Thursday Morning Joe producers set the stage for the aforementioned buzz by running Fox News America Live Megyn Kelly's Wednesday interview with Mitt Romney that was cut short because Megyn was up against what's known in the TV biz as a "hard break." You don't get out on time, you get cut off. [Romney was given the option of continuing past the commercial break.]
The Morning Joe crew then yukked it up with hard to swallow Mika Brzezinski who chided Megyn Kelly for cutting off Romney: "We just stay on with an interview if we have a presidential candidate. ... that was rude. ... they're treating him terribly ... they should apologize."
Morning Joe sidekick Donny Deutsch: "We don't need Starbucks."
Yes, you do. MSNBC has the lowest ad revenues in cable news. Lower than FNC and CNN/HLN.
Jim Bohannon and Marty, Talkers New Media Seminar.
Radio Hall of Famer Jim Bohannon dons his penguin suit to accept one of four First Amendment awards handed out tonight in DC. Among the four honorees: NBC News President Steve Capus.
Caption This! ABC News chick Claire Shipman and hubby, Obama press spox Jay Carney, arrive at Wednesday's State Dinner for Brit PM David Cameron. Photo: Bill O'LearyThe Washington Post
Talk radio guru, Talkers publisher Michael Harrison, clues the clueless media in on just what a radio sponsor "no-buy" is, noting "the irony is that he probably right now has the biggest audience he’s had in years, and the double irony of all this is sponsors that are fleeing, they’re missing out on the best advertising buy in radio."The Daily Caller
Talkers -- "the Bible of talk radio and the new talk media" -- fingering MSNBC Thursday: "Broadcasters willing to join the political battle at the expense of
maintaining the integrity of their broadcasting business model may find
out down the road that attempting to serve two masters – politics and the business of broadcasting – is a very difficult task to handle successfully."
Translation: MSNBC foul-mouthed, misogynistic blowhards are hypocrites.
Radio oracle Holland Cooke (my longtime friend) braved Ed Schultz's MSNBC Rush autopsy Monday night with Media Matters' Eric Boehlert. Ed gloats about Rush advertisers' "mass exodus" [redundant], and mispronounces radio talk show host Mark Levin's last name.
Talkers on "problematic data" used by Bloomberg claiming"America wants Limbaugh fired." That’s the result of a Bloomberg poll of 1,002 Americans conducted from March 8 to 11 asking questions
about the GOP candidates, how they feel about the birth control coverage
issue and, whether Premiere Networks star Rush Limbaugh should be fired for his remarks about Sandra Fluke
and her testimony. According to the Bloomberg data, 53% of Americans
believe Limbaugh should be fired for his remarks and 30% of those who
expressed that point of view were Republicans to boot! TALKERS
is not questioning Bloomberg’s polling techniques but . . . it should be underscored that the poll in question
doesn’t survey Rush Limbaugh’s regular listeners. It doesn’t even
survey regular talk radio listeners. Therein lays the
problem. Consumer media will grab hold of the result of this poll and
conclude that the end is near for Limbaugh since a majority of the
country wants him fired. But as TALKERS publisher Michael Harrison
has been telling the dozens upon dozens of media outlets he’s spoken
with on this issue since it began, Rush Limbaugh doesn’t broadcast to a
majority of the country. He broadcasts to a niche audience – a sizeable
one to be sure – but a niche nonetheless. Asking a sample of all
Americans how a talk radio station should be programmed is analogous to
asking the same sample about how to program the Golf Channel.
MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell Tuesday: "Republicans are having a three-way. . . . In Mississippi."
Jon Stewart Wednesday: "Watching MSNBC's election coverage wss like having brunch with friends
you went to Oberlin with ten years ago and about halfway through your
cinnamon brioche you suddenly wonder, why the hell am I still friends
with these people?" (Watch here)
Stewart:"But as election night belonged to CNN, the most desperate name in news, which once again unveiled an all-out assault on the senses, employing the full power of their razzle-dazzletrons."
"And real-time make-up techonology! Do you think David Gergen wakes up lookin' like that? No!"
CNN's one-note samba of the night: "Fresher numbers." Wolf Blitzer promised "results before anyone else. ... We are watching the numbers closely . ... No one's watching them more closely than our own John King. ... The most crews in the most locations. ... We'll be way ahead of all of other news organizations in sharing these numbers."
Stewart:"How insane was CNN's all-inclusive crying wolf about the freshness of CNN's numbers? When it came time to declare the races, aka 'the mattering thing,' CNN was beaten to the punch by the network that spent most of the night not covering the primaries!"
Stewart's final zinger: A CNN live shot of Rick Santorum finding out he won Mississippi followed by Wolf Blitzer refusing to call the race.
The spin: CNN's prime time eye candy, comely cipher Erin Burnett, is bitch-slapped in the ratings by the leggy babes fronting Fox's new Fox & Friends First.
Ainsley Earhardt, Anna Kooiman
A week on the air and the 5 a eye-opener not only pulls better numbers than MSNBC and CNN combined, but bests Burnett at 7p where far more boob tubes are turned on at that hour. TVNewser
Rush, off Monday playing a Palm Beach golf tournament, is back Tuesday, right out of the box crowing about Obama's all-time low poll numbers -- 41% Wash Post & NYT polls -- and media contortions to create chicken salad out of chicken shit.
Rush Tuesday:"One week ago they thought it was over. ... They thought I was finished ... and they thought Obama was elevated to heights that he was unbeatable."
Monday MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell was practically orgasmic in the set-up with my radio buddy, Tom Taylor, editor of Radio-Info after Tom got his hot little hands on an internal memo from Rush Limbaugh's syndicator Premiere Radio Networks pulling spots on Limbaugh's show for two weeks as well as other Premiere shows that might be considered "offensive or controversial." "Those are defined as environments likely to stir negative sentiment from a very small percentage of the listening public."
