The Weekly Standard: Brokaw, a once trusted newsman, will without a doubt lend legitimacy to the Chinese television network’s budding presence in America. . . . CCTV opened its Washington, D.C. based studio only last month, according to its website. “The move represents the latest move by China Central Television to project China and more closely connect Asia and America,” its website states. “The U-S production center is reaching out to American viewers and a global audience seeking diversity and alternative news coverage.” The new channel also represents the Chinese government’s investment in buying good coverage of its Communist regime here in America.
Why did it take 11 days for GE CEOand Obama jobs czar Jeff Immelt to deny through a spox that Republican Immelt's bagging benefactor Barack for Mitt Romney?
FBN's Charlie Gasparino's column quoting Immelt"friends" surfaced March 19th in the NYP. The denial came Friday in a Bloomberg story penned by fired MSNBC hack David Shuster's ex-wife.
Lisa de Moraes Wash Post: "Back in February 2011 when Current TV announced it was getting into bed with Olbermann, Hyatt hailed the hire as 'the best investment that Current has ever made.'”
Rebecca Dana The Daily Beast: "After luring Olbermann with praise and the promise of riches and autonomy early last year, Gore and Hyatt quickly found out that the big star they thought they bought actually owned them."
TIME's James Poniewozik:But here you had him at a network where he was handed the keys–literally given a piece of the network. Maybe the production values were bad. Maybe there was drama we don’t know about. But there’s drama everywhere. People deal with it. At some point, it’s not them, it’s you, no?
RE: Spitzer: The bar is not high, ratings-wise, and Spitzer is a known quantity. If he brings a modest, but devoted and partisan fanbase—and doesn’t gripe too much about the wiring—that may be enough. That said: really? Is the talent pool really that shallow? Does Current really want to become known as the Plan C Network for Slightezly Used Liberals? Current may not be a premium perch, but there have to be plenty of rising talents who would be glad to sign with the network in exchange for the chance to drive a show. Instead, it looks like, this version of Current is a network you have to work your way down to.
(H/t Wayne J. Svantner)
Update: Olbermann's going on Letterman Tuesday. THR
Maybe Olbermann can work for Carlos Slim and Larry King's new Internet TV venture. Unlike wusses Gore and Hyatt, you don't mess around with Slim . . .
Olbermann, who once swaggered he didn't burn bridges but rivers, torched his last TV news revenue stream.
Baltimore Sun TV critic David Zurawik: The cancer in cable TV news runs deeper than showboating, hotdog, reckless show hosts like Olbermann. They are just the symptom that distracts us from the real disease, which is executives like MSNBC's Phil Griffin who says he's proud of the actions of hosts like Sharpton. So, forgive me if I don't go crazy at the news that Olbermann is out at a national cable channel that draws fewer viewers in prime time than most local stations draw for their 11 p.m. newscasts in Top 20 markets. I predicted Gore and Current would rue the day they hired Olbermann, and it came sooner than even I thought it would. Olbermann has been doing his crazy dance for months -- not on-air election nights, and then tweeting crazy stuff about why he wasn't there.But for all its talk about the values Olbermann allegedly betrayed, it his firing about that. It wasn't even about him acting like a crazy person. He was canned. because Gore and Hyatt found out what some critics like me told them 18 months ago was true: Olbermann doesn't have an audience of more than a million viewers who will follow him anywhere. As it turned out, he didn't have even a fraction of that audience. And how do you pay someone $10 million a year for 5 years when no one is watching? But, honestly, most of my contempt is for Gore, and his arrogance in thinking he knows anything about media except how to manipulate writers and critics on the far left into ignoring his failures as they keep insisting what a genius he is. ... Current is a gang of used-up politicians and unabashed ideologues. That would be Spitzer, the self-righteous crusading prosecutor who manipulated banking transactions to try and hide his payment to prostitutes. Yes, I said CNN would rue the day it hired him as well, but that was shooting fish in the barrel for anyone but the CNN executives stupid or desperate enough to give him a show in the middle of prime time.He didn't last a year, did he? But wait, there is someone even more desperate and stupid who is giving Spitzer another show in the middle of prime time: Al Gore. The least trusted man in American television is back in prime time, folks.
