Aye Candy

Score one for the seasoned female TV news reporters with minds like steel traps, political and media institutional memory and experience spanning decades. CNN's Candy Crowley breaks the Sunday spin show millennium glass ceiling replacing as John King on "State Of The Union." King's taking over Lou Dobbs 7p slot.

Mediaite's Steve Krakauer talks to Crowley about her new gig starting next Sunday.  The show's been cut to one hour.

John King introduced Candy (she's been with CNN since 1987) on Sunday's show:



Candy's impressive resume includes a stint at my former radio network - Mutual.  We both also worked at Metromedia's WASH FM in DC waaaay back.

Congratulations, Candy!  You're an inspiration to many of us post-menopausal ex-broadcast babes...

This is why I love Candy.  No ego.  "I've never tried to stand out or make a name for myself. I always just wanted to do the story. If you do stand out and make a name for yourself, that's great. But I don't know anybody – well, yeah, I do – most people I know are in this because they love to find things out. They love to report, they love to tell things, they love to relay things to people. I'm consistently startled when people come up to me."  Mediabistro 2007 Candy interview

Roger Ailes: "We're the most trusted name in news."

Update 2:  Harpy Arianna has posted a video comparing Roger Ailes' Sunday "This Week" Glenn Beck comments and Beck's actual comments.

Update 1:  MSNBC's "Morning Joe." Mike Barnicle:  "Roger Ailes ought to be invited into the Oval Office for a dialogue."  Joe (multiple times):  "Fox's numbers have absolutely exploded over the last year."  Bloomberg's Al Hunt:  "He's no J. Edgar Hoover.  I know he doesn't wear pumps." Both Barnicle and Hunt pointed out Ailes makes a reported $23 mil a year - but Barnicle observed Ailes knows his poor Ohio "roots" and is still "hungry."

Babs Walters wrangles the roundtable at ABC's "This Week" and couldn't get in a word edgewise as the annoying, unintelligible Greek wretch Arianna Huffington ambushes panelist Roger Ailes over Glenn Beck and his "inciting" "paranoid" language. The other "roundtable" panelists sit there like potted plants as Arianna hijacks the roundtable "discussion."

Arianna: "Aren't you concerned about the language Glenn Beck is using?"

Roger: "I think if we start to run around around as the word police in this business it will be--"

Arianna: "it's not about the word police it is something deeper... The paranoid style is dangerous when there is real pain out there."  [Two words, Arianna:  Keith Olbermann]

Roger: "I agree with you. I read something on your blog that said I looked like J. Edgar Hoover, I had a face like a fist, and I was essentially a malignant tumor."

Arianna: "Well, that was not by anybody we approved of--"

Arianna:  "Can you explain to me why Fox went away from the meeting , um, the meeting the president was having..."

Roger: "Because we're the most trusted name in news and we believe, two liberal polls have now proven it, and the reason is we cover everything--"

Babs (cutting off Roger): "Gotta go!  I gotta go..."  [Keith Olbermann Worst Person theme music out....]



H/T Mediaite

That's the hand I use, well never mind..."

"A Simple Desultory Philippic (Or How I Was Barack Obama'd Into Submission)"

Left-handed in all things Barack Obama is asked a planted question when he showed up at the Duke-Georgetown basketball game to watch and ended up in the CBS Sports booth with Verne Lundquist and Clark Kellogg for six minutes of play-by-play.

5:14 in Verne: "May I, can I be totally irrelevant? You're obviously a left-hander. Do you have any problems at all going to your right?"

Obama: "I went to the Republican caucus just yesterday to prove that I can go to my right once in a while. But there's no doubt I've got a stronger left hand."

I presume Verne was referring to dribbling...



"You know, I'm having fun."  Not the basketball game. The Republican thing as NYT's Maureen Dowd dissects in Sunday's column.  NYT likened it to marriage therapy. The Wash Post called Obama's appearance at the Republican retreat in Baltimore a boost Obama "badly needs." 

2010 Miss America

Miss America 2010: Miss Virginia.  Caressa Cameron, left.  She wants to be a TV news anchor.  More photos and winners here.

The NYDN captioned the above photo: "No doubt this was Rush Limbaugh's favorite part of the competition!"

This was probably his least favorite.  A contestant rips a page from Michelle Obama's Stephen King stylebook with this ghastly gown.

