Felix Gillette

As we noted recently, reporters and correspondents in Baghdad have had an increasingly difficult time in recent months getting their reports on air and their stories on the front pages of newspapers.

But this morning, seasoned war reporter Lara Logan of CBS News popped up on the front page of the New York Post—albeit for a bunch of allegations about her life in Baghdad that have nothing to do with her enterprising reporting on the region.

The allegations against her couldn't have come at a worse time for Ms. Logan. Yesterday, CBS News announced that Ms. Logan, considered a rising star within the network, will be assuming a new role for CBS, serving as "chief foreign affairs correspondent" out of Washington, D.C.

Tonight on ABC's Nightline, Ben Affleck will report an "essay" on his recent fact-finding mission concerning the humanitarian crisis in the Congo.

"It's fairly clear that in the modern age that there is a currency to celebrity, or celebrity is a currency, really," Mr. Affleck told David Bauder of The Associated Press. "I've discovered that you can spend it in a lot of ways, or you can squander it. You can be taxed, as well. I really started thinking long and hard about how to use that currency as long as I had it."

In 2000, ABC News tapped Leonardo DiCaprio to interview then President Bill Clinton about the environment.

On the morning of Sunday, June 22, NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams made a much anticipated announcement at the end of Meet the Press, which he was moderating in the wake of Tim Russert’s sudden death of a heart attack nine days earlier.

“Beginning next week, my friend Tom Brokaw has agreed to step in as moderator of Meet the Press, to get us through this election season,” said Mr. Williams. “And allow me to add, during these past difficult days, Tom’s been an enormous comfort here in this Washington bureau.”

A comfort: yes. A full-time presence in Washington: no.  read more »

What does the long-term future hold for local television news business? Unclear. What does the short term promise?

Widgets.

On Wednesday, June 18, executives as WCBS, the CBS-owned and -operated station in New York City, unveiled a new online business venture in which they will supply “widgets with real-time news feeds” to a network of local blogs.

Reached on the phone recently, Dan Shelley, the director of digital media for the station, explained that WCBS was offering bloggers a variety of different widget packages to choose from, ranging from sports to entertainment to breaking news.

“We have a ‘water cooler’ section, which is a robust section full of weird news stories,” said Mr.  read more »

Tom Brokaw, the former anchor of the NBC Nightly News, will moderate Meet the Press on Sunday mornings for the rest of the election year.

Brian Williams, the current anchor of the NBC Nightly News, made the announcement at the end of Sunday's Meet the Press.

Since the sudden passing of Tim Russert, there has been much speculation about who would take over the role as moderator of the number-one-rated Sunday morning public affairs program. By naming Mr. Brokaw to the position on an interim basis, NBC executives have essentially bought themselves more time to find a long-term replacement.

"I volunteered," Mr.  read more »

No long-term decisions have been made, but Brian Williams will host Meet the Press this Sunday.

His guests will include Lindsey Graham and Joseph Biden, the scheduled guests for Meet the Press on June 16 before Tim Russert's sudden death last week. Jacques Steinberg of The New York Times has the news from NBC's spokeswoman, Allison Gollust.

Yesterday afternoon, politicians, journalists, news executives, friends and family members gathered at the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C. for a 90-minute memorial service honoring the late Tim Russert.

The moving ceremony reached an emotional peak when Mr. Russert's 22-year-old son Luke took the stage and spoke eloquently about his father's unfailing optimism, his faith in God, and his enthusiasm for life.

"Great men often lead with their egos," said Luke Russert. "Tim Russert led with his heart, his compassion, and, most importantly, his honor. He had a great time living, and is no doubt having the time of his life now in heaven.  read more »

At 1:30 p.m., the line of mourners on Mount Saint Alban in Washington, D.C., for Tim Russert, NBC Washington bureau chief and host of Meet the Press, who died so suddenly last week at the age of 58, stretched all the way from the front doors of the St. Albans School Refectory out to Wisconsin Avenue.

