Must-See TV

Fox News Pentagon correspondent Jennifer Griffin's on Greta tonight to talk about her battle with breast cancer.  Seventeen chemo treatments and an upcoming double mastectomy....

H/t CB reader ZD

Huffington Post Quarter Whores

The Huffington Post has a score card where readers can vote on their top five cable news shows. Fox cops the top 13 out of 30 - in ratings - in the first quarter of 2010.

But in the ratings-bereft parallel universe of the delusional Huffington Post, the top five are MSNBC's Rachel Maddow, Keith Olbermann 8p, Keith Olbermann 10p retread, Ed Schultz, Chris Matthews.

Drill, Barack, Drill!

The late Senator Howell Heflin after he saw a 1989 National Enquirer telephoto lens snap of Ted Kennedy humping some babe on a boat in the Meditteranean:  "I believe the senator from Massachusetts has changed his position on offshore drilling."

So has Obama - lifting the ban much to the consernation of liberal environmental freaks and Republicans.

Fox Loses Its Cool

Fox News jettisons a one minute eight second rapper LL Cool bite from Sarah Palin's 10p host debut Thursday night after Cool complained the clip wasn't shot for the show.   Richard Huff NYDN

Cool running off at the mouth on Twitter... 

Former MSNBC GM and on-air talent Dan Abrams' media website, Mediaite, has the good, bad, and ugly on LL Cool J (I left out the J.  Must stand for "Jerk"), and a Fox spox dismissive, snarky response.

Joy Behar: I'm Ready For My Close-Up, Mr. Leno.

The Joy of Vex over Glenn Beck: "I don't hate you. I don't give a flying fuck about you." Joy jokes (?) she'd only have him on her show if he were first "neutered and spayed."  Isn't that redundant or does Joy just want to make sure...  It's sort of like "free gift."  "Exact same."  And "dumb fucking broad."

 

The Real Whoreswives Of Washington

Wash Post and CNN "Reliable Sources" host Howard Kurtz dishes on the journos hoping to make a buck off Obama while he's still hot.

MSNBC talking head and Fox News party crasher Richard Wolffe is one of the whores:

With the publishing world nourishing a deep appetite for all things Obama, those working on such books include Newsweek's Jonathan Alter, NBC's Chuck Todd, MSNBC's Richard Wolffe, The Washington Post's Bob Woodward and David Maraniss, the New York Times' Jodi Kantor and two New Yorker writers -- editor David Remnick and Washington correspondent Ryan Lizza. Time's Mark Halperin and New York magazine's John Heilemann, whose campaign chronicle "Game Change" became a huge bestseller, have just signed a deal with Penguin Press to chronicle the 2012 contest -- for an advance reported to be about $5 million.

Such contracts have caused high-level grumbling about reporters cashing in on their connections. But that hasn't shut off the West Wing cooperation.

"Everyone thinks the doors are flung open for the book authors, and you just take it all down in your notebook," says Wolffe, who published a favorable account of Obama's 2008 campaign. "None of that's true."

Administration officials "have been very good to me -- I'm not complaining about it," Wolffe says. "But everyone has to work it."

Kurtz reports First Lady Michelle Obama is off-limits to the book bucks-a-million minions.

While I'm on the subject of party crashers, Wolffe, who was thrown out after trying to get into Fox's invitation-only Radio Television Correspondents' Association pre-dinner bash, gets his revenge May 1st when MSNBC hosts the post-dinner invite-only drunk-a-thon. 

White House Correspondents INSIDER's heavy breathing can be heard from Keith  Olbermann's "Rain Man" closet to Chris Matthews' favored MSNBC Washington urinal where the thrill runs down his leg:  "MSNBC, which has enjoyed much ratings success and made itself a primary player in the Washington political media culture, will give everyone a run for their money this year.MSNBC’s party will be created by top event producer, Philip Dufour, mastermind of the Radio and Television after party. If you are one of the lucky few to receive an invitation, we’ll see you at the Mellon auditorium." [photo, Ed Schultz and MSNBC czar Phil Griffin enjoy a cocktail.]

It's a safe bet the new whores stars of NBC's Bravo "Real Housewives Of Washington" centerpieces - Michaele and Tareq Salahi - will be honored guests.

Will You Still Need Me, Will You Still Feed Me, When I'm 64?

Happy birthday, Al Gore!  The inconvenient truth: the Goracle is 62.

CNBC's Jim Cramer: Street Cred Dead

CNBC's resident madman Jim Cramer could find himself out on the street.  The batty blowhard's TheStreet is under investigation by the SEC. What's more, Cramer's ratings suck wind.

Greta: Off The Record

"Make sure you tune in." Greta Van Susteren gamely gabs on her blog after Fox News bumped her Thursday show for new anchoress Sarah Palin's first special.

Greta merely mentions she's "off Thursday" and is heading West Friday for an interview.

Recall during the presidential campaign how Greta crawled up Palin's ass in those wet kiss interviews shot in Alaska on Palin's turf. 

Now Palin's biting Greta in the ass.  Even Scientology's alien god Xenu can't save Greta....

To be fair, NBC's "Today" show's Matt Lauer did a mirror massage in his on-location Palin pimps.

Stained Steele

"I don't know what a bondage club is." Mika Brzezinski, MSNBC's "Morning Joe" co-host.

Please.  Is Mika THAT naive?  But then again she was absolutely prudish when the "Morning Joe" conversation once turned to vibrators....