Red & Blue = Purple Haze

NYT "The Muddled Selling Of The President."  The only message not muddled at Obama's SOTU was costume color coordination.








ABC's "World News" anchoress Diane Sawyer seemed absolutely "gobsmacked" (to use her word when she "found out" Charlie Gibson was "retiring") as former Bill Clinton communications czar George Stephanopoulos observed post-SOTU that Obama and company's garb reflected a purple state subliminal message to independent voters via Biden's tie, Nancy's suit, and Michelle's Isacc Mizrahi plum frock. Even the Michelle fashion watchers caught the full frontal purple assault but not the purple swing state linkage.  How could Diane challenge George when he knows whereof he speaks?

Groundhog Day Ad Infinitum

Obama spawns pawn Janet Nap-olitano's yawn.

NYT Frank Rich "The State Of The Union Is Comatose":  Hands down, the State of the Union’s big moment was Barack Obama’s direct hit on the delicate sensibilities of the Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito. The president was right to blast the 5-to-4 decision giving corporate interests an even greater stranglehold over a government they already regard as a partially owned onshore subsidiary. How satisfying it was to watch him provoke Alito into a “You lie!” snit. Here was a fight we could believe in.

Frank: "The president must act. Only body blows to the legislative branch can move the country forward.... In Obama’s speech, he kept circling back to a Senate where both parties are dysfunctional. The obstructionist Republicans, he observed, will say no to every single bill “just because they can.” But no less culpable are the Democrats, who maintain “the largest majority in decades” even after losing Teddy Kennedy’s seat — and yet would rather “run for the hills” than accomplish anything

"Harry Reid, could be found yawning on camera Wednesday night. He might as well have just taken the whole nap."



If Reid can serve as the face of Democratic fecklessness in the Senate, then John McCain epitomizes the unpatriotic opposition. On Wednesday night he could be seen sneering when Obama pointed out that most of the debt vilified by Republicans happened on the watch of a Republican president and Congress that never paid for “two wars, two tax cuts, and an expensive prescription drug program.” .... Perhaps McCain was sneering at Obama because of the Beltway’s newest unquestioned cliché: one year after a new president takes office he is required to stop blaming his predecessor for the calamities left behind. Who dreamed up that canard — Alito? F.D.R. never followed it. In an October 1936 speech, nearly four years after Hoover, Roosevelt was still railing against the “hear-nothing, see-nothing, do-nothing government” he had inherited. He reminded unemployed and destitute radio listeners that there had been “nine crazy years at the ticker” and “nine mad years of mirage” followed by three long years of bread lines and despair. F.D.R. soon won re-election in the greatest landslide the country had seen.

Obama should turn up the heat on both the G.O.P’s record of fiscal recklessness and its mad-dog obstructionism. He should stop paying lip service to the fantasy that his Congressional opposition has serious ideas to contribute to the cleanup. Better still, he should publicize exactly what those “ideas” are.

Rielle-ity Bites

The John Edwards revenge book hits the shelves Groundhog Day.  The well-deserving Edwards is like Bill Murray waking up to the same day every day. Even the Washington Post reports some of the salacious details.

ABC News is all over this after Friday's Brian Ross "20/20" expose. Young appears in his first live interview on GMA Monday a.m. He claims Edwards forked over a million bucks (of OPM) to hide Young, his wife, and the then-pregnant Rielle Hunter after Young fell on his sword claiming he was the father.

Some of the most outrageous Edwards ego orgasms come from the Wall Street Journal.

Monday Hunter and Young do battle in court over ownership of that sex tape Hunter says is hers and she shot. Young says he has it now in "a safe place." Hunter got a TRO banning Young from selling the tape or distributing stills. National Enquirer

Meanwhile Edwards is hiding out in Haiti where he's been since admitting February 27th that he's the nearly two-year-old girl's daddy.

"You like me. You really like me."

Former Miss America 1989 Gretchen Carlson queries judge Rush Limbaugh on what he's hoping to spot in the contestants. Rush says "poise, confidence, articulation, and she must like herself."  

Mediaite blogger Rachel Sklar thinks that's weird.  '"Hoping a pageant contestant will 'like herself' sounds sorta creepy."

Mediaite runs this creepy frame of Rush as one of Saturday night's pageant where he looks like he's leering at naked chicks in a strip club.

Rachel, dear, I beg to differ with you on Rush's "like herself."

