The White House vs. FNC: The Evidence

US News & World Report’s Paul Bedard writes about a series of White House emails that have come out as a result of a FOIA request by Judicial Watch…

It’s not a secret that the Obama White House and conservative media outlets like Fox News have been at odds over the past two years, but new White House E-mails revealed today show how the Fox-administration relationship foundered back in 2009.

Released by watchdog Judicial Watch, the E-mails suggest a bias against Fox News as a whole and one of its anchors, Bret Baier, specifically. “He’s a lunatic,” says one of the White House E-mails.

Free for All: 07/14/11

What’s on your mind?

The Hazards of Live TV: #25,110

I’ve seen a lot of crazy things happen on cable news. But I don’t think I’ve ever seen the wrong guest show up on the satellite for a segment as this Sky News report documents happened when Michael Wolff unexpectedly popped up on the BBC…

As the interview began, Mr Wolff at first remained silent when the presenter introduced him as Ben Walker, baseball editor for the Associated Press.

But when his silence was put down to a mere technical error, the embarrassing blunder became clear.

When asked if he could hear, Mr Wolff replied: “You know what it’s even a worse situation than that, because I am not Ben Walker and I know nothing about baseball.”

He began to speak again, but was cut off by the presenter who said: “I beg your pardon we seem to have the wrong guest”, before moving quickly on to a story about the women’s world cup in Germany.

Kiran Chetry out at CNN…

Brian Stelter slow handed the following big news on Twitter…

Some CNN news: Kiran Chetry, the “American Morning” co-host, is leaving the net at the end of the month. (CNN’s been revamping “Morning.”)

Wow. With Ali Velshi not permanently attached to American Morning, Christine Romans not permanently attached to American Morning and now the permanently attached Kiran Chetry getting un-attached to CNN, the question should be asked: Is CNN going to kill off American Morning and relaunch something else in its place?

Update: Page Six, which first reported the story, has more details…

Kiran Chetry’s time at CNN is coming to an end, say sources who claim the “American Morning” beauty was seen packing up her desk today. Chetry has told colleagues that she plans to leave the network at the end of the month, and Ali Velshi and Christine Romans will continue as interim anchors on the low-rated morning news show.

Piers Morgan bans Ann Coulter for Life…

Ann Coulter was scheduled to be on Piers Morgan’s show tonight but suddenly and abruptly pulled out a day ago. We learned about this via a Piers Morgan tweet…

So @AnnCoulter has just pulled out of @PiersTonight tomorrow – in Britain you get a yellow feather for that kind of behaviour. #coward

Well, the reasons for the cancellation remained a mystery until Coulter tweeted the following an hour ago…

And I’m on Hannity tonight! 9pm EST.

This did not go un-noticed by Morgan who laid the smack down…

Wow. In that case you just banned yourself for life from my show. Congrats

Two very important lessons here.

1) If you cancel out on one show in order to do another show, be prepared for what comes your way.
2) Don’t piss off Piers Morgan.

Free for All: 07/13/11

What’s on your mind?

CNBC Digital June Numbers

CNBC Digital is noting its June numbers…

CNBC DIGITAL SETS NEW JUNE RECORDS

ENGLEWOOD CLIFFS, N.J. – July 13, 2011 – CNBC.com, the online destination for global business news and expert analysis, had its best June ever in terms of uniques and page views. According to the latest data from comScore Media Metrix, the site was visited by 6.2 million unique users last month, a 12% increase compared to the same time period last year, and recorded 294 MM page views.

CNBC Mobile also scored records for June. CNBC Mobile Web recorded 71 MM page views which represents a 28% increase year-over-year (Source: Omniture). CNBC’s Real-Time iPhone App posted 52 MM page views, representing a 37% increase year-over-year and also saw unique visitors increase by 7% compared to the same time period as last year (Source: Omniture). CNBC’s Real-Time Android App saw a 280% increase in page views year-over-year (Source: Omniture).