"He [Michael Steele RNC chairman] says he was going to get the party in shape and he's doing it." Eugene Robinson, Wash Post editorial writer and "Morning Joe" talking head.

Repub Tucker Carlson broke the story of the RNC's $2,000 Hollywood venture to Voyeur - a B&D nightclub and RNC Chairman Michael Steele's outrageous tabs.  Tucker:  "Our questions remain: Why did the committee spend more than $17,000 on private jets in the month of February? How and why was RNC business conducted in a bondage-themed nightclub, and how and why were the nearly $2,000 in charges that resulted approved by RNC staff?"

One RNC head has rolled - and it's not Steele's.  Steele wasn't even at Voyeur.  He was on an airplane from Honolulu.

The night started with a dinner for 50 as a recruitment tool for new RNC "Young Eagles" and wound up at Voyeur.  The guy coordinating the effort to attract young Repubs picked up the tab later reimbursed by the RNC.

Dana Milbank Wash Post:  "Quite a menu they have at Voyeur, according to write-ups in the Los Angeles Times about the new club: "Impromptu bondage and S&M 'scenes' being played out on an elevated platform by scantily clad performers throughout the night."  Chairs "detailed with the metal hardware and bondage straps of leather fetishists. . . . One with a harness that designer Ted Nemeth calls the Restraint chair."  "One female performer with a horse's bit in her mouth was being strapped to the wall by another."  "The dark, leather-heavy interior is reminiscent of the masked orgy scene" from the movie "Eyes Wide Shut."  "There is also a heavy net suspended above the club's lounge area where performers writhe above the heads of club-goers. Even more provocative scenes are played out in an enclosed glass booth area adjacent to the club's dance floor area."

Related:  NYP "Kink Stink over GOP Pricey "Bonding"  Wash Post:  "RNC Spending Renews Criticism Over Michael Steele's Spending"  NYTimes has two stories:  "A Club With A Hollywood Tint" sidebar

The Huffington Post is writhing in rolling orgasms....

A svelte Karl Rove deftly dodges questions about Voyeur on Jay Leno - who joked earlier in his monologue that if Republicans are the party of family values, what are the Democrats doing that we don't know:

CNN Corpse News Network. Deader Than Michael Jackson.

Bill Carter NYT:  CNN continued what has become a precipitous decline in ratings for its prime-time programs in the first quarter of 2010, with its main hosts losing almost half their viewers in a year.

The trend in news ratings for the first three months of this year is all up for one network, the Fox News Channel, which enjoyed its best quarter ever in ratings, and down for both MSNBC and CNN.

CNN had a slightly worse quarter in the fourth quarter of 2009, but the last three months have included compelling news events, like the earthquake in Haiti and the battle over health care, and CNN, which emphasizes its hard news coverage, was apparently unable to benefit.

The losses at CNN continued a pattern in place for much of the last year, as the network trailed its competitors in every prime-time hour. (CNN still easily beats MSNBC in the daytime hours, but those are less lucrative in advertising money, and both networks are far behind Fox News at all hours.)

About the only break from the bad news for CNN was that March was not as bad as February, when the network had its worst single month in its recent history, finishing behind not only Fox News and MSNBC, but also its sister network HLN — and even CNBC, which had Olympics programming that month.

CNN executives have steadfastly said that they will not change their approach to prime-time programs, which are led by hosts not aligned with any partisan point of view.

But the numbers are stark: For the network’s longest-running host, Larry King, who has always been regarded at CNN as the centerpiece of prime time because he drew the biggest audiences at 9 p.m., the quarter was his worst ever.

Mr. King’s audience dropped 43 percent for the quarter and 52 percent in March. He dropped to 771,000 viewers for the quarter from 1.34 million in 2009. More alarming perhaps, Mr. King, whose show has been regularly eclipsed by Rachel Maddow’s on MSNBC (and is almost quadrupled by Sean Hannity’s show on Fox), is now threatened by a new host, Joy Behar on HLN (formerly Headline News.)

In her first full quarter competing with Mr. King at 9 p.m. Ms. Behar wound up beating him in the ratings 21 times.

CNN has given no indication that any changes in its lineup are imminent, but recently announced that it would try a series of specials in a talk-show format at 11 p.m. with its current 10 p.m. host, Anderson Cooper. The specials are interpreted by some at the network as a trial run for a new 9 p.m. show with Mr. Cooper.

Mr. Cooper has long been regarded as the strongest host at CNN, but his show has suffered badly as well. For the quarter, Mr. Cooper dropped 42 percent in viewers and 46 percent among the 25-to-54-year-old audience that the news channels use for their sales to advertisers.

In the past, CNN relied on big audiences for Mr. King’s show to deliver viewers to Mr. Cooper. Now Mr. Cooper sometimes finds himself losing to repeats of shows on MSNBC and HLN. (At the other end of prime time, Campbell Brown’s show on CNN at 8 had its worst quarter ever with the 25-to-54-year-old audience.)

Even in the morning, CNN is sliding. Its “American Morning” show dropped behind “Morning Joe” on MSNBC in total viewers for the first time; it still beat the MSNBC show among 25- to 54-year-olds, though it was down 29 percent from a year earlier.

At the same time, Fox News, which had its biggest year in 2009, continues to add viewers. Greta Van Susteren’s show was up 25 percent from a year earlier. Bill O’Reilly, whose show commands the biggest audience in prime time with 3.65 million viewers, was up 28 percent, and Glenn Beck was up 50 percent from a year earlier.

