Media Scribbler

Ever thought about how much more  you’d watch CNN if they had Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert on as analysts for the debates?
Let’s face it — until they toned it down a month or so ago, MSNBC had the unintentional comedy troupe of Olbermann, Matthews, Buchanan and Maddow. But over at CNN, they’ve been relying on mostly the star power of their political team and all their Twittering.
But now D.L. Hughley is headed for the cable news net to launch something completely new — a panel with Hughley and guests waxing wise on politics, entertainment, sports and pop culture.
Part of …read more

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It’s very hard to talk about something as seemingly frivolous as television today, as Galveston, Texas slowly floods and Hurricane Ike eyes Houston as it moves ashore (as of 7 p.m. CST, it looks like the eye will go east of there, but there’s still about six hours to go before anyone knows.)
Since the National Weather Service has predicted “certain death” to anyone who stays anywhere near Galveston’s coast, most of us can only watch correspondents who are either brave or foolhardy enough to do coverage from the Texas coast.

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For the cable news networks, the national Presidential conventions are like the Olympics in ratings. CNN is going gangbusters with their Democratic National Convention coverage, and pulled in averaged 5.38 million viewers from 10 to 11 p.m. Wednesday, when VP nominee Joe Biden spoke and Presidential nominee Barack Obama made a “surprise” appearance. That was only slightly less than NBC’s 5.8 million viewers for the same time period, and CNN’s average for the night was up 95 percent over their coverage of the same night during the 2004 convention.
Unfortunately for the folks who make the programming decisions at CNN …read more

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CBS is betting that with a hot and heated presidential matchup in the works, they can win their own ratings gold medal on their Web site. Katie Couric has high hopes for her own all-around medal, even if she’s the underdog.
According to TV Decoder, CBS is planning to live-stream additional Couric-anchored coverage. They are only planning to show an hour of her on the network each night, but say she will remain on CBSNews.com and CNet.com for at least another 30 minutes.
I expect other networks will do similar things (and really it’s going to be hard to compete with Anderson …read more

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