Tweet of the Day…

CNN’s Carol Costello…

FOX is interviewing Santa. Santa told the “Friends” ‘people used to call me Santa,’ but since this war on Christmas started… Seriously?

Pushback Rebuttal?

Mediaite’s Tommy Christopher tries to push back on the push back to Gabriel Sherman’s FNC piece on Monday…

New York Magazine‘s Gabriel Sherman is under fire from the conservative media, and from Fox News’s Brit Hume, over his reporting on internal emails regarding Fox News’ weekend coverage of gun control in the wake of Friday’s horrific mass shooting. Much of that criticism is based on a story, from The Hollywood Reporter‘s Paul Bond, that purports to debunk Sherman’s reporting, but a review of what Sherman actually wrote, and how Fox News actually covered the issue of gun control this past weekend, reveals that THR didn’t check their facts, or didn’t care.

Christopher then goes on to argue that the type of discussion regarding “gun control” on FNC was weak…

The “both sides represented” by Fox News over the weekend, then, were:

Gun control is not the issue
Gun control is not the only issue
Let’s talk about something else

As supporting evidence, Christopher linked to a video, source unknown, of selectively edited clips from various FNC shows on Saturday and Sunday. Selectively edited clips are always a red flag for me. You can’t evaluate a segment or a series of segments fairly if you only have snippets of the segments to go on.

Notice the shift in narrative though? It’s no longer “FNC didn’t talk about Gun Control”. It’s now “FNC didn’t talk about Gun Control in a way I feel was meaningful.” It’s not a yes/no proposition anymore but a subjective in the eye of the beholder proposition. I consider that too slippery a slope to venture down. If you have to resort to subjectivism to frame your argument, you are going to be hard pressed to convince anyone whose ideological world view isn’t the same as yours.

On the other hand there is this…

Bond took what was spoon-fed to him by “Fox News insiders,” didn’t insist that they provide him with a full accounting of the emails that Sherman reported on, then closed the loop with an on-the-record source.

To be clear, there is absolutely nothing wrong with a network making a public relations effort to rebut negative press, and Fox News has no duty to tell Gabe Sherman’s side of the story, or provide evidence to contradict their own. That’s the reporter’s job, and THR‘s failed at it.

On this point, Christopher and I are in agreement. The Hollywood Reporter story had all the markings of a classic story plant.

Martha McCallum Re-ups with FNC…

TVNewser’s Alex Weprin reports that Martha McCallum has re-signed with FNC for another multi-year term…

Editorial Control…

New York Magazine’s Gabriel Sherman continues to be a thorn in FNC’s side. This time Sherman writes about an editorial edict that went down last Saturday…

According to sources, David Clark, the executive producer in charge of Fox’s weekend coverage, gave producers instructions not to talk about gun-control policy on air. “This network is not going there,” Clark wrote one producer on Saturday night, according to a source with knowledge of the exchange. The directive created a rift inside the network. According to a source, one political panelist e-mailed Clark that Bloomberg was booked on Meet the Press to talk about gun control. Clark responded, “We haven’t buried the children yet, we’re not discussing it.” During the weekend, one frustrated producer went around Clark to lobby Michael Clemente, Fox’s executive vice-president for news editorial, but Clemente upheld the mandate. “We were expressly forbidden from discussing gun control,” the source said. Clark’s edict wasn’t universal: On Fox News Sunday, host Chris Wallace talked with Democratic Senators Joe Lieberman and Dick Durbin about gun control, and later in the program, panelists Bill Kristol and Fortune editor Nina Easton weighed in on the issue.

This didn’t go un-noticed by Johnny Dollar who offered up three examples of FNC talking about Gun Control.

One example was concerning Bill O’Reilly talking about it tonight, which of course falls outside of the timeline window Sherman wrote about.

A second example was about Bob Beckel discussing it. No date was given to the discussing of it and Beckel is on The Five so I will assume it occurred today…which is also outside the timeline window Sherman wrote about.

The third example Dollar gave was a clip of Fox News Sunday, which Sherman himeslf wrote about in his article.