Goodbye, Larry King.

This Was A Real Nice Clambake....

CNN's Anderson Cooper is about to find out just how powerful the Church of Scientology is. AC360 kicked off an all-week investigation Monday night of violence against church members.

Cooper reports an orchestrated campaign of emails complaining about his series.

Wikipedia lists actress Anne Archer as the mother of Scientology spokesman Tommy Davis.  And more.

The usual suspects are John Travolta, Tom Cruise, and Fox News' Greta Van Susteren.  But the number and names of celebrities and others are shocking.

Taking on Scientology is like taking on the Vatican.  You could end up dead.... Just reading the glossary of Scientology terms is enough to give anyone the willies....

["A Real Nice Clambake," Rodgers & Hammerstein, "Carousel"]

Isn't It Rich? Isn't It Queer? Send In The Clowns....

I caught the first hour of Mark Steyn sitting in for Rush Limbaugh and enjoyed his take on Obama's health reform law and NYT columnist Frank Rich's Sunday smackdown of its opponents.  Our Komrades at Media Matters don't  like it so much.

Here's Frank claiming "the rage is not about health care":  "If Obama’s first legislative priority had been immigration or financial reform or climate change, we would have seen the same trajectory. The conjunction of a black president and a female speaker of the House — topped off by a wise Latina on the Supreme Court and a powerful gay Congressional committee chairman — would sow fears of disenfranchisement among a dwindling and threatened minority in the country no matter what policies were in play."

How else is one to read into it as Steyn did?  The opposition is a foaming bunch of racist, misogynistic homophobes.

What Media Matters leaves out is Steyn (right) - a Canadian - witnessed whitebread opposition to universal health care in England and Canada.  To make the discussion about race, sex, or sexual orientation is fatuous and a pitchfork in Frank Rich's balloon.  

What do you think?  I found Steyn's spin sound. 

I'll be back. I'm leaving now to see my daughter and son-in-law, go to her obstetrician's appointment Tuesday to hear the baby's heartbeat, and to take my son-in-law out to dinner Wednesday on his 33rd birthday! Will be back on CB later today!

ABC News' Pay-To-Play

"It was a mistake not to disclose the payment to our viewers," says ABC spokesman Jeffrey Schneider. "We've instituted a policy going forward that if someone is a subject of a story and there's any arrangement made to license material from them, that will be disclosed to our viewers." Schneider would not comment on the propriety of the payment itself, which some ABC staffers found appalling.  Wash Post and CNN "Reliable Sources" Howard Kurtz on ABC's $200,000 2008 payment to jailed Florida kid murderess Casey Anthony for photos and videos of dead daughter Caylee that aired on GMA and "20/20." 

Ironically ABC never did get an interview.

Tea Parties: American Graffiti

"Palin is such a fighter and great American that she quit on her stool as governor of Alaska because there was more money to be made in the other 49 states, shouting about death panels and health care and "European socialism" and writing unreadable books. In so many ways, she is a perfect media darling for our times. She doesn't scrawl graffiti, she thinks in it."  New York Daily News columnist Mike Lupica on the "vile, back-alley fighting" tea party "storm trooper sound bites, and hate."

NBC's Norah O'Donnell admits this a.m. on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" that "most of the tea partiers are women."

Scoop Dreams

"CBS Early Show" host Harry Smith interviews Obama on the WH basketball court where they'll shoot hoops.  Interview runs Friday.  Harry's colleague - CBS sports guy Clark Kellogg (left) - dribbles and shoots his interview with the prez to run Saturday during the Final Four where Obama'll get a huge audience for his health care pimp.

Obama's got Matt Lauer by the balls in an interview running Tuesday on "Today."

Tea Party Vanishes Into Media Area 51

The Mainstream Print Media (NYT, Wash Post, NYP, NYDN) has zip on Saturday's tea party starring Sarah Palin in Harry Reid's Searchlight, Nevada backyard.  But the NYT's website has the story and vid with the photo, left.

Between 12 and 1p Saturday MSNBC ran the entire John McCain/Sarah Palin Arizona campaign rally.  At 1 MSNBC aired a canned canned John Siegenthaler doc. If you've forgotten who he is, John anchored NBC's weekend news.

It Don't Mean A Thing If It Ain't Got Ka-Ching

"Money Honey" doesn't have the same ring to it these days for CNBC anchoress Maria Bartiromo.  Those product licensing deals didn't quite materialize after she trademarked the moniker in 2007. So the 42-year-old biz babe dropped the trademarks....

Don't be surprised if you hear and see more Bartiromo.  She's pimping a new book....

No Self-Respecting Fish Would Be Wrapped In A Times Newspaper

"This would never happen at the Wall Street Journal. Mostly because WSJ staffers are not allowed food."  FishbowlNY in a post featuring the above leaked photo from a disgruntled NYT wretch.

What smells even more is the $10 mil in stock bonuses awarded the NYT's top brass last year.

The Boston Globe's newspaper union is demanding the $10 mil in union concessions under threat of closure by the NYT be repaid.

While the two top NYT execs got 2009 pay increases, the ink-stained wretches faced layoffs and five-percent pay cuts.

Around The World With Kathie Lee

"Once in a while, Hoda I feel like we're the only two white, straight women left in the world."  Dumb f**k femme NBC's Kathie Lee Gifford at a huge gay/lesbian media thing in NYC.  TVNewser was all over the event like Rachel Maddow (M.I.A. BTW) on Scott Brown.