There are too many young girls and women with low or no self-esteem.  I saw it as a teen in the 1960s with girls torn between expected societal roles and healthy self-expression.  It is CRITICAL to like yourself. Healthy, not narcissistic, self-love. You project love; you get back positive people and vibes. You send out the opposite of love - fear - and you get it back. I saw my daughter and her friends struggle with identity and self-worth issues starting in the 1990s to the present. 

Rachel also nit-picks at Rush's "articulation" test.  "I think by 'articulation' he meant that she should be articulate, but ironically that’s actually not what that word means. Awkward."

Was it so "awkward" when pehaps you - and others in the liberal mainstream media - labeled George Bush "inarticulate?" 

Oh, but it was awkward and politically incorrect when both George W. Bush and Joe Biden branded Barack Obama "articulate" believing they were praising him?

Articulation is the act of stringing utterances, presumably words and not grunts,to make coherent sentences.  To perform that, one must "articulate."  You know what Rush meant:  good communication skills. 

Anyway, I'm "off-message" in what Rachel would perceive as a  screed.

Dial 'M' For Media Matters

"A jury of O'Keefe's peers may decide his fate, but it should be lost on no one that Breitbart and his allies at Fox News share in the responsibility for what has been alleged to have transpired."  Liberal Media Matters on the arrest of ACORN buster James O'Keefe and three others posing as telephone repairman at Sen. Mary Landrieu's New Orleans office.

O'Keefe now says he "could have used a different approach" to find out if Landrieu's office was deliberately not taking health care phone calls.

Man Crunch Bites Back

CBS fist punches Man Crunch's gay Super Bowl spot with pretty lame excuses from "Standards and Practices."  Man Crunch's panties are in a bunch and the gay dating website vows to fight.

Geraldo Rivera: Fail Safe

Geraldo Rivera (near right) reprises his  1986 ratings-buster Al Capone's vault stunt in New Hampshire where Mystery Swirls over what's in "Catcher In The Rye" author J.D. Salinger's safe.

Alas, there was nothing in Al's Chicago vault. Geraldo may find unpublished manuscripts in Salinger's safe.  The reclusive writer died this week at 91.

Al Capone Museum

So Easy A Guy Hiding A Bald Spot Can Do It

A British TV news reporter offers MSNBC's David Shuster a lesson on how to report the news:



H/T Michael Calderone Politico

Is that a rocket in your pocket, or are you just glad to see me?

This is the GAO report on the Christmas Day Underwear Bomber debacle that should've been delivered in person by DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano.  Instead she hid out and dispatched underlings to this week's congressional hearing.  A little light reading via Cryptome...

Rush Limbaugh's Stimulus Package

Radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh, 59, wins judge of the night and a Mr. New Jersey banner at the Miss America prelims in Las Vegas.  Rush cuts loose to Lady Gaga's "Poker Face" Thursday night.  Politico

Miss America Live tweets "Rush Limbaugh has exceptionally impressive fist pumping skills."

JohnnyKats tweets:  "Upon introduction, Limbaugh thumps his chest again AND does the Ed McMahon move. He performs more magic than you'll see in all of "Believe."

Rush says:  "I kinda went nuts for 30 seconds."

MSNBC Prez Phil Griffin: Keith Olbermann's Pole Dancer

Why is MSNBC president Phil Griffin still justifying, rationalizing, and minimizing the behavior of ratings-flaccid, acid Keith Olbermann?

Griffin laid on "Morning Joe" Scarborough after he criticized (but not by name) Olbermann's unprofessional, ideologically colored, rabid reax to Repub Scott Brown after he won Teddy Kennedy's Massachusetts Senate seat.

Griffin danced around the elephant in the room in a memo directed at Scarborough: "We do not publicly criticize our colleagues. This kind of behavior is unprofessional and will not be tolerated."

It is on-air behavior that was exhibited multiple times during the 2008 presidential campaign which Griffin swept under that same ratty rug.

Media scribe Jeff Bercovici wonders if Olbermann's allure has worn off now that the Dems control Congress and the WH:

Bercovici quotes Griffin dismissing the January ratings drop in a  month of international news:  "Keith has been our tentpole. I watch the show every night. It's a great show. It's as smart and clever and fun as any out there, and I'm pleased with where we are."

Uh, Phil, I wouldn't touch that with a ten-foot pole...

"This guy is one scotch away from being Ron Burgundy." Jon Stewart On Chris Matthews

Jon Stewart: "If you watched the speech and afterwards just wanted to have your mind blown, you gotta stick with Chris Matthews."