Additional June 2011 highlights include:

Network War Idiocy…

Mediaite’s Frances Martel writes about CNN covering FNC’s Fox News Watch not covering News of the World and News International’s phone hacking scandal.

There are many legitimate questions to be raised about the way news entities for whom the News of the World was a sister publication should and is covering the scandal, but this report doesn’t raise too many. Using Fox News Watch, a Saturday afternoon grab-bag talk show, to evaluate how the network has covered the scandal doesn’t quite make sense, even if it is the one show on the network that describes itself explicitly as a media show. CNN did not evaluate its own coverage of the scandal by counting how many mentions the News of the World has gotten recently on Reliable Sources, but by the whole network’s output. And the fact that Todd goes out of his way to emphasize that Fox has covered the scandal, Sky News has done so even more, and that both the Wall Street Journal and the The Times are covering it do take away from the “much ado about nothing” feel to the piece.

I’ll go further than Martel does and say this is nothing more than CNN tweaking FNC, and rather obviously too. All it’s going to do is provoke FNC to pull a similarly asinine stunt to rub CNN’s nose in it over something or another. What’s worse, CNN is on incredibly shaky ground talking about Fox News Watch not covering News of the World when Reliable Sources devoted just a few scant sentences to the firing of Octavia Nasr last year. Glass houses CNN…glass houses.

Home Movie Time…

I’m finally nearing the home stretch in editing together my trip from Palau over a year ago. Here’s one clip. It’s from Blue Corner, naturally. There is one point near the end where the audio drops in and out. That on account of Premiere Pro having a bizarre quirk where certain types of imported video – namely video from still cameras – is allowed one and only one dedicated audio track and you can’t crossfade audio when you’re overlapping two different video streams in a cross dissolve. I was cross editing footage of me shooting a Bumphead Parrot Fish with video of my dive buddy shooting me shooting the Parrot Fish. Since I’m dropping the audio anyway and replacing it with music, it doesn’t matter. But that’s why.

And yeah…that’s me dropping my snorkel again at the end of the video…sigh…

Banned from Cable News for All Time…

I joked to Piers Morgan EP Jonathan Wald on Twitter last week that four of six of the guests lined up for a Piers Morgan show would be on ICN’s list of “People who should be banned from Cable News for the rest of their lives”. But I just read a comment about Alan Grayson being on the Ed Show last night. That’s another one. And it got me to thinking. I can’t be the only one who has a list of pundits/talking heads that should be banned from cable news for the rest of their lives. Who is on your list? And don’t disappoint me by just selecting people you disagree with ideologically. I’m looking for people who you think are overexposed and tend to bring nothing to the conversation when they’re on the air.

The Ed Show on Steroids?

What got into The Ed Show last night? It beat everyone in the Demo at 10pm, apparently a first. An outlier of course, yet still it does underscore what could be potential trouble for AC360 once it starts going taped at 10pm; the theory being that a taped repeat usually does not outperform the debut…Showbiz Tonight being a notable exception.

(ratings via Nielsen)

10pm ET A25-54

MSNBC – 310,000
FNC – 303,000
CNN – 213,000
HLN – 183,000
CNBC- 92,000

Free for All: 07/12/11

What’s on your mind?

The Case Against Political Horse Race Coverage…

Dan Abrams argues on Mediaite that political horse race coverage is worse for the country than the Casey Anthony trial spectacle. Well, duh…that’s a no brainer. But it’s when you get down to the point in the article where Abrams starts talking about the political coverage, that he starts swinging for the fences. And he does manage to hit a few out of the park…

When the political media spends days upon days covering and analyzing President Obama’s birth certificate, Sarah Palin’s reference to Paul Revere, wall to wall coverage of Donald Trump’s fake Presidential run (I’ll even exclude Weiner coverage for now), and every other misstep, poor choice of words, and invented scandal, they are not just wasting precious media time, they are also forcing our political leaders to define candidacies based on largely irrelevant media moments. Even though Casey Anthony did not receive the sort of justice most believe she deserved, at least the public walked away with some understanding of why the system works the way it does. Can we say the same for the public’s takeaway from intensive coverage of political gaffes? I can explain the legal concept of reasonable doubt but it’s harder to explain unreasonable doubts about political leaders that result from often inane media coverage.