Before the hearse arrived bearing Russert’s dark wooden casket, the presidential motorcade had arrived; President George W. Bush and Laura Bush were among the first mourners. Then the hearse arrived to bear Russert’s casket into the refectory, followed by his son, Luke, and his wife, Maureen; then a host of his famous television news friends.  read more »

This morning, Luke Russert made an appearance on NBC's Today where he spoke to Matt Lauer and Meredith Viera about his late father, Tim Russert, who passed away of a heart attack on Friday afternoon.

The segment began with a moving photograph, taken by the Associated Press on Sunday morning, which captured Luke standing in the Meet the Press studio in Washington D.C., with his hands resting on his father's empty anchor's chair.

“I’m going to keep that chair forever,” Luke Russert told Mr. Lauer this morning. “That’s my chair now.”

On Sunday morning, Tom Brokaw hosted a special edition of Meet the Press, honoring the late Tim Russert. He was joined in the Meet the Press studio in Washington D.C. by James Carville, Mary Matalin, Mike Barnicle, Gwen Ifill, Doris Kearns Goodwin, and MTP Executive Producer Betsy Fischer. Maria Shriver patched in from Sun Valley, Idaho.

"Tim has a very large wooden sign in his office and it's going to be our mantra for this morning," said Mr. Brokaw at the outset. "It says, ‘thou shall not whine.' If I could add anything to that, I think, thou shall not weep or cry this morning. This is a celebration."  read more »

In the aftermath of Tim Russert’s sudden death, the Los Angeles Times speculates on who NBC News executives will choose to replace Mr. Russert as the host of Meet the Press.

“Speculation on possible successors centers on three on-air personalities already under contract to NBC: David Gregory, the former White House correspondent recently given his own MSNBC show, "Race for the White House"; Chris Matthews, host of MSNBC's long-running "Hardball"; and Joe Scarborough, the former congressman and host of "Morning Joe" on MSNBC, according to talent representatives who declined to speak on the record for fear of jeopardizing relationships with network management,” reports the L.A. Times.

   read more »

After digging through his extensive database and crunching the numbers, TV news analyst Andrew Tyndall has found that ever since 1991 when the late Tim Russert took over as the D.C. bureau chief for NBC News, his correspondents in Washington were significantly more productive than their competitors in terms of getting air time on the evening news.

"The DC bureau has been the backbone of NBC's journalism," writes Mr. Tyndall. "Each evening at the news hour, NBC Nightly News has relied on Russert's inside-the-Beltway corps of correspondents much more heavily than either CBS Evening News or ABC World News."

More from the report:

 

Tyndall Report's data show that since 1991, when Russert took the chair at Meet the Press, his DC bureau has accounted for fully 30% of all Nightly's weekday stories, an annual average output of 1520 minutes, more than 25 hours.  read more »

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Tim Russert, NBC's Washington bureau chief and the influential host of its Sunday morning program Meet the Press, died the afternoon of Friday June, 13, after collapsing from a heart attack while recording voice-over segments for Sunday's show at NBC's Washington news bureau. He was 58.

had previously been diagnosed with coronary artery disease, which he treated with medication and exercise. After the collapse, medics rushed Russert to Sibley Memorial Hospital, where efforts to resuscitate him failed. According to doctors at the scene, cholesterol plaque had ruptured an artery in Russert’s heart, which was enlarged, an autopsy later revealed.

Tom Brokaw announced the news of Russert’s death on the air for NBC. His colleagues were shocked and grief stricken. Doris Kearns Goodwin, who has known Russert for about a decade and was a frequent guest of his on Meet the Press was in tears after a television station broke the news to her with a telephone call.

"I feel so bad," she told The Observer. "He was such a good friend."

"Somebody just called from the television studio and said have you heard the horrible news about Tim and I thought he must have been in a plane crash,” she added. "He's a giant and he's the best. I loved him…I can't imagine what the news bureau is going through down there. I heard it is just wailing.”  read more »

"He had this wonderful ability to mix toughness with humanity, especially in an age when lots of people are posing as tough guys," said The New Yorker's Ken Auletta.

It was Friday evening, and Mr. Auletta was on the phone with the Observer, speaking of the late Tim Russert, who passed away on Friday afternoon of an apparent heart attack.    read more »

Declaring the president of the United States the "Worst Person in the World," is apparently no biggie these days, what with his historically low approval ratings and all that. But saying the same about Katie Couric?