Spitzer Friday night: "Welcome to Current's new 8 PM show, 'Viewpoint,' where every day we will drill down into the day's top stories in search of facts that inform." Huff Post
Dan Rather to Rachel Maddow: "I still can't believe that here, in the second decade of the 21st century, in a presidential campaign, that we're talking about contraception. Do you know any woman, of any race, creed, color or religion, who doesn't use some form of birth control?" (NewsBusters)
Other than the obvious, lesbian Rachel Maddow, 80-year-old Dan's wife, anyone with a history of uterine and breast cancer, women sans wombs, chicks waaay past menopause such as yours truly.
MSNBC host Thomas Roberts didn't interview an empty chair like colleague Lawrence O'Donnell. He just gave the other guy MSNBC booked the entire segment.
Turns out the anti-gay marriage talking head waiting for her few minutes in MSNBC's gladiator ring was in another studio and not the one Roberts thought. After dumping on her at the beginning of the segment, a sheepish Roberts later tweeted:
MYSTERY solved... @maggiemarriage was in a studio ready for our #nom interview it was just the wrong studio booked improperly on @msnbc_booking IT WAS OUR MISTAKE and she has an open invite for the show. Our sincerest apologies.
As for suspending Roberts, MSNBC should consider a Woody Allen psychiatrist's couch three times a week during the two-week suspension I'm prescribing for Lawrence O'Donnell.
What's going on at MSNBC? Frequent graphic foul-ups. And more . . . angst over MSNBC's on-air liberal outrages.
To employ that hackneyed phrase: It is what it is. MSNBC is what it is. I've recoiled at far more unprofessional antics on MSNBC than Roberts and O'Donnell committed by the likes of Chris Matthews, Keith Olbermann, David Shuster . . .
Although they're M.I.A. in the above photo, TV news celebrities Norah O'Donnell and Christiane Amanpour are two of 2012's 10 "Capital Dames," (ELLE's tag not the Washington Post or Politico).
ELLE: "NBC had lost a significant brain. . . . May be the biggest defection NBC has endured in nearly two decades."
What? Not Keith Olbermann from MSNBC to Current TV?
ELLE: Amanpour "is candid about the sacrifices she has had to make."
Wash Post gossipitas gushed the "glittering dinner" was "a promotional trifecta" at the new Italian ambassador's cushy digs featuring (a) Armani (2) ELLE mag (3) "Women in DC Power List honorees."
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Rush Limbaugh is amazed and pleased that the Washington Post, winding down after rolling orgasms over the Sandra Fluke story, actually wrote an accurate, he marveled Thursday, story on the "slut" fallout. Which, according to the Post's Paul Farhi, has evaporated into the etherland after a month.
The doom and gloom predicted by Media Matters and others has not materialized. Advertisers are back. No more stations have dropped him. Thursday Limbaugh crowed ratings are through the roof! 60% higher in some markets! And Limbaugh's affiliates are sticking with him rather than go with the untested Mike Huckabee's rival Cumulus show which has yet to debut.
Farhi appears to have bought into Radio-Info's Wednesday story revised Thursday with Clear Channel CEO Bob Pittman proclaiming:
THR: Couric, who left NBC's Today in 2006 to anchor CBS Evening News, signed a record $40 million deal with ABC in June. She has acted as a special correspondent for the network's news programs, including GMA and Nightline -- and will host her own syndicated daytime talk show, Katie, starting in September.
Lisa de Moraes Wash PostTV critic: It’s about time for ABC parent Disney - which signed Katie to star in a syndicated daytime talk show last June - to start warming up the daytime crowd for the show’s fall launch. . . . In January, ABC News President Ben Sherwood told a ballroom full of The Reporters Who Cover Television that his goal is to “topple” the “Today” show, ending the vice-like grip it has had in the morning ratings race for “10 billion weeks.” Sherwood was not over-promising: “GMA” has been gaining viewers while “Today’s” ratings have slid. Viewers aren’t taking to “Today’s” co-anchor (and former news reader) Ann Curry the way they did to the show’s former co-anchor, Meredith Vieira, who left last summer, and to Couric before her. Meanwhile, NBC News is taking forever to close a deal with much-liked “Today” anchor Matt Lauer to remain with the show. Some sources, and news reports, say Curry’s presence is a sticking point. “GMA” just enjoyed its closest first-quarter numbers relative to “Today” in 17 years. Last week, “GMA’ came in only about 140,000 viewers shy of “Today.” Last time “GMA” beat “Today” for a week was in December of 1995. Once, seven years ago, “GMA” got real close, but “Today” outmaneuvered the ABC show by pulling some ratings hanky-panky to eek out the win, the New York Times noted Thursday.