Unfortunately Abrams doesn’t acknowledge his position as GM of MSNBC when it became the “Place for Politics” and it did that kind of coverage (started before he became GM…in fact it’s been going on as long as there have been elections in the modern age). That does undermine his criticism somewhat…not because his criticism isn’t valid but because he was part of the machinery that churned this stuff out. At least give us some sort of mea culpa Dan. That would have insulated you from the point I just made.

Anatomy of a Misquote…

Mediaite’s Tommy Christopher does an excellent job drilling down Martin Bashir’s misquote of Sarah Palin…

On his eponymous show Monday afternoon, MSNBC’s Martin Bashir discussed a new Facebook posting by Sarah Palin with The Grio’s Goldie Taylor, and accused Palin of calling President Barack Obama a “sugar daddy,” which he understood to mean “a pimp.”

While Palin’s oddly sexual metaphor was weird and creepy, she wasn’t referring to the President as a “sugar daddy,” but to the American taxpayers. Taylor, for her part, absolved Palin of racism, accusing her, instead, of attention-seeking.

By my count this is at least the second time Bashir has been caught playing fast and loose with the facts. Bashir never directly respondnd to criticism of that other gaffe, instead opting to go off on a non-sequiturial tangent about his residency status in the US. Hopefully Bashir won’t drift this time when giving his explanation for the misquote.

The Five: Your Reactions

Post your reactions to FNC’s temporary new show “The Five” here…

Bloomberg to Air Murdoch Special Tonight…

Bloomberg announced that it will air a one hour special on Rupert Murdoch tonight. Um, how long before FNC does a piece on Michael Bloomberg?

BLOOMBERG TV PRESENTS ‘RUPERT MURDOCH: A SPECIAL REPORT’

One-hour special report airing tonight at 9pm ET/9pm PT

Whither the Kingmaker? Tonight in a one-hour special report, Bloomberg Television provides an in-depth look at Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. and the fallout facing the media empire following last week’s shuttering of The News of the World.

Host Margaret Brennan will speak to a roundtable of reporters and experts including influential former UK broadcasting regular Stewart Purvis and Felix Gillette, media writer for Bloomberg Businessweek.

Tonight’s special report will examine the challenges confronting Murdoch, the business impact of the NOTW scandal and what Murdoch stands to lose financially if he’s unable to make the BSkyB deal materialize.

With select interviews and material from “Bloomberg Game Changers: Rupert Murdoch,” Bloomberg TV goes in-depth on Murdoch’s rise into a media mogul and whether a tarnished Murdoch can have the same impact.

Free for All: 07/11/11

What’s on your mind?

What’s Hot/What’sNot: 07/10/11

What’s Hot:

CNN Programming Remake – CNN announced a bunch of changes to shuffle its programming around. The Situation Room moves back an hour, John King, USA moves to 6pm, Erin Burnett’s new show will debut at 7pm (thus proving Page Six right all along), and, most shockingly, Anderson Cooper will now be live at 8pm but in a taped repeat most nights at 10pm. It’s a risky move for the network as far as 360 is concerned and puts incredible pressure on Burnett to deliver right out of the gate upon launch as she’s Cooper’s lead in.

Carl Quintanilla and Melissa Lee – The duo have been tapped to anchor CNBC’s Squawk on the Street.

What’s Not:

Anjali Rao departs CNNI – The mystery of why Rao is no longer with the network rages on…

Casey Anthony Verdict – The actual verdict, the coverage of the actual verdict, all the finger pointing and recriminations after the actual verdict…it all sucks. Even HLN’s boffo numbers for the verdict sucks because it proves the programmers cynicism regarding the pandering to the lowest common denominator for the viewing public was accurate. Which means, given the opportunity, they’ll do it all over again. Networks should not be rewarded for this crap with large audiences. They should be punished by the public boycotting these gratuitous spectacles.