Outrageous! (Historically low ratings may not apply in this case.)  read more »

This past weekend at the National Conference for Media Reform in Minneapolis, Dan Rather delivered a wide-ranging speech that lasted some twenty or so minutes. Along the way, he criticized media consolidation, the corporate news environment, "message discipline," media cowardice, news-for-profit, celebrity fluff, "so-called human interest stories," sensational trials, gossip, "news you can use," partisan shouting matches, and a whole range of other journalistic sins.  read more »

Courtney Kealy, a veteran foreign correspondent for Fox News (and native New Yorker) recently told the Observer via phone from Baghdad that the mood at her bureau was "much better" than a few years ago.

"I don't wake up to a bomb in the morning," said Ms. Kealy. "I set an alarm now. It still could happen. I might hear a mortar every now and again. But in 2005 we were in the Palestine Hotel. At one time, they tried to take the whole thing down, Oklahoma-City style. That was a very scary place to be."  read more »

PBS executives announced today that they will be broadcasting extensive, "gavel to gavel" coverage of both the Democratic and Republican conventions this summer.

From the release:  read more »

Terry McCarthy of ABC News recently told the Observer that as the level of violence in Iraq has dropped off in recent months, correspondents in Baghdad have had more time to work on feature stories about the state of the country—rather than, say, report on the latest suicide bombing.

Last night, Mr. McCarthy reported one such "believe it or not" feature for World News with Charlie Gibson. The story was about booming housing prices in Baghdad.  read more »

Jamie Tarabay, the former Baghdad Bureau Chief for NPR, was stationed in Iraq in the early months of 2007 when General David Petraeus arrived to take over command of the U.S. forces there.

In the weeks and months to come, like many of her professional colleagues in the war zone, she eventually accompanied Mr. Petraeus on a number of walk-along interviews as he strolled through the streets of the occupied city.  read more »

“It’s the oft-stated phrase that truth is the first casualty of war,” said Michael Ware, CNN’s Baghdad correspondent, on the telephone from Iraq. “In this war, as in every other conflict, everybody lies to you. Your government is lying to you. The Iraqi government is lying. The insurgents are lying. The militias are lying. The U.S. military is lying. Even the civilians lie. Or in the best case, there’s confusion and exaggeration. The truth is the most elusive thing in war, particularly in an insurgency.”

Sixty-two months into the war, this is the language of the American journalist in Iraq. It’s not the only language; there are others: Cyclical, monotonous, brutal, strategic, hopeful. But slowly, as Iraq slips from the front pages and Web pages, today’s news starts to sound like yesterday’s; violence explodes; a spectacular military success, or failure. Casualty lists grow until they become incomprehensible, and then unreadable, unquantifiable. Against that metronomic numbness, 90 American journalists (according to a November 2007 study by the Project for Excellence in Journalism) continue to work a dangerous war that becomes a harder and harder story to sell to Americans. As the American press corps gets older, wearier—and simultaneously younger and more untested as the veterans leave—there are truths that some of the reporters of Baghdad have learned about the war in Iraq.  read more »

Give it up for MyNetworkTV!

According to TV Week, this fall, Arsenio Hall will host a new "home-video blooper show," that will air on Wednesday nights on America's sixth most popular broadcast network.

The show will apparently be called Funniest Moments and will likely target that bountiful demographic of Americans (like the Media Mob) who (a) aren't quite satiated by YouTube and (b) feel nostalgic for the '90s-era comic stylings or Mr. Hall.  read more »

Beginning on Monday, June 16th, conservative radio host Laura Ingraham will be guest-hosting the 5 p.m. hour on Fox News, the cable news channel announced today.

In February, Fox News executives replaced their longtime 5 p.m. anchor John Gibson with a show called America's Election HQ, anchored by Bill Hemmer and Megyn Kelly.

According to Brian Stelter of the New York Times, Fox News is searching for a new format at 5 p.m. and will be trying out a rotating cast of personalities beginning next week with Ms. Ingraham.  read more »

Martin Bashir, the co-anchor of ABC News' Nightline has been diagnosed with a brain tumor growing on his pituitary gland.

