Felix Gillette

Several weeks ago, David Barstow wrote an investigative piece for The New York Times taking a hard look at a group of ex-military pundits and their relationships with the Pentagon during the run-up to and early stages of the war in Iraq. Today, in the Politico, former Media Mobster Michael Calderone and his colleague Avi Zenilman report that while the television networks have mostly ignored the unflattering revelations in the Times story, various Democratic Congressional leaders are now calling for investigations "that could provoke the networks to finally cover the Times story—and, in effect, themselves."  read more »

Look out, Pat Kiernan! The world of round-the-clock local New York news channels is about to get a whole lot more competitive.

According to The New York Times’ Bill Carter, NBC Universal is planning to start a 24-hour local news channel, to be called … “New York’s Newschannel.”

 

More from the Times:  read more »

On Monday, MSNBC kicked off The New York Times Special Primary Edition, a new irregularly recurring daytime political show hosted by John Harwood in which Times scribes chew over news from the campaign trail.

So how did the show's premier do?

Not great!

According to Nielsen data, "The New York Times Special Primary Edition," finished fourth among cable news networks in the 2 P.M. time slot.  read more »

According to a new study by the Nielsen Company, during the first quarter of 2008, product placement jumped a whopping six percent in primetime programming.

The study covered ABC, CBS, CW, FOX, MNT, NBC, A&E, Bravo, HGTV, MTV, and TLC.

More from the Nielsen summary of the study:

Broadcast television placements rose 39%, while cable television was essentially flat at -1%.  read more »

On Tuesday, April 29, Chad Hurley, the pup-faced 30-year-old CEO of YouTube, popped up on the Internet along with the mayor of New Orleans, the governor of Louisiana and an executive from Google to invite the 2008 presidential candidates to participate in a “town hall meeting” to be held on Sept. 18 at the convention center in New Orleans, where, 32 months ago, thousands sought refuge from the devastation of Hurricane Katrina.  read more »

   read more »

The Media Mob has learned that "institutional advancement" has struck again at Thirteen-WNET, New York's flagship PBS station.

On Thursday, April 24, Vice President for Institutional Advancement Barbara Bantivoglio sent out a bulk email to Thirteen staffers informing them that the channel's marketing department was being "restructured."

In other words, more staffers were being laid off.

"It is never easy to make changes like these," wrote Ms. Bantivoglio.  read more »

“It’s not the best time in the world to be a White House correspondent,” said Bill Plante on the sultry afternoon of Saturday, April 26. This was at Tammy Haddad’s annual pre-White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner lawn party. The blooming wisteria was strangling the woods that surround her house.

These nearly-over final four years of George W. Bush are Mr. Plante’s third second-term presidency in his years as CBS White House correspondent. “I guess he could still drop a bomb somewhere—there are people who think he means to do it,” Mr. Plante said.  read more »

"I think it'll be the kind of interview we do on Fox News Sunday: tough, probing but fair," said Chris Wallace.

Mr. Wallace, the host of Fox News Sunday, was speaking to Media Mob on Thursday afternoon, about having just landed a major interview that had long eluded him: a one-on-one sit-down with Senator Barack Obama.

This Saturday, April 26, Mr. Wallace will be in Indiana, where he will interview Mr. Obama at length. The interview will air the following morning on Fox News Sunday.

"We certainly aren't interested in a food fight," he added.  read more »

On Tuesday April, 22, Steve Krakauer of TV Newser was the first to report that CNN's suspender-wearing newsman Larry King had re-upped with the cable news network through June 2011.

   read more »

“This is not your father’s Watergate,” said James Rosen.

Mr. Rosen, an on-air D.C.-based correspondent for Fox News was speaking to NYTV on Monday afternoon. Next month, Doubleday will publish Mr. Rosen’s first book—a revisionist history of Richard Nixon’s downfall, called The Strong Man: John Mitchell and the Secrets of Watergate.  read more »

Today, for the umpteenth time, the legal teams of Dan Rather and CBS appeared back in court in lower Manhattan, for yet another round of legal gymnastics over Mr. Rather's $70 million civil suit against his former employers.