CNBC Changes…

TVNewser’s Chris Ariens reports that CNBC will make Carl Quintanilla and Melissa Lee the new anchors for Squawk on the Street. Interestingly CNBC has opted to keep a rotating group of anchors filling the void left by Quintanilla’s departure from Squawk Box. Bet that doesn’t last…

What’s Hot/What’s Not: Submissions…

Post your nominations for this week’s What’s Hot/What’s Not. I’ll post the finalists on Sunday night…

The Hazards of Live TV: #25,109

Charlie Gasparino: World’s Strongest Man…

Why Lockup?

The Washington Post’s Jack Curry writes about MSNBC’s Lockup. If you ever wondered why MSNBC still clings to this antiquated non-sequitur of a cable news program, this will explain it to you. It’s all about the money…

The phenomenon defies MSNBC’s business model: a line-extension amortizing the expense of its NBC parent. NBC doesn’t even generate “Lockup.” Los Angeles-based 44 Blue Productions handles all filming and post-editing. (44 Blue was in town this year for its reality pilot “Potomac Fever.”) MSNBC’s reliance on 44 Blue represents the greatest amount of outsourcing by a news channel in TV today, possibly ever.

“We may be using an outside group, but, trust me, we vet it with the same standards we use on NBC News,” Griffin says.

Senior producer Elise Warner, the MSNBC staffer in charge of day-to-day supervision of “Lockup,” says,“I am very involved. I have editorial control of every minute that goes into this.”

Jessica Yellin Interview…

Cablefax’s Kaylee Hultgren interviews CNN’s newly minted Chief White House Correspondent Jessica Yellin…

How does the nature of online news and the 24-hour news cycle change your reporting strategies?

I covered the Bush White House in 2005. You don’t stop during the day. You have to be on top of news all day long, 24 hours, be in constant contact. And you have to work well with your team. You’re never going to know about everything that’s on the Internet, right?

Do you use online tools like Twitter?

I know you’ve mentioned it in some of your reporting before. Ok, I need to step up my Twitter game. I know. I’ll get on it. I follow people on Twitter, people who make interesting observations on the world. But it’s challenging being on Twitter because part of the job is bringing information in, and then disseminating it internally and online.

Part of what I learned coming up in local news is once you learn [to multitask], it’s in your blood for good. I used to work for Central Florida News in Orlando. I did video with my own camera—they gave me a two-way walkie talkie that I used as a cell phone. On day two, they gave me an address, a map and I just had to go and shoot my own tape, take notes, get back to the station. And once you get good at that, you do another one—maybe two a day.

Free for All: 07/08/11

What’s on your mind?

Free for All: 07/07/11

What’s on your mind?

Media Matters vs. FNC: FNC Strikes Back…

Politico’s Keach Hagey writes about FNC going to the mattresses in its response to Media Matters’ declared war on the network…

In the past ten days, the news channel has run more than 30 segments calling for the nonprofit group to be stripped of its tax-exempt status. Its Fox Nation website has even provided a link to pre-completed complaint forms against Media Matters to send to the Internal Revenue Service.

While Fox News personalities like Glenn Beck and Bill O’Reilly have long grumbled about Media Matters, this attack on the group has been carried out across the channel’s news and opinion programs. It has included shows like “The O’Reilly Factor,” news coverage of the complaints to the IRS, and even a psychological profile of Brock, a former conservative journalist who went over to the liberal side, on “Fox and Friends” that suggested he might be “full of self-hatred” because he was adopted.