So Dollar’s defense wasn’t very iron clad. The one example of discussing Gun Control which occurred on the weekend that’s presented by either Sherman or Dollar was the Fox News Sunday example. It’s not clear to me whether Fox News Sunday falls under Clark’s oversight since it’s produced for Fox broadcast and not FNC. But even if it did fall under Clark’s oversight, it doesn’t invalidate the theory that Clark’s edict occurred and instead was ignored by Fox News Sunday.

CNBC’s Wall Street Journal Report Changes Name…

In a move that should surprise no one,  CNBC tersely announced that the syndicated Wall Street Journal Report with Maria Bartiromo is getting a new name..

Starting January 1st, “The Wall Street Journal Report” will be renamed “On the Money with Maria Bartiromo”.

What wasn’t mentioned is the reason why. But it’s obvious. On December 31st, CNBC’s agreement with Dow Jones expires. Starting January 1st, don’t expect to see the Wall Street Journal brand anywhere on cable other than News Corp. properties…

FNC Wants DVR Viewers…Badly…

Sometime fairly recently, perhaps within the past week. FNC started making a brazen appeal for viewers to DVR its programming. It has been embedding a “DVR it NOW” bug into programming spots.

This isn’t the first time someone at the network has gone down this path. Years ago when there was still something of a dispute between some of the cable nets about whether Live or Live+SD ratings should be the standard to measure ratings by, Bill O’Reilly practically begged viewers to DVR his show. Now, of course, everyone goes by Live+SD (and even that may go the way of Live ratings as C7 gains momentum) ratings.

Still this is a really silly campaign for FNC to mount. What’s the point? Not enough people are DVR-ing FNC shows? Is this, like O’Reilly’s plea five years ago, an attempt to boost the network’s ratings?

I doubt it will work. People with DVRs already DVR the shows they can’t watch live. It might have some impact on the less DVR savvy who don’t have recording queues a mile long…such as mine which has 217 programs to record over the next two weeks. But the impact will probably be negligible. Ultimately this campaign’s main achievement will probably be to focus attention on the network’s appeal (and the speculation as to why) and the benefit of that is dubious at best.

Update: It’s worse than I thought. FNC’s website has a DVR FAQ…

DVR FAQ

Have a question about your DVR? We have the answer.
What is a DVR?

It’s like a VCR, but it does not require a video tape. Instead, it records and plays back video digitally right from your cable or satellite box. It contains a hard drive, like a computer, that stores the information.

Anybody ignorant of what a DVR is is probably too ignorant to find this web page…

FNC’s War on Christmas…

FNC…contributing to the secular progressivism that is destroying the moral fabric our country was founded on? Didn’t they get the O’Reilly memo?

Over the Line…

There’s a big supposed “gotcha” moment that’s circulated the blogosphere today. Politico’s Dylan Byers writes about the case of Jesse Watters and the Obama Campaign donation…

One week after the 2012 election, Fox News correspondent Jesse Watters told Bill O’Reilly that Obama voters were “zombies” who supported the president “as long as there was Obamacare, gay marriage and abortion on demand.”

Per the FEC filing above, Watters, who resides in Long Island, N.Y., contributed $500 to Obama Victory Fund 2012 in late September. You’ll note “News Corp.,” which owns Fox News, is listed under “name of employer.”

I’m not in favor of “outting” stories, even if they are true which this one appears to be. I’m no fan of Watters and his shtick, but If Watters is perfectly comfortable with grilling Progressives via ambush interviews and in general making them look bad in his clips while at the same time making campaign contributions to Progressive politicians, that’s his business. It’s not our business. I imagine most of us at one time or another have done things in our jobs that were against our nature but we did them anyway. We all make calculations in our day to day lives about what we’re willing to do and what we’re not willing to do and everyone’s matric is different. Some will quit before doing something that is against their nature. Some won’t. It’s not for us to judge.

Watters had to have known that making that contribution could eventually become exposed and he went ahead and did it anyway. The mischievous side of me does wonder if he did it as a stunt just to see who would bite but it doesn’t seem likely.

Shots Fired…

The Washington Post’s Erik Wemple has MSNBC President Phil Griffin doing something he shouldn’t be doing…

Now Griffin is feeling vindicated. New York magazine’s Gabriel Sherman yesterday reported that Fox producers who wish to place Karl Rove or Dick Morris on-air must get “permission” to put them on.