Nearly two weeks ago, on April 10, Justice Ira Gammerman of the New York Supreme Court made his first major ruling in the case, dismissing 4 of Mr. Rather's 7 initial causes for action (including the claim of fraud) while allowing several issues (including breach of contract) to move forward.  read more »

Tony Snow, the former White House press secretary, is joining CNN as a conservative political commentator, starting today.

From the Press Release:

A well-known and respected observer of politics with a longstanding news background, Snow will contribute to CNN as the network continues to broadcast winning political coverage.  read more »

The North Carolina Democratic Party has just announced that the proposed April 27 presidential debate in North Carolina has been officially cancelled. The star-crossed debate would have been hosted by CBS News--and would have been Katie Couric's first opportunity to prove herself as a debate moderator on a national stage.

From the web site for the North Carolina Democratic Party:  read more »

On the night of Wed. April 16, comedian Mo Rocca walked across the stage in the spacious auditorium at the Hilton Washington on Connecticut Avenue in Washington D.C. and thanked several hundred reporters, politicians, and celebrities for showing up at the annual Radio and Television Correspondents Association Dinner.

"I know that the White House Correspondents' dinner in about 10 days gets most of the glory," said the ubiquitous political satirist and sometime MSNBC contributor. "I think of this one as sort of the Nicky to that one's Paris Hilton. This is sort of the Jamie Lynn to that dinner's Britney. Well that dinner is sort of like CNN. This one is MSNBC."  read more »

On Monday morning, shortly after 7 a.m., Mark Sollars, a chatty teenager in a gray hooded sweatshirt, stood in a crowd at Rockefeller Center and glanced over a police barricade at the alfresco portion of NBC’s Today studio.

Sensing a potential interview subject, NYTV pounced. So what exactly should Katie Couric do next with her career?

“Katie should come back here,” said the young demo-defying Today fan. “This is where she belongs. Everyone loved her here.”

Nearby, production assistants had decked out a slab of Today’s outdoor set in Western décor (haystacks, etc.), in anticipation of an upcoming feature on lasso lessons.  read more »

On Tuesday morning, at an upfront presentation to the media hosted at Tom Colicchio's restaurant Craft on East 19th Street, Bravo executives announced they will be expanding their Real Housewives franchise.

Next up?

New Jersey!  read more »

On Friday, before he got sidetracked, Senator Barack Obama suggested that he might bow out of a proposed April 27 debate in North Carolina to be hosted by CBS News and moderated by Katie Couric and Bob Schieffer, reports the Charlotte Observer.

"In a telephone interview with the Observer to discuss his economic plan, Obama doubted whether a proposed April 27 debate at Raleigh's RBC Center would fit with his schedule," reports the Charlotte Observer.  read more »

Filling out the rumors floated in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal, today the New York Times reports that a “wide-ranging discussion” about Katie Couric’s future took place among CBS executives back in February:

 read more »

The Media Mob has learned that after several months of hearing from lawyers on both sides of the case, Justice Ira Gammerman of the New York Supreme Court has just made a ruling regarding CBS's motion to dismiss the $70 million civil lawsuit that Dan Rather initially brought against CBS back on Sept. 19, 2007.

In short: The case will proceed on a limited basis.

Lawyers for CBS did succeed, however, in knocking down several major aspects of Mr. Rather's suit.  read more »

The Wall Street Journal reports:

After two years of record-low ratings, both CBS News executives and people close to Katie Couric say that the "CBS Evening News" anchor is likely to leave the network well before her contract expires in 2011—possibly soon after the presidential inauguration early next year.  read more »

Amid reports of a possible news-sharing partnership between CBS News and CNN and stories about layoffs at CBS stations around the country, today Matea Gold and Meg James of the L.A. Times write about the state of the local news gathering business.