I know FNC’s M.O. is to never walk away from a street fight but I really don’t get why it’s going all out on what is very likely a loser fight with more downside than upside in this instance. Like O’Reilly engaging Olbermann, this constitutes “punching down” at Media Matters and can only raise the organization’s profile and get its battle with FNC more publicity in the press (as evidenced by Hagey’s three page article on the subject). Media Matters’ tax exemption may or may not be a legitimate story to pursue but by going all out the way it has on this subject, that’s not what everyone’s going to be writing about. They’re going to be writing about how it has finally “gotten to” FNC…just as Olbermann “got to” O’Reilly. And we all know how well that worked out for O’Reilly…

Anjali Rao Out at CNNI…

CNN Observations notes that Anjali Rao is no longer with CNNI. I only get to see CNNI when I’m overseas diving somewhere…not very often. But I did get to see Anjali Rao anchor World Report several times over the past few years and thought she had real star power and was destined for big things at CNN. So, to find out that she’s no longer there was a shock to say the least. No word on how or why this happened, which in itself is a little telling. If it turns out to be a non-renewal scenario, I’ll be stunned.

9 1/2 Years of No Changes on FNC Primetime? Almost…

Gretawire posted the following today…

I had not thought about it….but do you realize that Fox’s prime time line up has not changed in 9 1/2 years!??

That is a long run with no change!

Sorry but that’s not entirely accurate. There was no “Hannity” in 2002. It was “Hannity & Colmes” and that show was fundamentally different from the one that currently occupies 9pm on FNC. So in the interest of accuracy, that should really be one change in 9 1/2 years. Still very impressive though…

Another Ken Jautz Interview…

Jautz definitely made the rounds today. Here he is talking to TV Guide’s Stephen Battaglio…

“It underscores a commitment to quality journalism,” Ken Jautz, executive vice president CNN/U.S. tells TV Guide Magazine of the moves. “The shows not only provide reporting but have a view based on their reporting.”

Huh? Who outside of Cooper has carved a name for themselves doing that? King? I don’t think so. Definitely not Burnett since her show hasn’t even debuted yet.

Jautz says Cooper’s program has become much more than a straight newscast, with its “Keeping Them Honest” segments and deeper analysis on issues the anchor takes on (often breaking down false or outrageous statements made by politicians). “The show has much more of a point of view than it did before,” he adds. “It’s become much more energetic and edgy.” Jautz says he believes Cooper could be a real alternative to Fox News, MSNBC and now Keith Olbermann on Current TV, which have a more politically partisan bent.

Hate to beat a dead horse here but Paula Zahn was supposed to be a “real alternative”. Campbell Brown was supposed to be a “real alternative”. Cooper does bring with him an established brand and doesn’t have to create from scratch like those two did which will spare CNN the pain of viewer acclimation to what Cooper is doing (though not necessarily spare CNN from the pain of viewer acclimation to the 8pm time slot change).

CNN will update the repeats of Anderson Cooper 360 and Erin Burnett’s new program in the event of breaking news stories that extend into the night. “They will be freshened up whenever events warrant,” says Jautz.

But those updates likely won’t include the presence of Burnett, especially if the news breaks late (later than 10pm ET). I don’t see CNN keeping Burnett on ice for three hours just in case something might happen. CNN’s historical M.O. in such instances has been to toss to CNNI but that tends to happen for events of an international nature. But it’s not impossible for CNN to drag Cooper back in late. That has happened before once or twice in the past. But it would have to be a really big story.

An Improved CNN Lineup?

The Baltimore Sun’s David Zurawik is pleased with today’s CNN programming changes…

Moving King to 6 p.m. from 7, and sliding Blitzer up to 4 p.m. from 5, is a wise choice that provides viewers with three hours of fact-based, reliable information in and around the dinner hour.. With three hours of Blitzer and King, no one can complain about their being a dearth of trustworthy reporting, analysis and context of the days events on American television.

The move also acknowledges the reality of the prime-time marketplace for cable TV. CNN did have to try and get a better ratings lead-in to the 8 p.m. start of prime time, as well as a stronger 8 p.m. performer than the blighted “Parker-Spitzer” and then Spitzer’s “In the Arena.”

We will have to wait to see how Erin Burnett does in that new 7 p.m. role. starting in September. Her success is going to be important to the evening’s audience flow given that she replays at 11. The other key move involves moving Anderson Cooper to 8 p.m. with a replay at 10.