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I was a TV news anchor during the same era as "Ron Burgundy." The mid-1970s. When the movie came out in 2004 I nearly gagged when I saw Ferrell: he looked like a mirror image of my male co-anchor! And the clothes! The garish sport coats (that's what we called them in Michigan). The "leisure suits!" The hair! The attitude! The sexism from the news team and floor crew when I invaded his solo 6 p.m. newscast fiefdom! If HR had been in existence I would've been filing daily complaints!
The Hollywood costumers dressed anchoress Christina Applegate in the new (then) Diane von Furstenberg wrap dresses ($99 at Saks in 1976. $345 now). The navy Mary Jane pump with thick heel.
Period perfect even down to the shiny plastic insulated copper and black-colored coffee carafes in the conference room with plastic poop brown cup holders and disposable white cheap plastic conical cups.
Who would you cast in a real-life "Anchorman?" Which himbo currently committing obscenely-paid anchor duties most closely resembles Ron Burgundy?
MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell was spotted frothing clad in this after his bizarre, vein-popping pummeling of a chair on-air where perp George Zimmerman's M.I.A. lawyer was supposed to be sitting while awaiting Lawrence's oral rape Tuesday. O'Donnell was last seen babbling at a bare wooden chair (not the House Chair) and mumbling something about the Apocalypse.
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Jon Stewart does three minutes on MSNBC host Lawrence O'Donnell's apoplectic, abusive querying of a chair at an Orlando TV studio where hoodie kid killer suspect George Zimmermann's lawyer was supposed to be bracing for an out-of-control O'Donnell verbal strafing.
"Don't go to IKEA with Lawrence O'Donnell!"
"Not the most enthralling television, but it's MSNBC! i didn't think dressing a grizzly bear in human clothes was a good idea but they made that work."
So Stewart interviews the chair's lawyer. The fan:
Simmons took to Twitter late last night to revise and extend: "ppl have 2 read my msg. I luv Geraldo just calling his apology bullshit. Is that ok . . . "
Mitt Romney comported himself well on Tuesday's NBC Tonight Show. He seemed relaxed, friendly -- not his usual prickly, stammering, stiff, entitled self. Credit the campaign's Etch A Sketch reset.
After rolling for VP candidates (Mitt: "David Letterman"), Leno ticked off a list of people asking Mitt to cough up one-word descriptions.
Leno: "Chris Christie." Romney:"Indomitable."
Leno temporarily flummoxed by the five-syllable word.
The "press secretary" a slam at Santorum for losing his temper Sunday and billing formidable, maybe indomitable, NYT political scribe Jeff Zeleny's question "bullshit." With the cameras rolling.
Leno had Romney on for three segments.
#8 donor, Mike B. Oklahoma (repeat donor). #7 donor -- two-time contributor Chris S., Missouri, donated Tues. Mar. 27. Please pony up some green for Chickaboomer's Vernal Equinox donation drive! Help keep CB up and running! Thanks!
Last week was the second week in a row that O'Reilly's FNCshow beat NBC's Rock Center -- the Brian Williams prime time vanity vehicle. Bill's bested Brian before in the ratings.
Related: MSNBC blowhard Chris Matthews claims he's "centrist." NewsBusters
Stephen Colbert cackles: “A hooded sweatshirt can make an innocent teen look like a criminal. Just like a suit and glasses can make Geraldo Rivera look like a journalist!” Mediaite
Geraldo has put his money where his mouth is, cleaning out Fox's online store of hoodies. BuzzFeed