Dry Drunk Matthews muses after Obama's SOTU speech: "I forgot he was black tonight for an hour."

Stewart: "Oh, you know what else you might have forgotten? You're miked, I swear to God this guy is one scotch away from being Ron Burgundy."

Matthews also observed: "Well, it wasn't rope-a-dope, I'll tell you that. It was much more positive and much more seductive."

Say what?



Watch the entire seven minutes of Jon brilliantly hammering cable TV and politicians' reax:

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Fox Wins State Of The Union

More than five mil watched Obama's SOTU on Fox, two million more than CNN and three mil more than MSNBC.

Reporting cable news ratings is so bor-ing with Fox far and away the #1 cable news network. Consistently.

David Shuster: The Big Sleazy

Class, permit your teacher to invoke "muckraker" and "yellow journalism" as practiced by NBC's cable news farm team MSNBC.

Inside Cable News is calling on MSNBC suits to recall Shuster to Washington for "going too far" by crossing the line between journalism and bald-faced advocacy.  Recall Shuster was suspended for two weeks during the 2008 presidential campaign for contending Dem prez candidate Hillary Clinton was "pimping out" Chelsea in media appeances on behalf of her mother, pointing to Hillary and Bill's eight years of  WH threats to the media to stay away from their daughter.

Young David "Chelsea Pimped Out" Shuster is back in hot water again after a series of "tweets" that turned out to be false, defamatory, and sensational.  Shuster was sent to New Orleans to dig into the case of Sen. Mary Landrieu's uninvited office guests -  conservative filmmaker James O'Keefe and three co-horts posing as telephone repairmen.  The four were arrested with the judge ordering O'Keefe to his parents' house in NJ where he has to get court permission to venture outside the Garden State.

Thursday MSNBC brass called Shuster's tweets "inappropriate" prior to conservative media purveyor Andrew Breitbart's agreed-upon virgin appearance on MSNBC with Shuster.  Shuster sucked in Breitbart by emailing "I don't have a horse in this race" but once Breitbart was captive on camera, proved otherwise.

O'Keefe produced those ACORN prostitution stings as a contract employee of Breitbart's TV operation. So here's Thursday's Shuster six minutes of toxic air:

Joe & Mika: Where There's Smoke....

No that's not Joe Scarborough in disguise. It's a Hazmat hunk after Mika and Joe's commercial flight to Charleston, SC where they're moderating a governors' candidate debate tonight had to make an emergency landing in Myrtle Beach.  Smoke in the cockpit. In flyover country the  Myrtle Beach Sun-News referred to Joe and Mika as merely "two television news hosts."

Mitt Romney SOTU Reax: "We lost a year."

Mitt to George Stephanopoulos on GMA. Watch.  Obama droned on for 71 minutes - one of the longest SOTU speeches in 45 years.  The Washington Post fact-check.

Related:  Politico's John Harris:  "Reality check:  Obama gropes for a strategy." NYP:  "'Trust' plea by the new Obama." Wash Post:  "We face a deficit of trust."  Wash Post columnist Dana Milbank: "It was as cold as a meatlocker in the House chamber Wednesday night...."

Chuck Todd, NBC's WH correspondent and host of the MSNBC show "The Daily Rundown," characterized Obama's performance as "loosey-goosey."

Tight:  Joe 'n Nancy's freshly filled and Botoxed mugs.

The Chris Matthews Leg Tingle Trickle-down Effect

MSNBC's dotty dry drunk sexagenarian blowhard Chris Matthews stepped on his dick (again) after Obama's SOTU and was forced to revise and extend his earlier ready fire aim on-air orgasm "I forgot Obama was black tonight."

Michael Calderone Politico takes the pulse of the media mavens on Matthews' latest crawl up Obama's ass:

Justice Alito to Obama: Read My Lips. Kiss My Black-Robed Ass!

A classless Obama skewers the Supreme Court in a supreme breach of SOTU protocol for "opening the floodgates to special interests" by reversing corporate contributions to political campaigns.

Trapped in the House chamber like a battered wife enduring a rage eruption inside a Yugo, a clearly disgusted Alito shakes his head and mouths "Not true."

Can You Hear Me Now?