Aha, says Griffin. “If you’re looking for evidence that the Pew study is inaccurate, take a look at what just happened. MSNBC does have a point of view but was honest and accurate about what was going on with the election. Fox was dishonest and misleading in their analysis and now benching two of their key contributors,” notes Griffin.

Uh…WRONG!

Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong…

Rule #1 of Network President PR: Never, never dump on the other guy no matter how tempting it is or how right you feel you are. You should remain above such things and let your underlings take the shots. You never let it escalate to the Network President level. It makes everyone under you a target.

Rule #2 of Network President PR: Know what you are doing. Griffin just attacked FNC. In fact he didn’t just attack FNC, he labeled very specific inflammatory charges at the network and its news division. He does realize that FNC lives for this kind of broadside and will respond in kind with even greater firepower, especially since it’s coming from the Network President (See Rule #1).

Rule #3 of Network President PR: Don’t make yourself look foolish. If you feel you must go on a suicide mission and attack FNC you better be certain your case is rock solid and can’t be interpreted in other ways. Such is not the case here. Pew says one thing, Griffin takes what Pew wrote and argues about something that is tangential at best to the Pew report.

The central point of the Pew report analyzed news coverage of the campaigns by story count. Griffin is arguing over the egregiousness of the content of the coverage. That’s like two Major League Baseball players both testing positive for steroids and then the two argue over which steroid was worse in order to make themselves look better. In the end they both still tested positive for steroids and that’s all that matters.

Here’s the central Pew point, a point which Griffin isn’t arguing here…

[W]hen Romney was receiving negative coverage in the final week from the rest of the press, Fox was different; 42% of its segments about him were positive while only 11% were negative. This was more positive than the earlier part of October when 34% of Fox News’ Romney coverage was positive and 9% negative.

MSNBC moved in the other direction. MSNBC’s coverage of Romney during the final week (68% negative with no positive stories in the sample), was far more negative than the overall press, and even more negative than it had been during October 1 to 28 when 5% was positive and 57% was negative.

Griffin can’t argue against that point because it’s a numerical statistic. So he changes the conversation to how egregious the violation is.

Update: Oh I almost forgot…

Rule #4 of Network President PR: Timing is everything. Coming out with an attack at FNC and a revisiting of the Pew study two days after most of your primetime hosts were seen at a White House event for Progressives kind of undermines your argument to some extent.

Ailes and Patraeus…

I hadn’t thought much about the Roger Ailes/Patraeus Bob Woodward story since I read it last night. I didn’t think it merited much notation. However with this article, Politico’s Dylan Byers has gotten me to rethink that…

Imagine waking up to this breaking news alert: “In spring 2011, Phil Griffin, president of MSNBC, advised Sec. of State Hillary Clinton to abandon her plans for life outside the public sector and run for president against Barack Obama in 2012.”

The next breaking news alert you’d be likely to receive is this one: “Phil Griffin, president of MSNBC, to step down.”

That would likely be true if it were the president of CNN, ABC, NBC, CBS, NPR, The New York Times or any other news organization. But Roger Ailes, the president of Fox News, makes his own rules. Last night, The Washington Post’s Bob Woodward reported that in spring 2011, Ailes tried to enlist then-Gen. David Petraeus to run for president. Yet since news broke, Ailes has received no substantial criticism and the reputation of Fox News remains intact.

“If the President of ABC News did this, it would be a scandal, not least for the journalists at ABC News. At Fox it’s just part of the culture,” Jay Rosen, a professor of journalsim at New York University, told POLITICO.

FNC Election Fallout?

New York Magazine’s Gabriel Sherman writes about FNC after the election…

According to multiple Fox sources, Ailes has a directive to his staff: He wants the faces associated with the election off the air — for now. For Karl Rove and Dick Morris — a pair of pundits perhaps most closely aligned with Fox’s anti-Obama campaign — Ailes’s orders mean new rules. Ailes’s deputy, Fox News programming chief Bill Shine, has sent out orders to producers mandating that producers must get permission before booking Rove or Morris. Both pundits made several appearances in the days after the election, but their visibility on the network has dropped markedly. Inside Fox News, Morris’s Romney boosterism and reality-denying predictions became a punch line. At a rehearsal on the Saturday before the election, according to a source, anchor Megyn Kelly chuckled when she relayed to colleagues what someone had told her: “I really like Dick Morris. He’s always wrong but he makes me feel good.”