Lotsa TV news stars.  TVNewser has all the gossip and pix.

Fox's Kimberly Guilfoyle, Jamie Colby, Megyn Kelly. Kimberly's looking a bit overdone - if you know what I mean.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

NBC anchoress Amy Robach and new hubby, Andrew Shue.
[Photos TVNewser].  BTW to my trained eye, Amy appears pregnant.  Three-four months along.... If she is, this'll be her third child.  Amy has two by her first husband.

Glenn Beck "the single most dangerous person in this country."

Let's check in with our Komrades at Media Matters. MM Field Marshal Eric Burns on MSNBC's Ed Schultz: "We catch Glenn Beck in lies every single day. And they're serious lies.  Dangerous lies.  Glenn Beck is the single most dangerous person in this country....  He's a serious threat to our Democratic process....  In 200 shows that Glenn Beck did last year on Fox News last year he mentioned revolution 173 times.  This man is trying to start a real revolution in America."

Ed: "What is the most outlandish thing he's said
Eric: "It's almost impossible to find the single most outrageous thing."



As for the health care backlash "threats" against Democratic congressmen who voted for Obama's legacy:  they are manufactured by the Democratic party to heap sympathy on Dems and smear the tea party types and Repubs. 

Phony. Orchestrated. The Dems have been smart enough to be bipartisan in this phony, calculated campaign by targeting a few Repubs. 

MSNBC - for one- has totally bought into the bullshit threats....

Related:  "America Gets Blinded By Glenn Beck's Sweater."  Beck wore it on Friday's program.  If you turn it inside out, the threads spell "Paul Is Dead."

Rachel Maddow: No, I'm Not

MSNBC's Rachel Maddow MSNBC takes out a full-page ad in the Boston Globe in a two-fer to a) dispute new Repub Sen. Scott Brown's Maddow's-running-against-him fundraising gambit, and b) chastise Brown for not coming on Maddow's show. I ask you, why would Maddow run when she's so in the money?  Good pub, Rachel.  Nice touch pimping it on your blog.

Nancy's Purple Reign

Happy Birthday Nancy Pelosi!  The House Speaker moves from sexagenarian to septuagenarian today.  The big 7-0. 

Little-known Nancy nuggets:  She's "useless with a blowdryer" and takes her coif to a salon for precisely 20-minute blow styles.

Nancy's husband, Paul, functions as her dresser - wardrobe mister, if you will - selecting all Nancy's costumes, including that seriously expensive scarf (Hermes?) covering her coif on a Middle Eastern tour. Nancy's really into purple (mix of red and blue states) lavender these days. 

Beck v Stewart?

Huffington Post's Andrew Shaptur: This is an open invitation for Glenn Beck and Jon Stewart to come together on a neutral stage in New York City to debate about the future of America and its politics. Imagine: A live debate between two of the most well-known political commentators on television today. All in the name of charity. On one side sits FOX News host Glenn Beck; and on the other, comedian and Daily Show host Jon Stewart. Crazy idea? Not at all. In 1969, William F. Buckley debated Gore Vidal, and more recently, Bill Maher debated Ann Coulter in the 2009 Speaker Series. A debate between Beck and Stewart could prove to be the most exciting ideological battles we've seen in years.”

Well. What do YOU think?  To quote Joe Biden:  "This is a big fucking deal!"

Joe Cool

"We've got something pretty good here. And I have more influence than I would as the 99th-most-senior member of the Senate."  MSNBC's "Morning Joe" Scarborough to the NYDN's David Hinckley.

Well, then stop the tediously repetitive "when I was in Congress" on-air pimp. 

Hinckley quotes Joe:  "I know it cuts against the grain of almost everything on talk radio and on cable talk today. When I started, they told me it would never work, that I had to pick a side. "But we've found people like it."

In ratings released Wednesday, Scarborough's radio show beat the much-publicized Glenn Beck on WOR (710 AM), 10 a.m.-noon, as it has been doing for months. "Morning Joe," 6-9 a.m., has pulled ahead of "American Morning" on CNN. Last Thursday, for example, Scarborough had 366,000 viewers compared to 311,000 for CNN.

Both shows, like everything on cable news, run well behind those of Fox, which averages over a million morning viewers. But Scarborough says beating CNN is encouraging."We're ahead of people with a lot more experience and many times our resources."

Joe and his MSNBC bosses are nervous about CNN's rumored retooling of its flailing morning show "American Morning."

Swimming With Sharks

CNN anchor and "60 Minutes" contributor Anderson Cooper exposes his testicles to tea-bagging sharks. CNN colleague Rick Sanchez can't top this:


Watch CBS News Videos Online

"Crap and Trade"

Radio talk show host Jim Bohannon's bon mot on Talkers New Media Seminar panel on global warming and freeing America from Middle East oil blackmail. Look for MSNBC's "Morning Joe" Scarborough to purloin Jim's phrase.

Global warming capped and slayed "Mr. Green Genes" Joe Kennedy's Teddy Senate seat ambitions. So speculates Joe.

Lucky for us Joe didn't go to Harvard. The former lawyer and Republican congressman turned cable news star would be perpetually wrestling with "When I went to Harvard" versus "When I served in Congress."