Conan's still waiting for that call from Jay. Don't hold your breath. Watch Jay's eyes in this bite from Oprah's interview with Leno that airs today:





Related:  Richard Huff NYDN

Colbert Blinded By Mika's Legs

With Joe Scarborough there "for support" in the green room. Those two must have known each other in a previous lifetime. They're always together. Mika's just been booked as co-host of the Washington Press Club Foundation's annual congressional dinner February 10th sharing the duties with an already-booked Joe. (I've been invited to go. We'll see...)

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Katie Couric's CNN Cameo

Katie Couric walks into a CNN Ed Henry live shot from the WH briefing room. All the Big Network News Guns were at the WH today for lunch with Obama pre-SOTU.

Poor Ed was on the equivalent of a Hollywood celebrity red carpet as he tried (and failed) to get the likes of CNN's own John King, Wolf Blitzer, and NBC's Brian Williams to dish on the lunch. Effete Williams does his best Brad Pitt imitation in dodging Ed. The whole segment is so lame except for ego-free Bob Schieffer:



TVNewser reports Fox's Shep Smith got stuck sitting next to MSNBC blowhard Chris Matthews and observed Matthews failed to manifest a discernable leg tingle in Obama's presence.  Mediaite gets a leg up on TVNewser with more from Shep...

Beyond Salvage: Keith Olbermann Pisses Off The Wrong Target

Former MSNBC GM and "The Verdict" anchor Dan Abrams appears to be out to get Keith Olbermann after Olbermann called Abrams' Jewish father a Nazi on "Countdown" January 22nd. 

Abrams is now proprietor of the influential website Mediaite, and Abrams Research.  Abrams' father is famed First Amendment lawyer Floyd Abrams. 

Wednesday Mediaite mulls "Olbermann Is Neither Fair Nor Balanced On Obama's Spending Freeze."  Mediaite:  "For a guy who constantly mocks Fox News’ “Fair and Balanced” slogan, Keith displayed a marked lack of both."

Keith Olbermann, provoked by a joke, attacks Bill O'Reilly for promoting a "violent fantasy" during Saturday's "Bold Fresh" comedy appearance with Glenn Beck where he razzed that if he were Obama he'd have the CIA kidnap Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi.

Wednesday Mediate muses:  "Humorous hyperbole or serious threats?"  Obviously "humorous hyperbole."  It is obvious that (a)  the election of Repub Scott Brown to replace Ted Kennedy, (b) Obama's tilt to the populist teabaggers, and (c) the president's anti-liberal spending freeze, has sent Olbermann over the edge.  Any shred of rationality Olbermann had is gone.  

Glenn Beck: Spot On

Fox's Glenn Beck rips Joe "Primary Colors" Klein a new asshole after Klein (who didn't have the balls to publish the Clinton book under his own name) vomited a condescending "See Spot Run" TIME mag piece on the intellectual vacuity of the American public.

To wit:  

1. The Obama Administration has done a terrible job explaining the stimulus package to the American people...especially since there have been very few documented cases of waste so far.

2. This is yet further evidence that Americans are flagrantly ill-informed...and, for those watching Fox News, misinformed.

It is very difficult to have a democracy without citizens. It is impossible to be a citizen if you don't make an effort to understand the most basic activities of your government. It is very difficult to thrive in an increasingly competitive world if you're a nation of dodos.

Why is Glenn second only to Oprah in popularity?  This. Sixteen minutes and a few seconds of pure pathos, bathos, cunning comedy, effete snobbery, hypocrisy, corruption, sex, lies, and videotapes:

Conan To NBC: This Dud's For You

NBC persona non grata Conan O'Brien claims he's "shocked" that NBC has picked up a pilot TV drama produced by his production company.

H/T Danny Shea Huff Post

Katie Couric Reads The Tea Party Leaves

Katie Couric right out of the box to two Tea Party leaders:  "Hi guys...  as someone in 'Big Media' I know I'm one of the enemies."  Tea party guy:  "Not necessarily..."

Why didn't Katie run this on CBS Evening News?

Company Cooper

CNN's Anderson Cooper is turning a Greenwich Village firehouse into his house.  8,420 square feet.  Cooper's building a special closet next to the brass fire pole filled with color-coordinated custom disaster duds.

NBC's Brian Williams got so excited he  had to be hosed down....

Fox: Catch Me If You Can

CNN is forced to drop the slogan "The Most Trusted Name In News" after a new poll finds Fox News is trusted by more Americans than any other network - cable or broadcast.