They begin by noting the layoffs last week of more than 160 employees at CBS-owned stations in 13 cities, including a number of top anchors and seasoned correspondents.  read more »

“We’re mostly a bunch of newspaper hacks,” said Jim VandeHei, the executive editor of the political media entity Politico, which, if you are, statistically speaking, like most Americans, you are more likely to recognize as the somewhat obscure co-sponsor of some of this election season’s televised presidential debates than from its Web site, politico.com, or its printed Beltway cheat sheet, The Politico.

He was talking about himself and his boss, John Harris, whom he followed out of The Washington Post in 2006 to join the nascent Allbritton-owned media property amid some print-industry-rankling hubris.  read more »

On Tuesday, April 8th, Chez Pazienza will be self publishing his memoir, “Dead Star Twilight,” via his Web site, www.deusexmalcontent.com.

NYTV first wrote about Mr. Pazienza back in late February, following Mr. Pazienza's public dustup with his former employers at CNN.  read more »

Last night, NBC threw a party to celebrate the fifth anniversary of Countdown with Keith Olbermann. Network bigwigs, including Jeff Zucker and Phil Griffin, turned out to toast their top cable-news anchor, who at one point during the night posed for pictures wearing a sparkling tiara.

The party was thrown at the Landmarc restaurant at the Time Warner Center.  read more »

Get ready, Katie!

After much back and forth, the Clinton campaign has just announced that they have agreed to a CBS-hosted debate in North Carolina, on Sunday, April 27.  read more »

“I’m going to stay for sure through the inauguration.” That’s what Bob Schieffer, the host these last 17 years of CBS’s Sunday morning, half-hour news program Face the Nation, told TV Guide’s Stephen Battaglio at the end of 2007. “Quite frankly, I don’t know what I’m going to do after that.”

Neither does CBS News. Which must be why he told The New York Times recently that he was going to put off his retirement for an indefinite period of time at the behest of CBS News president Sean McManus.

“We’re going to have a transition period, maybe try some people out,” Mr. Schieffer said.  read more »

The numbers are in for the cable news networks for the first quarter of 2008. The verdict? Thanks in large part to the nation's ravenous interest in the political season, Fox News, CNN, and MSNBC all enjoyed a strong first quarter, particularly compared with the seemingly dismal news coming from much of the rest of the industry. Today, employees of the cable news networks were falling all over themselves, trying to out-tout each other's accomplishments. Herein, some of the highlights:  read more »

This morning, the New York Daily News reported that WCBS Channel 2 has laid off two senior correspondents-investigative reporter Scott Weinberger and Andrew Kirtzman, a former political reporter for New York 1--amid a broader round of cutbacks.

"Weinberger and Kirtzman are the only familiar faces involved in the layoffs, although behind-the-scenes staffers and freelancers were also cut, sources told the Daily News," reported Richard Huff.  read more »

 

 

Above: Jefferson Han demonstrates his Perceptive Pixel technology.

On the night of the Super Tuesday presidential primaries, John King and Wolf Blitzer stood in front of a camera in a studio at CNN’s headquarters at the Time Warner Center and provided some live analysis of the night’s upcoming contests. Behind them was a device that looked like a widescreen television, showing a map of the United States.

The conversation eventually focused on California. While Mr. Blitzer gave a basic run down of the state, Mr. King turned and touched the screen with each of his forefingers. As he pulled his fingers slowly in opposite directions, the map of California expanded.

“The delegates for the Democrats, the way they proportion and decide who gets those delegates is going to be very important,” said Mr. Blitzer.  read more »

David Marash, a former longtime ABC Nightline correspondent has quit Al-Jazeera English, where he has worked as an anchor for the past two years, the New York Times reports today.  read more »

Last week, we reported that Katy Tur, daughter of legendary chopper reporter Bob Tur and current paramour of MSNBC anchor Keith Olbermann, had landed a freelance general assignment reporting gig with CW11.

