25-54 demographic (Live +SD)

• Total day: FNC: 275| MSNBC: 115 | CNN: 146 | HLN: 97

• Primetime: FNC: 460 | MSNBC: 225 | CNN: 197 | HLN: 131

	5p:	6p:	7p:	8p:	9p:	10p:	11p:	12a:
FNC	Five:	Baier:	Shep:	O’Reilly:	Hannity:	Greta:	O’Reilly:	Hannity:
	362	365	299	526	437	416	294	204
MSNBC	Matthews:	Sharpton:	Matthews:	O’Donnell:	Maddow:	EdShow:	O’Donnell:	Maddow:
	127	129	138	213	248	214	156	177
CNN	Blitzer:	Blitzer:	KingUSA:	Cooper:	Morgan:	Cooper:	KingUSA:	Morgan:
	104	128	153	213	171	207	172	118
HLN	Special:	Prime:	Issues:	Grace:	DrDrew:	Behar:	Showbiz:	DrDrew:
	77	112	115	141	161	97	68	61

Read more

“Social Media Marketing Boot Camp is an extremely cost effective way to quickly gain skills in the challenging and rapidly changing field of social media marketing. Like any good boot camp, you can expect to be challenged and pushed.” – Tony Levelle. Our next session of this online conference and hands-on workshop starts September 27. Register before September 8 to save.

Now that it’s settled that Pres. Obama will address the Congress — and the nation — on the jobs issue next Thursday, MSNBC has announced plans for the GOP debate the night before. The debate, moderated by NBC’s Brian Williams and Politico’s John Harris at the Reagan Library in Simi Valley, CA, begins at 8pmET and will run until 9:45pmET.

At that point, MSNBC’s primetime hosts Rachel Maddow, Chris Matthews, Ed Schultz, Lawrence O’Donnell and Rev. Al Sharpton will analyze the debate. Michael Steele and Steve Schmidt will provide analysis from the GOP perspective. MSNBC will re-air the debate in its entirety at MidnightET.

The debate was first announced last November and was originally scheduled for May but was pushed back because no GOP candidates had announced they were running.

More details after the jump…

Read more

Hurricane Irene coverage displaced all four of the Sunday shows across several markets on the east coast on August 28, as all the networks went into various stages of continuing storm coverage. Still, NBC’s “Meet the Press” held steady in first place. Compared to the same week last year, “MTP” has gained viewers in both total audience and the A25-54 demographic.

“This Week,” which was anchored on Sunday by ABC chief White House correspondent Jake Tapper, came in second in total viewers and the demographic. Year-over-year, “This Week” has also experienced growth in total audience and the A25-54 demographic.

CBS’ “Face the Nation” fell to third, ahead of “Fox News Sunday” in fourth. Both “Face the Nation” and “FNS” are down in total viewers, but up in the demographic, compared to last year.

Network	Program	Total Viewers	A25-54
NBC	“Meet the Press”	2.98M	947K
ABC	“This Week”	2.38M	858K
CBS	“Face the Nation”	2.27M	781K
FOX	“Fox News Sunday”	1.26M	535K

Fox News will tap into Google’s web technology to involve viewers in a jointly-hosted Republican presidential debate, slated for September 22 at 9 p.m.ET.

The debate will take place at the Orange County Convention Center in Orlando and will be moderated by “Special Report” anchor Bret Baier, with panel contributions from Chris Wallace and Megyn Kelly. Fox News will ask for question submissions via Google-owned YouTube, and viewers will be able to vote on the questions they want answered. The debate will also incorporate Google search trends and public data, “to help provide context to the questions and inform the debate throughout the evening,” according to the Fox News release.

The September 22 debate follows the ratings success of the last FNC Republican presidential debate, held in Ames, IA, on August 11.

The summer went out with a bang for the morning shows during the week of August 22-26, with Hurricane Irene coverage contributing to significant week-to-week growth for all three morning shows  — NBC’s “Today,” ABC’s “Good Morning America” and CBS’ “The Early Show” were all up in both total viewers and the A25-54 demographic.