Related:  "Cap and Trade Loses Its Standing As Energy Policy Of Choice" John M. Broder NYT March 26, 2010

Pimp My Ride Dogg Style

Septuagenarian Larry King hangs with Snoop Dogg. Tell me more on Larry's Twitter.

Thump, th-thump, th-thump: "I try to tell 'em but they won't understand that pimping ain't easy. I got money (got money), I got cars (got cars). Still fucking with them hood superstars (superstars). Spend a hundred grand over by the bar like pimping ain't easy."  ["Pimpin' Ain't EZ" 2009 "Malice N Wonderland"]

Rumble In The Talk Radio Jungle

Alan Colmes, Fox News Radio, moderates Talkers New Media "Rumble" featuring, from left to right, Randi Rhodes (Premiere Raido Networks); Bill Press (Dial Global); Roger Hedgecock; Allen Hunt (Allen Hunt Show); Alan Stock (KXNT Las Vegas); Phil Hendrie (Talk Radio Network); Steve Malzberg (WOR Radio Network); Errol Louis (WWRL NYC); Neal Boortz (Dial Global); Thom Hartmann (Dial Global/WYD Media). Westwood One's Jim Bohannon referees in a ump's shirt and whistle.

It's liberal radio talk show hosts v conservatives in a debate on how to meld political ideology and entertainment into talk show success, ratings, and sponsors. It's a fine line with liberal talk show hosts and liberal syndicators like Air America flopping big time in an industry where conservative hosts rule. Reading between the lines, it seems as though the liberal talkers are taking shots at incendiary (highly successful) conservative hosts Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, and Rush.  I waved my hand at Alan to ask specifically about Beck but he ignored me. Maybe he was pissed because I called him a "fucking liberal" in a huddle with former WOR programming czar David Bernstein.  "Why are you calling me that?" Alan beseeched.  Alan, you and I are Facebook friends.  I was fucking joking.  You're a lovely man with a  chick magnet personality. Really. I like you. A lot.

Fired now-bankrupt liberal Air America Princess Randi Rhodes (falling upward at Premiere Radio Networks which syndicates Rush Limbaugh, among others), as lone lady on the panel, squeezes balls right out of the box by suggesting conservative WOR NYC's Steve Malzberg needs to get laid....

For more Talkers NMS video, go to Chickaboombox.  The above is edited for brevity and bullshit....

As for bullshit, MSNBC's Ed Schultz, host of "The Ed Show" and a liberal radio talker, had a lot of balls showing up at Sean Hannity's Talkers reception last Friday night.  Ed's now pushing government takeover of radio to silence the far more successful conservatives like Rush:

TLC Sleeps With The Dishes

"Sarah Palin's Alaska" is officially baked.  TLC - the network that brought you Kate Gosselin - has picked up eight episodes at a rumored $1-1.2 mil a pop.  TLC is owned by Discovery Communications.

Reality show czar Mark Burnett is producing what TLC refuses to brand a reality show. 

Repub-turned-limo liberal Arianna Huffington was jarred out of her beauty sleep. (Huff Post WWIII head above).  Huffington Post's Danny Shea calls TLC's move "strange." 

The ratings will eclipse TLC's "Jon & Kate."

Chris Matthews: Wrong Again

JEOPARDY! question 2013:  WHO was Chris Matthews?

MSNBC's "Hardball" hectoring blowhard Chris Matthews has his balls handed to him two months after he lambasted Florida Dem Rep. Alan Grayson's prediction that health care reform would pass.

"Matthews has become such a self-parody it's not clear people notice anymore." James Rainey LA Times

Time for MSNBC to send sexagenarian Matthews to the has-been anchor heap...

What? Me Worry?

Uh, yeah, now that MAD editors are over sixty and facing Medicare cuts under Obamacare....  Above is May cover.  Let's revive the Gray Panthers!

Campbell Brown's Husband Not Running For Senate

CNN's Campbell Brown's anchor seat is safe.  For now.  Brown gets to continue her plunge in the ratings. Hubby Dan Senor has decided against running for NY Senate against the appointed-to-fill-Hillary's-seat Kirsten Gillibrand.  "I ultimately decided this wasn’t the right time in my family and business life for me to run."

Senor and Brown have two children. If Senor had run, Campbell would've been forced to trade lousy ratings for a Pat Nixon Republican cloth coat....

Dog-Eat-Dog At ABC News

"Those who know don't talk, and those who don't know can't stop talking." ABC News insider on new "This Week" hostess Christiane Amanpour's reported $2 mil a year as ABC beaches 400 working stiffs in budget cuts.

From God's Lips To Conan's Ear

"We all like Conan. It's an arithmetic problem."  Roger Ailes to the Chicago Tribune's Phil Rosenthal in a far-reaching rare interview.

Translation:  we'd love to have him but he costs too much and we don't know if he'll deliver the biggest bang for the buck.  NBC is prohibiting Conan from being on a Fox American Idol charity special April 21st.  Conan's forbidden from any TV appearances until May 1st. 

The Hollywood Reporter finds the timing of Conan's live tour intriguing.  If he makes a deal with Fox by the April 12th tour kickoff, Conan will conveniently be able to meet with local Fox affiliates in the top nine major markets where he's scheduled to perform.  Conan is curiously free May 17th - the date of Fox's upfronts in NYC. 

So Conan leaks the above to THR figuring he's making it easy for Fox to pimp his new show - if there's a deal.