49 % trust Fox. CNN was 10 points behind at 39%.  NBC/MSNBC are distrusted by 44% while CBS and ABC are not to be belieed by 46% of those polled. 

Greek Myth

Does anyone really give a rat's ass that Huff Post Greek goddess Arianna Huffington is throwing a party for MSNBC's Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough at her Brentwood manse when the pair are in LA pimping Mika's new book?  I suppose it guarantees the Unintelligible One more face time on "Morning Joe"....

Rick Sanchez and John King Flatline with CNN DC Staffers

CNN Worldwide prez Jim Walton goes to Washington to take the pulse of the DC bureau's huge staff.  Executive summary:  Wolf Blitzer gets the blood pumping, John King puts them in the twilight zone, and Rick "Our Bad" Sanchez renders the 200 grunts comatose.

Fox Rules

Fox finished last week #1 in primetime.  Rivals CNN and MSNBC were in double digits. CNN at 22 and MSNBC at 31.

 Last Tuesday's Hannity ranked #2 on a list of top 25 cable shows in all off cable. Tuesday's Greta and O'Reilly were #4 and #11 respectively.  Wednesday and Thursday O'Reilly cracked the top 25. 

A Pew Research report shows CNN covered Haiti three times more than the competition.

In broadcast TV, FOX beat out the other three networks for the number one spot, hitting the highest numbers in two seasons thanks to "American Idol," "Bones," and football.

Radio: Risky Business

NYC-based radio broadcast network Westwood One is on Forbes' risk list of 100 companies possibly destined for failure.  WW1 the top five. WW1 is one of the largest commercial radio syndicators in the country. "The Dennis Miller Show" is a WW1 property.

Der Furor

Jay Leno Hitler? Instead of annexing countries, Leno is annexing OPS - Other People's Shows? Conan O'Brien the Czechoslovakia of late night TV?  Former Spy scribe Joe Queenan - in the Wall Street Journal - jests? that "NBC will regret appeasing Leno."  If Queenan were still writing for Spy, the headline would be:  "NBC will regret sucking Leno's legendary dick."

Huff Post's Jason Linkins doesn't get Joe Queenan:  "He whiffs badly." 

He whiffs goodly - if you know anything about Queenan, a self-described "sneering churl."  It's satire, child! Baby boomer Queenan's WWII military whiff on Leno/Conan  makes sense to me.  In 2008 the satirist wrote a column comparing Rod Blagojevich to Nero.

Queenan merely picks up where this leaves off:  Mommy was appeasing Linkins with a pacifier when Queenan was waxing brilliant and churlish at Spy:

The Rise and Fall of NBC

Tom Shales Wash Post: In dying color: No. 4 NBC has cast itself in the role of the fading peacock.

Where there's mire, there's muck, and NBC is just the place to find both. It's long been a kooky little tradition that when TV columnists and critics write about which of the four major broadcast networks is doing worst in the ratings, they say it is "mired in fourth place" or "mired" in third. The practice seems to be phasing out, but then, networks seem to be phasing out, too.

None is phasing faster than NBC, the once-proud-as-a-peacock establishment that is now mired in fourth, behind Fox, behind everybody.... What made the gold shine brighter in NBC's golden age was that people could see its color. They could see the color of everything, because NBC began telecasting programs "in living color" before cheap ABC or sluggish CBS did. With every color show, NBC was pushing the color TV sets made by RCA, which owned the network. The Justice Department apparently saw no problem with this.

NBC had other periods in which it shone more brightly than its competitors. The '80s and the '90s saw the network aglow not only with ratings success but, thanks to new chairman Grant Tinker, who also teamed with [Brandon] Tartikoff, also with the reputation of being a quality operation. "Cheers," an innovative and warmhearted comedy, was kept on the air for a second season even though its first had been feeble in the ratings; eventually, it not only caught on, it triumphed.

While still running the network, Silverman decided to exhume as a company logo the old NBC Peacock, originally designed by an advertising agency to help RCA sell those then-pricey color TV sets. Many a baby boomer can easily recall NBC's animated peacock unfurling at the start of some major production, accompanied by a musical fanfare and announcer Mel Brandt intoning majestically, "The following program is brought to you in living color on NBC."

You can see those original peacock openings -- the birdie went through a few different versions -- at many Web sites. If you lived through TV's early days, the sound of that orchestral theme and the sense of auspiciousness may actually give your spine a tingle or two. They helped imbue the programs that they preceded with an exciting sense of event.