All three morning shows were also up in both categories compared to the same week last year. Although “Today” is still the ratings leader by a wide margin, “Good Morning America,” riding a summer-long ratings uptick, showed the most growth: +19% in total viewers and +13% in the demographic. “Today” is up +11% in total viewers and +9% in the demographic; “The Early Show” is up +10% in total viewers and +9% in the demographic.

The averages for the week of August 22:

• Total Viewers: NBC: 5.29M / ABC: 4.62M / CBS: 2.57M

• A25-54 viewers: NBC: 2.35M / ABC: 1.78M / CBS: 1.05M

“Countdown with Keith Olbermann” on Current TV drew 310,000 total viewers and 102,000 A25-54 viewers on Tuesday night, giving the former MSNBC host his highest ratings since the week his show debuted in June. Olbermann spent the a good chunk of the show talking with former U.S. diplomat Joe Wilson about former VP Dick Cheney‘s memoir, and — as he has done many times before — named Bill O’Reilly, who is Olbermann’s 8 p.m. competition on Fox News Channel, “Worst Person in the World.”

Although the ratings mark an uptick for Olbermann, his Current TV program is still recording lower ratings in both categories than the competing programs in the 8 p.m. timeslot.

CNN has announced the candidates that will be participating in its upcoming September 12 GOP debate to be held in Tampa, Florida.

Dubbed “The Tea Party Republican Debate” due to the Tea Party Express being a co-sponsor, the debate participants will include  Texas Gov. Rick Perry,  Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, Texas Rep. Ron Paul, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, businessman Herman Cain, former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum and former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman. CNN also extended invitations to Former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin and former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani (neither of whom have said they will run) and former Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty, who dropped out of the race earlier this year.

Read more

Bloomberg LP and Comcast continue to trade FCC filings over news neighborhooding. In the latest filing, Bloomberg attempts to show that Comcast must make room for its cable business channels wherever it groups together cable news outlets. As part of its deal to acquire NBCUniversal (and along with it, CNBC) Comcast agreed that independent channels cannot be discriminated against in channel “neighborhoods.”

Bloomberg argues that anywhere that Comcast groups together multiple cable news and business channels, Bloomberg must be included as well. Comcast argues that the rule only applies to any “neighborhoods” created in the future.

If the FCC were to find in favor of Bloomberg, it could theoretically benefit a number of other channels, including Fox Business Network and Current TV, and may require Comcast to place those channels in the same “neighborhood” as CNN, CNBC and Fox News.

Read more

Viewers of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” could have been forgiven for thinking that they may not have been completely awake this morning. Former Vice President Dick Cheney appeared line in-studio for a lengthy interview on the program, a  favorite among Washington’s wonk set.

The interview itself was cordial:

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

The same program featured an interview with a little more in the way of fireworks: press secretary Jay Carney, who talked “schedule-gate”:

Read more

25-54 demographic (Live +SD)

• Total day: FNC: 291 | MSNBC: 104 | CNN: 167 | HLN: 113

• Primetime: FNC: 470 | MSNBC: 178 | CNN: 214 | HLN: 138

	5p:	6p:	7p:	8p:	9p:	10p:	11p:	12a:
FNC	Five:	Baier:	Shep:	O’Reilly:	Hannity:	Greta:	O’Reilly:	Hannity:
	330	349	426	574	496	330	355	303
MSNBC	Matthews:	Sharpton:	Matthews:	O’Donnell:	Maddow:	EdShow:	O’Donnell:	Maddow:
	124	124	145	151	188	195	145	126
CNN	Blitzer:	Blitzer:	KingUSA:	Cooper:	Morgan:	Cooper:	KingUSA:	Morgan:
	168	194	123	230	161	253	219	160
HLN	Special:	Prime:	Issues:	Grace:	DrDrew:	Behar:	Showbiz:	DrDrew:
	59	87	108	170	129	122	179	150

Read more