Doctors discovered the tumor recently after Mr. Bashir injured his head on the set of Nightline and was taken to the hospital for stitches.  read more »

Over the weekend, Michael Bloomberg and ABC News invited Barack Obama and John McCain to debate each other in a 90-minute town hall showdown, which would be broadcast live in primetime from Federal Hall.

ABC's Good Morning America anchor Diane Sawyer—who did not get the opportunity to moderate a debate in the primaries—would host the town hall meeting.

Both campaigns have since indicated that they would be willing to participate in the event in New York City, but did not want ABC to solely control the broadcast.

The invitation marks the second time this year that a major media company has attempted to sponsor a debate without the blessing of the Commission on Presidential Debates—a non-partisan, D.C.-based organization, which has more or less maintained a monopoly on organizing general election debates for the past 20 years.  read more »

Jim McKay, the longtime sportscaster, chronicler of the Olympic games, and host of ABC's seminal sports show "Wide World of Sports," passed away on Saturday. He was 86.

Here, a brief video from the Associated Press, remembering Mr. McKay's career.

According to several news reports today, though it is currently in fourth place among the broadcast networks, NBC has wrapped up its advance advertising sales this year with successful results.

And they didn't even throw an upfront!

Earlier this year, NBC executives announced that they would eschew the traditional TV time frame, not show pilots to advertisers at an upfront presentation, and would roll out new programming all year long.

"NBC's intention to announce a new sked in April—and then follow with a mix of small meetings and one big Gotham pitch—promises to disrupt the usual upfront selling season by giving the net a full month's head start on dealmaking," Variety reported back in February.

Four months later, that approach appears to be working.  read more »

In an apparent effort to cash in on the highly lucrative wedding-industrial complex, NBC Local Media is teaming up with the ubiquitous wedding brand, The Knot, to create a ten-episode weekly series titled I Do!, which will air this summer on WNBC.

According to today's press release, the show will focus, in part, on "the reality and drama of planning and throwing a wedding in the New York City area."

Scary!

The news comes amid reports that NBC Universal CEO Jeff Zucker is scrambling, as the New York Post recently put it, "to grow the media giant despite being given the financial equivalent of the cold shoulder by parent company General Electric."  read more »

Recently, CBS paid nearly $2 billion to purchase CNET, a San Francisco-based company that owns a diverse network of Web sites.

Was the purchase by CBS a smart idea?

Um, probably not.

That's the conclusion of James Surowiecki of the New Yorker, who writes about the merger in the current issue of the magazine.  read more »

On Tuesday night, the last night of contests during this marathon primary season, CNN scored a big win over its cable news rivals, according to a story in today's Washington Post.

From the Post:

CNN clocked more than 3.5 million viewers in prime time. That's a 34 percent lead over MSNBC's more than 2.5 million viewers. It's also a 47 percent advantage over Fox News Channel's prime-time crowd of 2.4 million viewers.  read more »

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MSNBC has ordered a second helping of Morning Joe.

The New York Times reports this morning that Joe Scarborough has extended his contract with MSNBC until March 2011. Last summer, after a successful tryout, Mr. Scarborough took over Don Imus' old morning slot on MSNBC, beating out the likes of David Gregory along the way.  read more »

Roughly three months after the tumultuous exit of Shelley Ross, The Early Show on CBS has named Zev Shalev as the show's new executive producer. Rick Kaplan of the CBS Evening News with Katie Couric had been filling in on an interim basis.

From the press release:

Shalev has been senior broadcast producer of the program since March.  read more »

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Call it a rich stash of New York radio history. Or call it a bunch of old office crud.

In either case, on Thursday, June 12, from 11 in the morning until 2 in the afternoon, WNYC employees will be holding a "stoop sale" in anticipation of their imminent move to new headquarters.  read more »

Veteran local news anchor Rob Morrison is leaving WNBC, as first reported today by Fishbowl NY. For the past several years Mr. Morrison has anchored "Today in New York," the lead-in to NBC's lucrative Today.