I ask you, where else can Conan go?  Fox appears to be it. Under terms of Conan's NBC $48 mil exit, he can return to TV in September.

Fox Assumes A New Position

With Fox News consistently penetrating the top basic cable news network ratings (USA #1, Fox #2, TNT #3.  CNN and MSNBC are consistently ranked in the 20s and 30s).

Ad Age on Fox's new strategy:  Paul Rittenberg, exec VP-ad sales for Fox News Channel, Fox Business Network and Fox News Digital, said Fox's big push to advertisers this year will be to pit its upscale audience against the more mass-reach networks like TNT and USA. "For the last six months, we've been trying to position ourselves as more than just direct competition with CNN; that's over for us in a way," he said. "The general perception among media buyers, especially the 25-year-olds who don't watch TV news anyway, is that it's downscale. But there's no number that doesn't contradict that."

Part of Fox's upfront pitch will include a slide that shows its share of 25- to 54-year-old viewers with household incomes of $100,000 or more. Among its broader competitive cable set, Fox has 26% share of cable's gross rating points among that audience, more than History (12%), Discovery (11%) and CNN (9%).

CNN, of course, was its biggest competitor in a cable-news horse race that used to be fairly neck-and-neck among viewers 25-to-54 until Fox finally pulled ahead for good in 2009. CNN now often ranks fourth or fifth in a five-network prime-time cable news race that also includes sibling network Headline News, CNBC and MSNBC.

Although that makes the network a mid-tier player in terms of net ad spending, it's enough to make the network the most profitable division of News Corp., as CEO Rupert Murdoch recently told The New York Times.

But in previous years, pricing and higher cost-per-thousand-viewer rates, or CPMs, was a game CNN was winning, as Fox held out to sell more volume in its upfront negotiations. CNN continues to command a higher price for many of its programs despite ratings attrition in 2009, and it grossed $415 million in measured ad spending in 2009, according to Kantar, a 0.7% decrease from 2008. CNN has been pitching advertisers on the growth of its online video views as well as its out-of-home viewing in airports and bars, as measured by Arbitron, which helped them hold on to more ad dollars even as prime-time ratings dropped.

However, three media buyers Ad Age spoke to said Fox has started to close the CPM gap with CNN despite the latter's multiplatform pitch.

Mr. Rittenberg admitted that Fox News has a ways to go online in terms of traffic and views -- its 9 million monthly uniques trails CNN's 33 million, according to ComScore -- and will continue to push more inventory before holding out for higher pricing.

"At the end of the day, you can't take a CPM to the bank," he said. "If an advertiser is impressed enough by our story to commit an incremental $1 million or $2 million, we'll have succeeded."

Yeah, this is all inside baseball, but... BTW Fox was on top of the Sunday health care cable bloviating talking head orgy.

Cokie Roberts' Hypocrisy

Update:  "Avatar" director James Cameron calls Glenn Beck "a fucking asshole." Beck dons 3-D glasses on Wednesday's show to trumpet the slur.

ABC Newsbabe Cokie Roberts brands Fox's Glenn Beck "a terrorist." As in "He's more like a terrorist who believes he has discovered the One True Faith, and condemns everyone else as a heretic. And that makes him something else as well -- a traitor to the American values he professes so loudly to defend."

Meet Cokie's powerful lawyer/lobbyist brother Tommy Boggs.  Tommy's law firm Patton Boggs killed Bill Clinton's health care reform on behalf of its powerful health care industry and trial lawyer clients. No mandatory or voluntary insurance alliances designed to provide health insurance to uninsured Americans.  No malpractice reform.

Washington Monthly April 1995 Daniel Franklin "Tommy Boggs and the death of health care reform - lobbyist": The total defeat of all health reform also means that the issue will come around again, and with it, another rush of clients paying top prices to have Patton Boggs on their side. Health care reform took good care of Patton Boggs. The firm's total revenue shot up 25 percent in two years, from $49 million to $61 million. The next round could be even more fiercely fought, and more profitable for the firm. Tommy Boggs will be ready.

Now who is a "traitor to American values?"  Corruption? Tommy Boggs is the progeny of a Louisiana political dynasty. Tommy's Patton Boggs bio.

In 2007 Boggs was #1 with a bullet on Washingtonian Magazine's 50 top hired guns list. "Boggs’s law firm, Patton Boggs, makes $70 million a year from more than 350 lobbying clients. His biggest and best-known client, Mars, pays him $2 million a year. In return Boggs has for years made sure that every US serviceman and woman gets a Snickers bar or pack of M&Ms in his or her rations almost every day."

How sweet!

Related:  How Cokie - born Mary Martha Corinne Morrison Claiborne Boggs - got her nickname.  Hint:  it has nothing to do with cocaine.

Washington Life:  2009 Power 100

A disclaimer:  I know Tommy Boggs.  Not in the biblical sense, but he tried.  More than 20 years ago at some dinner event he and I got drunk - I think - Florida's Captiva Island.  All we talked about was his House Majority Leader dad (Hale Boggs D-LA) who disappeared in a 1972 Alaska plane crash.  His body was never found.  Tommy had consulted psychics to no avail.  Tommy really let his hair down to me - but I'm saving that for the book....

On The Beach

"I hope someone will pay me to continue being a pain in the ass."  CBS "60 Minutes" curmudgeon Andy Rooney's son Brian - victim of ABC News' "downsizing" after 22 years based in L.A.  Like father, like son, no?  Pains in the ass.