A Fox spokesperson confirmed the new booking rules for Rove and Morris, and explained that Shine’s message was “the election’s over.”

Megyn Kelly ‘Freaked’ by New Fox News Alert

FNC changed its Fox News Alert and apparently it caught Megyn Kelly off gaurd…

He said/He said…

The Daily Beast’s Howard Kurtz writes about the FNC/Tom Ricks flap…

Was Ricks being deliberately provocative? Perhaps he was, for controversy sells books. And maybe his criticism was overstated. But the fact remains that he was invited as a guest, was asked about the Libya attack, and responded in a way that made Fox’s relentless coverage of the controversy part of the story. And that was deemed unacceptable.

Michael Clemente, Fox’s executive vice president, told me that Ricks’s conduct “felt like a stunt…That was just bush league, especially for a veteran reporter.” Ricks wasn’t answering the anchor’s question, says Clemente, and Scott, feeling “offended,” decided that “I’m not going to give this guy any more airtime.”

What’s more, Clemente says, Ricks “apologized” to a Fox staffer on the way out.

Ricks denies this, saying he told the staffer—who accused him of being rude—that he “might have been a bit snappish” because he was tired from his book tour. “This was in no way an apology,” Ricks told me, “but rather an explanation of why I jumped a bit when the anchor began the segment with the assertion that pressure on the White House was building—which it most clearly was not.”

As for the interview itself, “I was not picking a fight with Fox. I was answering their questions.”

Bull. Ricks absolutely was picking a fight with FNC the same way that John Ziegler tried to pick a fight with Contessa Brewer and got booted off MSNBC. If you attack a network you are appearing on with that kind of rhetoric, you should expect to get yanked off the air. One could still make the point Ricks was trying to make without resorting to the language Ricks was using…language which left FNC with no choice but to drop him like a hot potato.

The only question I have is whether Ricks has a documented history of taking jabs at FNC. If he has, then FNC’s bookers share some of the blame for bringing him on knowing what could happen.

The Bob Beckel Hall of Shame…

Since FNC seems to want to keep walking Hazard Bob Beckel on the air, I think it only fair to remind everyone just how much a Hazard Beckel has been for the network…

Feb 2010 – Flips the bird on Hannity…

July 2011 – Beckel’s first of many profanity bombs on The Five…

Sept 2011 – Bombs Away…

Oct 2011 – Bombs Away Again…

Apr 2012 – Where’s he Bleep?…

Aug 2012 – So many Bombs, so little time…

Nov 2012 – No Bombs…just offensive commentary…

Beckel has stolen the crown of “Biggest Foul Mouthed Loose Cannon” away from serial offender Chris Matthews; something I didn’t think was possible. Thanks to Beckel, The Five has yanked the crown of “Show Most Deserving of a Permanent Seven Second Delay” away from Morning Joe. You can understand why Matthews and Morning Joe are still around…they’re key to MSNBC’s success. But Beckel is small fry. He’s an interchangeable cog for FNC. And the network has never punished him ever for being such a negative attention magnet and his inability to change his ways. FNC can’t keep sticking its head in the sand and hope things change. They won’t.

BOOOM!

Ouch…

Bob Beckel Apologizes (YET AGAIN) for (LATEST) Embarrassment…

(via J$)

Bob Beckel read a dictated from management apology at gunpoint apologizes for being the embarrassment to FNC that he is yesterday’s gaffe…

The Twinkie Defense?

Seriously? A bus bombing in Israel and FOX is doing a segment on do-it-yourself twinkies?

- Carol Costello this morning on Facebook.

Megyn Kelly: Another viewpoint…

A veteran observer of the cable news industry emailed in the following regarding the Megyn Kelly situation at FNC…

You know the media love to promote the Megyn Kelly Rising Star storyline, and it’s true she has been featured quite a bit. But it’s always in a manner consistent with a role as reporter rather than opinionator. And opinionators are what sell in primetime.

Also doesn’t anyone look at the ratings? She comes in below Fox & Friends! Only Happening Now (which has been lagging for years) and Studio B are lower in dayside. She loses viewers from Hemmer’s block. I just think it’s odd how much this meme continues to bubble around when she’s not exactly setting the Nielsens on fire. Though I understand it to a certain extent as she is so good on camera, and smart on her feet (lawyers turned journalists tend to have that ability)…but this in the role of a reporter, not as a primetime commentator/opinion host.

