBC may be numbered…

MSNBC tops CNN on “Primary Night” – It wasn’t a major primary and I wish the networks would stop overbilling these non-major primaries but MSNBC did top out over CNN on Tuesday Night. The hours where CNN beat did MSNBC in the Demo were at 10 and 11pm but it wasn’t enough to keep MSNBC from winning the night coming out on top.

AP vs. CNN – Yahoo News’ Michael Calderone reported that CNN is still using AP wire stories after ending its agreement with the service. And the AP isn’t happy about it apparently.

What’s Not:

Shafted – My planned night dives on Maui Tuesday were canceled because there weren’t enough people signed up. Dang…