Sources confirmed to the Media Mob that in recent days Mr. Morrison cleared out his office and left 30 Rockefeller Center for good.  read more »

In a lengthy, front-page article today, the New York Times investigates how Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has increasingly deployed the Kremlin-controlled TV networks as a political tool to silence his opponents.  read more »

On Saturday night, mixed martial arts (MMA, as it's called by those in the know) made its prime-time broadcast television debut. CBS kicked off "EliteXC Saturday Night" by broadcasting what was called the "Elite Extreme Combat" event in Newark, N.J., including a featured showdown between former Miami street fighter (and YouTube sensation) Kimbo Slice and British heavyweight James Thompson.

Along the way, Mr. Slice scored a third-round TKO over his bloodied opponent, and CBS scored a big boost in its ratings among young male viewers.  read more »

HBO's smart, new, original movie "Recount," about the contested 2000 presidential election in Florida, may be a hit with critics but according to the Hollywood Reporter it has yet to catch on with HBO subscribers.

From the Hollywood Reporter article:  read more »

Last night, CNN congressional correspondent Jessica Yellin appeared on "Anderson Cooper 360," in part to discuss the brouhaha over former White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan's tell-all book about the Bush administration, What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington's Culture of Deception.

At one point, Mr. Cooper asked Ms. Yellin about the allegations in the book that the national media was "too deferential to the White House," during the run-up to the war in Iraq.  read more »

Former White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan isn't the first member of his family to write a controversial book about a president of the United States. But while Mr. McClellan's book, What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington’s Culture of Deception, may be considered a form of character assassination by some, Mr. McClellan's father was more interested in real assassinations, namely that of John F. Kennedy.  read more »

Paging all "Ausholes."

Influential TV blogger, columnist, and Smurfs collector Michael Ausiello (whom NYTV profiled back in November) is leaving his longtime home at TV Guide for a new writing gig at Entertainment Weekly, where he will pen a weekly column and contribute to EW.com.

A few weeks ago, Macrovision Solutions Corporation competed a multibillion dollar takeover of Gemstar-TV Guide. Since then, Macrovision executives have reportedly been trying to sell the magazine while holding onto TVGuide.com—where Mr. Ausiello has established himself in recent years as a major force in the entertainment industry.  read more »

Ever since word of Katie Couric's supposed lame-duck status at CBS News spread far and wide across the Internet last month, the ratings at her evening news show have continued to drop.

Now, Steve Krakauer at TV Newser is reporting that CBS Evening News with Katie Couric hit a new low last week.

"The broadcast averaged 5.33 million Total Viewers and 1.54M in A25-54." reports Mr. Krakauer. "The week of April 21, the previous low, the broadcast drew 5.34M Total Viewers and 1.58M in the demo."

Over the past few weeks, HBO has announced a series of moves to stem the tide of speculation that the network is faltering. After canceling 12 Miles of Bad Road, a series starring Lily Tomlin, HBO announced deals with Oscar winners Alexander Payne (of Sideways and Election fame) to develop a dark comedy called Hung, about a man who divines power from his generous equipment; and Alan Ball, the creator of Six Feet Under, who is working on not one but two shows for the network.  read more »

Not long ago, the actor Charlie Sheen reportedly encouraged TV viewers to boycott the new reality show featuring his ex-wife Denise Richards, and their two young daughters.

To judge by the show's opening numbers, Mr. Sheen's boycott may have backfired.  read more »

In his column this week, PBS's ombudsman, Michael Getler, wanders far, far away from his home territory in public broadcasting and, instead, does some pro bono ombudsmanry for ... NBC News.  read more »

In the latest clip in what we like to call the "Candid Katie" series on YouTube, Ms. Couric gets down with Bette Midler at a ‘60s-themed benefit on the Lower East Side.  read more »

On the morning of Wednesday, May 14, Torrey Meeks, a 25-year-old freelance writer and producer in Las Cruces, N.M., rolled out of bed and checked his various Web pages. “Unbelievable,” he thought to himself. “This thing is blowing up.”

The previous afternoon, Mr. Meeks, along with thousands of others, had taken his first (and second, and third … ) look at the Internet’s viral video du jour—specifically, a decades-old clip, freshly unearthed on YouTube, featuring news anchor Bill O’Reilly (long before his current Fox News fame), unleashing a curse-filled tirade on the set of Inside Edition.  read more »