I would counter argue a couple of things raised here. I can’t say that Kelly ‘loses viewers’ from Hemmer’s block since her block doesn’t follow Hemmer’s block. As for the ‘opionators are what sell in primetime’ argument…They certainly do sell at 8pm and at 9pm but Greta Van Susteren has done just dandy at 10pm and I wouldn’t consider her cut from the same opinionator stone as Hannity and O’Reilly. I think a Kelly-Van Susteren swap out, if the network ever decided to go that route, wouldn’t hurt FNC’s primetime any.

Deja Vu All Over Again…

The Daily Beast’s Howard Kurtz argues Megyn Kelly is destined for bigger things than 1pm…

She is clearly too big a talent to remain marooned at 1 p.m. and would like a more prominent time slot. But with Fox having stuck for years with a winning prime-time lineup of Bill O’Reilly, Sean Hannity, and Greta Van Susteren, it is not clear where Kelly would land.

Ohhhh…how about 3pm and 7pm? Just about everyone sees Shepard Smith as the “square peg” in FNC’s “round hole”. Granted, he brings something unique to FNC’s broadcasts, as does Kelly. But, my point is, FNC doesn’t have to give Kelly a primetime gig to elevate her further. Do I think it will happen? Only if Smith decides to leave for another network.

Of Rove and FNC’s Decision Desk

If you watched it last night as I did, it was one of the more interesting sideshows on cable news election night coverage. New York Magazine’s deadly danger man Gabriel Sherman goes behind the scenes of last night’s FNC Rove vs. FNC’s Decision Desk bruhaha. More amazing than Sherman’s story is the fact that FNC commented on the record at all. I thought Sherman was permanently radioactive for FNC…

Shortly before 5 p.m. yesterday, Fox News chairman and CEO Roger Ailes assembled his network’s election team in a second floor conference room at Fox’s midtown headquarters to discuss the night’s coverage. He prepared them for the worst. “Guys,” he told them according to a source familiar with the exchange, “if things don’t go your way tonight, don’t go out there looking like someone ran over your dog.”

Six hours later, American Crossroads co-founder and Fox News contributor Karl Rove was on-camera seeming to ignore his boss’s orders. Shortly after 11 p.m., Bret Baier went on-camera to read a script written by Fox’s Washington managing editor Bill Sammon, based on an analysis by the network’s decision desk, announcing Ohio for Obama. “That’s the presidency, essentially,” Baier said.

Instantly, Fox phones lit up with angry phone calls and e-mails from the Romney campaign, who believed that the call was premature, since tallies in several Republican-leaning Southern counties hadn’t been been fully tabulated. “The Romney people were totally screaming that we’re totally wrong,” one Fox source said. “To various people, they were saying, ‘your decision team is wrong.’” According to a Fox insider, Rove had been in contact with the Romney people all night. After the Ohio call, Rove — whose super-PAC had spent as much as $300 million on the election, to little avail — took their complaints public, conducting an on-air primer on Ohio’s electoral math in disputing the call.

Preliminary Election Night Numbers…

CNN is noting how well it did last night in the ratings. These numbers are not final so it’s possible that somewhere Karl Rove is questioning the Nielsen Decision Desk’s call…

CNN IS TOP-RATED CABLE NEWS NETWORK ON ELECTION NIGHT; WINS TOTAL VIEWERS, KEY DEMO 25-54 AND YOUNGER VIEWERS (18-34)

CNN Breaks Four-Year Traffic Record Online, Earns More Social Media Buzz than Any TV News Brand

According to Nielsen Fast National Ratings data, CNN ranked #1 among the cable news networks last night in total viewers, key demo 25-54 and younger viewers (18-34) from 7pm-2am (when first polls closed thru both candidates’ speeches).