NBC is no longer owned by RCA; it's owned, for now, by General Electric, a company that has been an ill-suited, penny-pinching guardian -- sort of like Nicholas Nickleby's. If current plans are approved, meanwhile, NBC will soon pass into the mighty clutches of Comcast, the giant cable conglomerate. Sadly enough, Comcast is much less interested in the NBC Television Network than in all of the little niche cable networks that NBC owns: USA Network, Syfy, Telemundo and more.

Might the trademark "NBC" be retired and the TV network become just another cog in a large, empty capitalist apparatus -- one that plops out leisure-time product with the slick, chilly efficiency of an assembly line? It's possible that Comcast could be even more tightfisted an owner than GE and that NBC might be the first network to prove that the whole idea of broadcast networks really is over. It could prove it by dying.

And then all those shows, and those sparkling golden ages, will be consigned, like so much else in this new century, to memory, or to electronic bric-a-brac on the Web. One of the sites brandishing the animated peacock calls itself "RetroJunk.com." Imagine. Retro "Junk." I wouldn't want to be the one to tell Kukla, Fran or Ollie about that.

Cable News Ratingzzz

Friday January 22.  Ho-hum. Nobody can catch Fox...

Buss Stop: Barack Busted Bussing Big Blonde

Diane gets a kiss.  Brian bows.  What's this world coming to?

H/T Steve Krakauer Mediaite

Obama: Are You Smarter Than A Sixth Grader?

Apparently not.  Jon Stewart sends up the president for his teleprompter speech to elementary students in Falls Church, Virginia:

Glenn Beck's Number Two

Fox's Glenn Beck debuts as #2 on the Harris Poll's annual survey of favorite  TV personalities.  Bill O'Reilly didn't make the grade last year, but is back - at #10.

Oprah's #1.  Jay Leno drops to #3.  Interesting that Beck is the favorite among independent voters.

The scribe who wrote that multi-part Salon series on Beck has turned it into a book out in June.  Politico's Michael Calderone quotes the author describing the tome:

Half of the book chronicles his coke-fueled years as a Top 40 deejay, his early talk radio success in Tampa, and his rapid rise to multimedia super-stardom. The second half of the book analyzes his worldview, his tactics, and the shifting media and political landscapes that have enabled him to become the second most influential conservative voice in the country (behind only Rush Limbaugh.) The book's most detailed case studies examine Beck's high-profile campaigns against Van Jones and ACORN.

CNN's Disaster Chic

After allowing that no one's really paying attention to the fashion statements of TV reporters on the ground in Haiti, NYT's Guy Trebay treats us to a 10 paragraph drone on how male correspondents' duds have changed since the days of Gunga Dan Rather and Peter Arnett.

Viewers who watched CNN’s earthquake coverage this last week were bound to be struck by correspondents who looked a lot less like the usual disheveled examples of those in the profession than like bendable action figures.

You could call it the Anderson Cooper effect. Mr. Cooper has rarely missed an opportunity to showcase his buff physique (as anyone would know if he or she remembers his stripping to a bathing suit to quiz Michael Phelps). But Mr. Cooper isn’t the only CNN correspondent with a self-conscious taste for form-fitting charcoal T-shirts, accessorized with a tiny microphone clipped at the neck.

Looking somewhat sheepish about it, a newly sleek Dr. Sanjay Gupta moved through Port-au-Prince wearing a snug gray T-shirt, his hair styled in the obligatory CNN crop. His colleague Jason Carroll, reporting on Wednesday’s aftershock and looking like a guy who had done 20 quick pushups before going on air, wore a T-shirt so snugly revealing it called into question whether a disaster zone is the place to flaunt one’s gym physique. A spokeswoman for CNN declined to comment, but in journalism, as in most things, old standards of decorum are clearly on the wane.

Plugging The Dyke

Tracey Ullman does.... Rachel Maddow!  Watch here. Ullman's "State Of The Union" premieres at 10:30p on Showtime.

And a killer Arianna Huffington who gives MSNBC's "Morning Joe" anchoress Mika Brzezinski a shout-out.

Ullman says she was drawn to Rachel's "goofy laugh."

H/T Danny Shea Huffington Post

Dirty Bombs

Nancy Pelosi and Joe "Botox" Biden added to the no-fly list as walking terrorist time bombs .  Why?