Now, how much is ABC paying new hire Christiane Amanpour to front "This Week?"

Fast-forward 30 Years: Where Were You When Obama Moved The Deck Chairs On The Titanic?

Joe Biden stepped on his dick at today's "historic" Obama health care reform bill signing.  The loose-lipped VP whispered to Obama at the podium before a live mic:  "This is a big fucking deal."  Fox News got the gaffe first.  Fox "Special Report" sage Charles Krauthammer:  "New Deal, Square Deal, now Big Deal."

It was a big fucking deal for TV news. AP:  ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox broke into daytime programming Tuesday to cover the event. Cable television news networks also carried Obama's speech and bill signing. ABC opened its coverage with tape of President Franklin Roosevelt signing Social Security legislation and President Lyndon Johnson creating Medicare. Anchor Diane Sawyer said the Obama administration "considers this their legacy moment." As he was signing off, NBC's Brian Williams noted that despite the White House celebration, "there is a lot of anger in the land."

Fast-forward 30 years:  the pen Obama used to sign health care reform into law goes for 3 yuan on chiBay...

Good Night At Black Rock

If you didn't get to listen to me on Jim Bohannon's nationally syndicated radio talk show Thursday, March 18th, 2010 - here is the link.  I'm on in the third hour.  We did it out of CBS News NYC because we were both in town for Talkers magazine's New Media Seminar which lured the usual suspects.  Sean Hannity,  Neal Boortz, G. Gordon Liddy, Lou Dobbs, Blanquita Cullum,  Ellen Ratner, Bill Handel, Roger Hedgecock, Alan Colmes, Ed Schultz, Stephanie Miller, Randi Rhodes, Bill Press, Dr. Joy Browne, Steve Malzberg, Gil Gross, Ellis Henican, Dave Graveline, Doug Stephan, Grace Blazer, Tom Leykis, Lionel, Lincoln Ware, Lars Larson, Doug McIntyre, Thom Hartmann, Laurie Castillo.  Programming suits: Holland Cooke, David Bernstein, Phil Boyce, Gabe Hobbs, Kipper McGee, Mike McVay, Geoff Rich, Mark Chernoff WFAN NY, Scott Lakefield WOR NY, Kraig Kitchen, Larry Kahn, Jack Swanson - and more. 

Everybody's pimping something or someone: Peter, Paul & Mary's Peter Yarrow entertained while plugging his new CD.  Famed 60s artist Peter Max (left, Talkers publisher Michael Harrison on right)and his new painting of Shaquille O'Neill.

I'll upload all the video on Chickaboomer's YouTube channel.  It's always amazing that the microphones never work properly at these talk radio things.  

I had a great conversation while smoking ($12 a pack NYC tax) outside Friday night with Ed Schultz's MSNBC "The Ed Show" producer James Holm.  More on that later - but I was really impressed with James and his understated passion...

Olbermann: Republicans "Elite, clueless minority."

Keith Olbermann is back. Tanned, rested, ready - and revoltingly hyperbolic.  Republicans are dead. "The manufactured outrage of the tea parties failed to derail health care." "You are behind the wheel of a political Toyota."

Ho-hum. Yawn. 

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

H/t Danny Shea Huffington Post

Christiane's Tour de France Delays New ABC "This Week" Gig

Christiane to ABC News suits:  what part of vacation don't you understand?

NYP Page Six: Newly hired Christiane Amanpour has irked her ABC News bosses by refusing to start until August -- because she wants to spend the summer in the south of France. The respected CNN chief international correspondent, who will take over as anchor of ABC's Sunday morning show "This Week," told network honchos that she wouldn't start until after her regular summer vacation. Some ABC News chiefs are concerned that the delay, while Jake Tapper fills in as host, could hurt ratings.  A source told Page Six, "Christiane made it clear she would not start until August because she wants to spend time at her family house in France."

TVNewser: ABC White House ace Jake Tapper, frontrunner for "This Week" until Amanpour dropped into the picture a few weeks ago, isn't talking. He's disappointed, newsroom insiders say, but he's manning up to keep the seat warm for Amanpour, whom he admires.

There are a lot of predictable sour grapes among surviving ABC News grunts amid layoffs.

Tom Shales Wash Post: If being the moderator of "This Week," ABC's Sunday morning news-talk show, required Senate approval, then journalist Christiane Amanpour.... would already be in big trouble.... As if outside opposition to Amanpour weren't enough, ABC News is practically in a state of internal revolt over her selection, according to such industry-watchers as TV Newser, which quotes ABC insiders as resenting Westin's hiring of a highly paid celebrity interloper for a job that many thought would go to White House correspondent Jake Tapper or to "Nightline" co-anchor Terry Moran. Either would have made a better "This Week" anchor, and neither would put ABC News in the position of having to rationalize spending big bucks on an superstar while making brutal cutbacks in the division.... Referring to the ABC staff as "too demoralized to care" about the nomination, an unnamed network veteran told TV Newser, "The appointment of Amanpour is a sideshow" because "the future of a Sunday morning talk show is trivial to people who believe they have no future at ABC News." ....Giving Amanpour the "This Week" job seems like one more bitter pill for ABC professionals to swallow, even as they overdose on all the others they've been forced to gulp down. After artfully orchestrating a smooth transition from Charlie Gibson to Diane Sawyer on ABC's "World News," Westin now seems to have ended his winning streak with a resounding clunk.... From many angles, it was a bad choice -- one which could create so much consternation that Westin will be forced to withdraw Amanpour's name and come up with another "nominee" for the job. That would hardly be a tragedy -- considering how many others deserve it more than she does.