The March 9th memo cites Limbaugh, Hannity, Beck, Mark Levin, Michael Savage, and Tom Leykis (not conservative like the others but raunchy).
O'Donnell barked "Breaking News!" even though Tom broke the news Saturday.
Limbaugh's advertiser exodus has freed up precious spot avails for PSAs like the United Negro College Fund running on Limbaugh's flagship station WABC Radio NYC. Ad Age via an ecstatic Media Matters.
Tom: "I wouldn't be surprised if Rush gets in some more golf."
O'Donnell: "Have we seen . . . a publicly announced advertising exit like this from any radio show?"
Tom:"The last time we saw this sort of outcry was exactly five years ago, it was March 2007, and it was Don Imus."
O'Donnell: "Yeah, and, uh, and ... on the, one the, Imus, uh, situation there, uh, there wasn't anything about intervening with FCC or anything like that ..."
The Last Word goes to talk radio guru Al Peterson: There will always be advertisers who get a little ‘skittish’ when the heat is hotter than usual, but there are also savvy advertisers who understand the value of the active Talk radio audience. This is not the first time Talk radio has been at the center of controversy — seriously, isn’t that the business we’re in? In a crowded media world, the last thing any media can afford to become is irrelevant. Sure, these are some rocky times for the Talk radio industry. But to quote the legendary Paul Harvey, “In times like these, it’s good to remember that there have always been times like these.”
Mike Huckabee always seems to be at the right place at the right time . . .Radio Ink
Roland Martin's "journalism" has been limited to 140 Twitter characters since his suspension a month ago for committing tweets offensive to gays. This just in: CNN is letting him back on the air. TVNewser
The world's richest man rolls out his nascent Internet TV news network by giving Larry King, 78, the title as co-founder. Read the press release.
Lebanese Slim with squeeze, Jordan's ex-Queen Noor.
In anticipation of his new gig with Mexican telecommunications billionaire Carlos Slim, King and CNN parted ways last month with the remaining Larry King CNN "specials" biting the dust.
The on-demand network's new CEO is Jon Housman. Housman was News Corp's digital VP. Digital Media Wire
Gloria scampered down the Playboy Club rabbit hole and emerged a bunny boiler. "All women are bunnies," the "political activist" fumed in her 1963 expose. CBS News Aug. 2011 on Gloria's bad hare days.
Gloria and "Barbarella" Jane Fonda are bullying the bully's radio show syndicator's owner, Clear Channel, and urging activists to file FCC complaints against local stations with the ultimate goal of driving Rush off those stations with the threat of FCC license revocation for failure to serve the "public interest" hanging over their heads.
Jane and Gloria are existing in Alice's Wonderland. Rush will be on radio until he ceases to exit.
Some WNBC Friends Of Sue took umbrage at Kaplan's story, offering another side to TV industry's FTVLive (the contents of which was posted by someone on Chickaboomer in the comment box).
Sunday's NYP three-pager is a Sue Simmons orgasm -- and rightly so.
For those of you not on this planet in 1974, just out of the womb, too young to give a rat's ass about TV news, or at the Pac-Man Donkey Kong stage, Sue was one of the pioneers of TV news: 1974 Baltimore under the tutelage of news whiz Ron Kershaw (the late Jessica Savitch's TV news mentor/lover), NBC o&o WRC-TV 1976-1980 with a young, then-unknown Al "I had a huge crush on her" Roker.
Cafferty, now filling the Andy Rooney curmudgeon role at CNN, soared to #1 co-anchoring WNBC's new, edgy "Live at Five" format (pushed over the edge in 2009) with Sue introduced by live announcer Dan Pardo standing behind a microphone: “Sometimes she is capable of going over the line, but the town forgave her. ... Whatever she was thinking came out of her mouth. ... She’s a sucker; she’s very giving. But she takes no s--t. She will cut you off at the knee if
you do a game on her.”
Al Roker recalls “she brought out the best in people. Jack Cafferty, for one, played the curmudgeon to Sue’s whacky fun sister.”
See if you recognize Cafferty and the "Live at Five" cast in this 1981 promo:
Related: CNN Reliable Sources host Howard Kurtz Sunday: WNBC announced this week that it's dropping Simmons sparking outrage
online including a "Save Sue Simmons" page on Facebook. Did the station
decide that Sue, who had a multimillion-dollar contract, was too old
for the job? She's 68. But guess who just got his
contract renewed - her longtime partner, Chuck Scarborough. He is also
68. I'm sorry. This just smells bad and more than a little sexist.
When Andrea Mitchell interviewed Rush Limbaugh target Sandra Fluke on her MSNBC show after Rush branded Fluke "a slut" on his 600-plus FCC-regulated radio affiliates Andrea was all over the conservative talk show icon for "language that we will not repeat on the air."
But NewsBusters points out Andrea used the word herself on TV with impunity. Hilarity ensued the next day on MSNBC.
Apparently Andrea was not concerned about the "language," the FCC's indecency rules, and NBC Standards and Practices*in an October 2010 cameo appearance on NBC's 30 Rock starring child verbal abuser Alec Baldwin and Tina Fey.
What's more, MSNBC replayed the Mitchell-Williams slut clip to much in-studio hyena howling.
NBC News Chief Foreign Affairs Correspondent Andrea Mitchell snarls "slut" to NBC 30 Rock's Tina Fey as Brian Williams poses in bespoke Savile Row suiting.
*Are you kidding me? MSNBC is FCC free! The FCC does not regulate the content of cable TV. To wit: "fuck" has rolled off the tongue of MSNBC's Morning Joe Scarborough while Morning Joe talking head Mark Halperin heaped on Obama calling him "a dick" on the air.