Election Night (7pm-2am), Tuesday, November 6, 2012:

CNN 8.836 million total viewers/4.387m adults 25-54/2.711m adults 18-34

FNC 8.708 million total viewers/3.494m adults 25-54/1.214m adults 18-34

MSNBC 4.604 million total viewers/2.021m adults 25-54/785k adults 18-34

CNN Digital:

CNN.com breaks four-year traffic record:

On Tuesday, November 6, 2012 CNN.com broke four-year traffic records by delivering 203 million page views and reaching more than 23 million unique visitors. Accounting for half of the day’s page views were the CNN Politics section and CNN Digital Election Center which boasted 101.5 million page views collectively. In addition, CNN.com delivered nearly 6 million video starts and 382,000 live streams for Election Day 2012. (Source: Omniture Site Catalyst)

More buzz than any other TV news brand:

CNN was the most cited TV news brand in measured social media yesterday, more than doubling that of second place – Fox News (Source: Sysomos). CNN’s flagship Facebook fan page garnered more than 145,000 actions yesterday while daily total actions across the CNN flagship Twitter accounts, @CNN and @CNNBRK, totaled 68,000 (Facebook API and Twitter Analytics).

“CNN”, “Watching CNN”, “Anderson Cooper” and “Wolf Blitzer” were all worldwide trending topics on Twitter during primetime election coverage (Twitter Analytics).

Megyn Kelly Interview

The Miami Herald’s Glenn Garvin interviews Megyn Kelly…

Curiously, letting her own personality emerge proved the most difficult part of becoming an anchor, Kelly says. As a lawyer, the only emotion she showed in the courtroom was ferocity. (“I can’t wait to kick your ass,” she infamously once told an opposing attorney.) As a reporter, she took a just-the-facts-ma’am approach. As an anchor, her bosses told her she had to let go a little bit — audiences didn’t want to spend two hours with an automaton.

“I was putting up a wall,” Kelly acknowledges. “[Fox News boss] Roger Ailes told me, ‘Take more risks, don’t be afraid of being vulnerable, show who you are.’ It wasn’t easy for me at first. When you’re putting up a front … and you get rejected, you can take comfort in the fact that it’s just your professional self. But if it’s your actual self, then they’re actually rejecting you. It’s scarier.”

Kelly accepted the advice, sometimes to a surprising degree. She even agreed to do Howard Stern’s radio show, where she answered questions ranging from the size of her breasts (“my husband calls them Killer B’s”) to the old slumber party favorite of name-association with the phrase fornicate-marry-kill (“Bill O’Reilly, Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck.”)

Kelly offers no apologies for that one — “It was a great opportunity to get the Fox News brand in front of an audience that wasn’t very familiar with it.” And she demurs when it’s suggested that, once upon a not-so-long-ago time, a television anchor would have jumped into a volcano before appearing on Stern’s show.

Shannon Bream Profile…

The Charlotte Observer’s Matt Washburn profiles Shannon Bream…

Bream was practicing labor law in Tampa when she got the TV news bug. She talked a local news director into letting her have an internship, then an entry-level job writing scripts on the overnight shift.

When a new news director arrived, he decided to clean house and called in Bream.

“He told me I was terrible. He said, ‘You’re the worst person I’ve ever seen on television.’ He said, ‘I hope you’re a better lawyer than a reporter, and you need to go back to that.’”

Bream had a good weep in a soundproof edit bay, summoned the strength to make a dignified exit and went looking for her next job. She found it in 2001 at Channel 3 alongside longtime morning anchor John Carter.

Carter remembers Bream as smart, poised and hard-working, but most of all funny.

They were doing a newscast from Channel 3’s old Center City studio beside Bank of America when one of the robotic cameras went haywire.

“She’s reading this serious story and the camera pointed at her starts going up and down and sideways, and then spinning around while the video part of the story was running.

“She just lost it laughing and she fell out of her chair. Its was spinning around like nobody’s business, like it was possessed. She was on the floor, and I had to finish reading the story, then we went to commercial.

“From that day on, there was never a day there wasn’t a production person there in case those cameras went wrong.”

Slow Day So Here’s Some Red Meat For You

Slate Magazine’s  Amanda Marcotte (predictably) ridicules Bill O’Reilly and Jesse Watters..

Bill O’Reilly has been very concerned about the problem of degrading women lately. So concerned, in fact, that he worried out loud that Sandra Fluke had degraded women with her immodest suggestion that insurance benefits cover contraception. With Bill O’Reilly as a fierce protector of ladies, you can imagine that his show’s segment on single female voters last night was a chaste, respectful affair that represented the wide diversity of this important portion of the electorate: the never-married, the divorced, the widowed, the single mothers and the non-mothers, the cohabitating but unmarried, the young and the old, and, of course, women from a variety of racial and ethnic backgrounds.