Her addition to the CW11 team came amid some speculation about her qualifications for the job. All of which left us wondering what type of stories Ms. Tur would be reporting on.  read more »

On the morning of Friday, March 21, Chris Wallace woke up at his home in Washington, D.C., grabbed some fruit and yogurt, and turned on the Fox News early show, Fox & Friends.  read more »

 

Candid Katie Couric can be a great thing. But recently most of the genre's memorable moments—Husky eyes!—have come to us courtesy of Harry Shearer. Not from the official Ms. Couric sanctioned YouTube channel.

That said, this most recent clip from the YouTube project, in which Ms. Couric travels to an interview with CNN's Larry King, has one pretty classic moment.  read more »

Today, in the New York Times, Richard Perez-Pena notes that five years into the war in Iraq, "it would be hard to tell from a quick look at television news, newspapers and the Internet" that the country remains at war.

Tonight and tomorrow night on PBS, the producers at Frontline will do their part to thrust the subject back into the national spotlight.  read more »

This morning, Page Six reported that Keith Olbermann's 24-year-old girlfriend, Katy Tur, had just landed a news anchor job on CW11, despite minimal journalism qualifications. How did Ms. Tur—the daughter of legendary Los Angeles helicopter reporter Bob Tur—land such a lofty job at such a tender age? The Post reported that Ms. Tur had gotten the position "allegedly with [Mr. Olbermann's] help."

But as it turns out, Ms. Tur hasn't landed a news anchor job at all.  read more »

A recent episode of 'Race For the White House.'

“MSNBC and NBC are one,” said Phil Griffin. “We’ve said that for over a decade. It actually is true now.”

Mr. Griffin, the senior vice president of NBC News, was speaking on the phone to NYTV on Monday afternoon. He had brought up the unification of the two news operations as a way of explaining the internal politics underpinning the launch of MSNBC’s new prime-time show, Race for the White House, which premiered on March, 17 at 6 p.m., replacing Tucker.  read more »

On the morning of Wednesday, March 12, reporter Dan Rice was riding shotgun in the WNBC “Chopper 4” helicopter, roughly 2,000 feet above then-Governor Eliot Spitzer’s apartment on the Upper East Side, when he noticed something strange.

For the past half hour, Mr. Rice and his ace Norwegian pilot Lars Andresen had been hovering above Manhattan, along with a handful of other news choppers, waiting for Mr. Spitzer to emerge from his apartment at 80th Street and Fifth Avenue. At the time, the governor was on the verge of stepping down. And the plan was to provide aerial coverage of Mr. Spitzer’s drive to his office on Third Avenue near 40th Street, where he would presumably deliver his resignation speech.  read more »

Last week, on Thursday March, 13, Ed O'Keefe of ABC News reported that Senator Barack Obama and Senator Hillary Clinton might debate at least twice more before the all-important Pennsylvania primary on April 22.

Both senators, ABC reported, had agreed to an ABC News debate in Philadelphia; and Mr. Obama had agreed to a CBS News debate in North Carolina at a time and place to be determined.

As NYTV had earlier reported, Katie Couric has yet to host a debate in this podium-rich primary season. The North Carolina gig would be her first chance at the big stage.

But will it happen?  read more »

 read more »

“Happy Super Tuesday,” the prolific conservative talk-show pundit Glenn Beck told viewers of Turner Broadcasting’s stepchild cable news channel, Headline News, on the evening of Feb. 5. “We’ve got a very low budget. This is, like, the fourth-most-impressive election team on television.”

It was just his excessively self-effacing way of countering the slogans coming out of the big cable channels that night: CNN’s “Best Political Team on Television,” MSNBC’s “The Place for Politics,” Fox News’ “Best Political Analysts.”

Mr. Beck was on the phone with NYTV on Monday afternoon, discussing his latest professional gig: hosting live coverage of big political nights for Headline News.  read more »

Today, NBC News officials announced that as of next Monday, NBC News Chief White House Correspondent David Gregory will be replacing anchor Tucker Carlson at 6 P.M. on MSNBC.