Veteran radio programming gurus Chickaboomer polled at last weekend's Talkers magazine's NYC New Media Seminar predict Christiane's going to bomb in the ratings.  Perhaps ABC News president David Westin's crystal ball fantasizes divines girl-on-girl action in Sunday spin future if NBC dumps the preternaturally gray David Gregory (Chickaboomer hears he dyes his hair to add gravitas to his late 30s chronological age) for the MTP ratings-busting Rachel Maddow.

Liberal radio talker Alan Colmes nailed it on the head to me:  ABC News wanted to get Christiane into the fold.  Read between the lines of Westin's Amanpour announcement.

Caption This!

Sean Hannity at Talkers magazine's New Media Seminar Friday March 20, 2010 NYC at the reception he hosted.

Why is 79-year-old G. Gordon Liddy smiling a little over a month after his beloved wife Mrs. Liddy exited the planet?   CB snaps Gordon on the hotel elevator leaving Sean's do early.  Chickaboomer hears he brought a PYT to NYC...

Bluff, The Magic Draggin'

Peter Yarrow of Peter, Paul & Mary: "Puff wasn't about drugs."  Peter (with guitar, right) appeared at the 13th annual Talkers Magazine New Media Seminar March 19th in NYC where he was joined in song by the hastily-formed New Media Singers Jim Bohannon, Talkers publisher Michael Harrison, Ellen Ratner, talk radio hostess Stephanie Miller (in red sequin number).

Ellen decked out the troupe with John Lennon granny glasses and peace signs.  Peter, who berated my husband with "How could you do that? Take that beautiful woman (me) out of circulation?", was so smitten (says hubby) he dragged me up to Michael Harrison imploring I join the New Media Singers on stage. To Peter, the answer, my friend, was blowin' in the wind.  Or blowin' up MY end. Unfortunately I'd left my granny glasses, long dress, and roach clip in the sixties.

To invoke the hackneyed phrase:  Jim, Michael, Stephanie, and Ellen - keep your day jobs! In the background:  famous sixties artist Peter Max. Peter was absolutely enchanted with my story of registering for a Peter Max red enamel coffee tray and matching pot (not that kind) with a trademark Max design featured at an upscale Michigan store in 1970 - the year of my first marriage.  Peter was absolutely enchanted with me - but that's another story. Wedding Song (There Is Love).  And divorce.



Peter, Paul & Mary's first hit "If I Had A Hammer" hit the charts in 1962.

CBS News to Chickaboomer: "Tell me what you really think!"

Thirty-year veteran CBS News photojournalist Michelle to CB after Sunday's interview outside NYC's St. Patrick's Cathedral. I don't know when the thing aired but here's the raw video shot by Mr. Chickaboomer unbeknownst to me and CBS:

It's A Wrap! Chickaboomer's Excellent NYC Adventure

Chickaboomer in NYC for Talkers magazine's New Media Seminar is thrown out of Katie Couric's "closed studio" Thursday night after attempting to sneak in and sit in her anchor chair.  CB appeared on Radio Hall of Famer Jim Bohannon's nationally syndicated talk radio show broadcast from CBS News HQ on West 57th.  Black Rock. 

After Katie barred the door, Jim kicked off Thursday's Marty segment observing that Katie's chair looked like it was covered with a condom.  God forbid someone's nasty ass should touch Katie's throne.  There was more plastic on that chair than Nancy Pelosi and Joe Biden's combined countenances.

Talkers 13th annual NMS kicked off Friday with a panel on energy:  global warming and freeing America from dependence on foreign oil.  There was a plethora of natural gas from the dozen panelists which included MSNBC's "Morning Joe" team of Mika Brezinski and Joe Scarborough. 

An aside:  My profound apologies to Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough.  Mika beckoned to me as I was sitting in the front row, videocamera at the ready, with "I want to talk to you." [Mika, Joe, and I had been on the Jim Bohannon Show last year and got to know each other waiting to go on at Jim's CBS News studios in DC.] After the panel Mika came up to me and said she was hoping to see me again soon to tell me I had misidentified her as Joe's wife, Susan Scarborough, in a photo I'd posted on Chickaboomer. 

Mika politely asked that I remove the post that someone had emailed her.  I was embarrassed.  As a former network radio and TV news broadcast journalist, I pride myself on not making egregious errors like that.  Someone named "Louis the Talent Producer" at  "Morning joe"  thrust his card in my hand claiming I was sent an email about the above and failed to respond.  Louis, darlin', I never got an email, and told him I don't give a shit about jettisoning the offending post and photos.

I went up to Joe Himself and apologized.  Joe laughed:  "If my wife thought it was a problem I would've heard about it."

I just got back from NYC late Sunday night.  Smoking gun commentary and video to follow. 

Teasers:  Friday night I was penetrated (figuratively) by two Peters - Yarrow and Max - in my new role as poster girl for horny men over 70.

I was interviewed for the "CBS Evening News" Sunday as I exited from St. Patrick's Cathedral (next to Saks Fifth Avenue) after lighting a candle before the statue of Saint Jude as I prayed for failure of Obamacare (God was listening to Nancy Pelosi instead), on the Pope's Rope-a-Dope of Irish peophile priests.