Just kidding! O’Reilly sent his producer Jesse Watters out on Halloween weekend to interview sexy young white women on the street, all of them in costume and ready to party, so that Watters could leer at their single lady voter breasts and condescendingly make “can you believe they have a right to vote?!” faces at the camera in response to the women’s selectively edited answers to his questions.

One Hour Journal Editorial Report and Fox News Watch till the Election?

Johnny Dollar scoops that FBN will keep The Journal Editorial Report and Fox News Watch at supersized one hour lengths until the election…

FNC Changes…

A question from an emailer…

I noticed at 10 am America’s Newsroom and 9pm Hannity are not using their regular Studio J. 10am they used studio D and Hannity used the newer FBN studio. Do you know if they are making changes to Studio J?

The grapevine is saying that FNC is prepping the studio for election night.

Open Mouth…Insert Foot…

The Huffington Post’s Bonie Kavoussi writes about something Steve Doocy said on Fox and Friends yesterday…

During a Monday segment on the anniversary of the Occupy Wall Street movement, Fox News anchor Steve Doocy took the opportunity to compare Occupy protests to recent protests against the United States in the Arab world.

“That almost looks like what happened last week in Libya and in Cairo,” Doocy said on “Fox & Friends” on Monday, while airing footage that appeared to be at least several months old. “We’re talking about the Occupy forces moving out.”

Looks like what happened last week in Libya and in Cairo. Really?

Who did the Occupy movement murder Steve?

The DOJ – Media Matters Connection?

The Daily Caller’s Matthew Boyle has a story on communication between Media Matters and members of the Justice Department’s press operation.

Internal Department of Justice emails obtained by The Daily Caller show Attorney General Eric Holder’s communications staff has collaborated with the left-wing advocacy group Media Matters for America in an attempt to quell news stories about scandals plaguing Holder and America’s top law enforcement agency.

Dozens of pages of emails between DOJ Office of Public Affairs Director Tracy Schmaler and Media Matters staffers show Schmaler, Holder’s top press defender, working with Media Matters to attack reporters covering DOJ scandals. TheDC obtained the emails through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request.

Part of me wants to say, “Gee…a press office working with media types…what a novel concept” and another part of me wants to say, “Gee…a government press office interacting with ‘friendly’ media types who may be sympathetic to their cause…totally unheard of in the history of the press!”

A Blind Man Could See This Coming…

You just knew Phil Griffin’s dig at FNC would come back in his face. And it did via TVNewser (with the invisible hand of FNC no doubt pitching in)…

Of course, that’s not exactly accurate, and since Griffin asked, here are a few recent examples of Fox news praising democrats.

- Chris Wallace on Michelle Obama’s DNC speech: “Masterful… from her heart.”

- Brit Hume on Mrs. Obama: “Extremely impressive and attractive woman.”

- Charles Krauthammer on Mrs. Obama: “Brilliant speech and brilliantly delivered.”

- Hume on Bill Clinton‘s DNC speech: “If I were ever in trouble and if I were guilty — especially if I were guilty — I would want Bill Clinton there to defend me because nobody does it better.”

- Wallace on Clinton: “The reason he is such an effective political speaker is because he is such an effective political thinker. He is able to frame a political argument more effectively than anyone I’ve ever seen in politics.”

Boomerang PR at its finest folks…

The Gretchen Carlson Situation

Lost in last week’s Gabriel Sherman piece on Roger Ailes in New York Magazine was the story of Gretchen Carlson’s future at FNC…

According to one person familiar with the matter, Carlson and Fox have been haggling over her contract terms. Carlson is said to want to host her own show on the network, but Fox executives are resistant to the idea. This summer, as the talks dragged on, Carlson was conspiculously absent from Fox & Friends for days on end. One person said they were able to reach a short-term accord that would keep her on the curvy couch with Steve Doocy and Brian Kilmeade until the election. But after November, it’s unclear.

If there is even a shred of truth to this, Carlson is on dangerous ground. Roger Ailes and FNC have a history of summarily dispatching talent whose dreams are bigger than FNC reality will tolerate (see: Chetry, Kiran).