How was Mr. Carlson taking the cancellation of Tucker?

On Monday afternoon, the Media Mob caught up briefly with Mr. Carlson.

"I'm not going to whine about it," said Mr. Carlson. "They've been nice to me."

Mr. Carlson said he was "glad" to stay on with MSNBC as a senior campaign correspondent.  read more »

Tucker Carlson is out. David Gregory is in.

Today, MSNBC officials announced sweeping changes to their primetime lineup.

Most notably: starting Monday, March 17, NBC White House Correspondent (and robo newsman) David Gregory will be anchoring a new show, Race for the White House weekdays at 6 P.M.

The new show, billed as a "a fast-paced daily look at the latest election news" will replace the long struggling Tucker.  read more »

Steve Friedman, the legendary news producer who's been known over the years to walk the hallways of the various morning news outfits at which he's worked wielding a baseball bat, is starting his own media venture.

On the same day CBS News announced that it was firing embattled Early Show executive producer Shelley Ross, Mr. Friedman (who, oversaw the Early Show prior to Ms. Ross' arrival), publicly announced the plans for his new venture, a consulting company called Vir2L media.  read more »

The Media Mob has learned that CBS News is on the verge of announcing the end of Shelley Ross’ brief, tumultuous reign as executive producer of the Early Show.  read more »

Tuesday, March 4, around 8 p.m., Bill O’Reilly bounded across a chilly studio on the first floor of the News Corp. building on Sixth Avenue toward the desk at the back of the room.

There, the members of the Fox News Super Tuesday II political team—Brit Hume, Juan Williams, Bill Kristol, Nina Easton and Fred Barnes—were wrapping up another back-and-forth session, chewing over the night’s early returns. Mr. Kristol made an observation about the rationality of voters. A producer announced a break.  read more »

On Feb. 5, during MSNBC’s Super Tuesday political coverage, anchor Keith Olbermann joked that during this long primary season, it sometimes seemed like everyone in the business had already anchored a debate. “I think most people at home have now moderated one as well,” said Mr. Olbermann.

If Katie Couric was watching at home, chances are she wasn’t laughing. Eight months and more than 20 debates into podium season, Ms. Couric has yet to get anywhere near the big stage.  read more »

Two decades ago, CBS's 48 Hours was rolling around in the horrors of "Crack Street." Last night, it was celebrating in a plush Manhattan lounge.

Around 7 p.m., a throng of TV luminaries gathered on the 20th floor of 230 Fifth Avenue to fete the resilient news documentary show, which recently marked its 20th anniversary on the air, making it the third-longest-running prime-time series on network TV, behind ABC's 20/20 and CBS's 60 Minutes.  read more »

In the spring of 2001, Chez Pazienza was sitting in his apartment in the West Hollywood neighborhood of Los Angeles, smoking heroin and watching The Filth and the Fury, a documentary about punk legends the Sex Pistols, when he realized he had a problem.

At the time, Mr. Pazienza was an ambitious young producer running the 11 o’clock news for Los Angeles’ NBC affiliate KNBC. Ratings were up. His anchor drove a Ferrari. The job was good—great.

But Mr. Pazienza’s marriage was falling apart. And as he listened to Sid Vicious describing the sensations of heroin withdrawal, Mr. Pazienza finally acknowledged his own raging addiction. “I was like, okay, I’m screwed,” Mr. Pazienza said. Shortly thereafter, he checked into rehab.  read more »

Today, according to an article in Crain's, a judge in Manhattan federal court said that NBC Universal will have to stand trial in a $100 million civil suit, revolving around the 2006 suicide of Texas district attorney Louis Conradt.

At the time of his suicide, Mr. Conradt was about to be arrested for soliciting a minor. The investigation was being filmed as part of NBC's To Catch a Predator.  read more »