The Scoreboard: Wednesday, October 12

25-54 demographic (Live +SD)

  • Total day: FNC: 334 | MSNBC: 130 | CNN: 128 | HLN: 139
  • Primetime: FNC: 577 | MSNBC: 174 | CNN: 165 | HLN: 141

5p: 6p: 7p: 8p: 9p: 10p: 11p: 12a:
FNC Five: Baier: Shep: O’Reilly: Hannity: Greta: O’Reilly: Hannity:
368 329 319 732 583 415 483 382
MSNBC Matthews: Sharpton: Matthews: O’Donnell: Maddow: EdShow: O’Donnell: Maddow:
172 124 154 158 174 192 169 133
CNN Blitzer: KingUSA: Burnett: Cooper: Morgan: Cooper: Burnett: Morgan:
147 121 150 129 133 234 171 134
HLN Special: Prime: Issues: Grace: DrDrew: Behar: Showbiz: DrDrew:
177 175 157 190 110 128 118 122

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MEDIABISTRO EVENTS

Integrate Social Media with Offline Engagement

Join Geno Church (Brains on Fire) at Socialize: Monetizing Social Media, October 20-21, 2011 in San Francisco. He’ll discuss how to build long-term momentum online and offline for your company, product, service or organization. Other speakers include Dallas Lawrence, Megan Berry, and more. Register now.

Telemundo Plans GOP Debate In Nevada

As a boycott threatens a GOP presidential debate on Univision, the other major Spanish-language TV network, Telemundo has planned its first-ever GOP primary debate.

Telemundo will produce and broadcast its first ever Republican Presidential debate from Las Vegas in early December. The debate, broadcast in Spanish, will be moderated by Telemundo news anchor José Díaz-Balart and is produced in partnership with NBC News. NBCUniversal owns both NBC and Telemundo. The debate may also be rebroadcast on MSNBC.

Nevada is one of the early primary states and has a population that is 26.5% Hispanic. The national average is 16.3%.

In His Memoir, CNN EVP Mark Whitaker Turns a Journalistic Eye on Himself

TVNewser stopped by a book party last night for CNN EVP Mark Whitaker, held at the Upper West Side apartment of HBO Video President Henry McGee and his wife, Celia. (HBO and CNN are both owned by Time Warner.) Whitaker’s family memoir, My Long Trip Home, will be released Tuesday.

In a room packed with colleagues and friends — people he called his “journalistic families” from stints at Newsweek, NBC and CNN — Whitaker (pictured here with his wife, Alexis Gelber) chronicled the experience of writing the memoir, which tells the story of his parents, an interracial couple who met in the 1950s.

“What really got me going and kept me going was not so much writing from memory, which I started to do at the beginning,” he said. “But when I realized that there were a lot of gaps in the story that needed to be filled, and I started to report. And it was really the reporting of the story that I became obsessed with.”

See who else was at the party after the jump.

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Producers From CNN, ABC News Hired at Bloomberg

Bloomberg TV announced two new hires today: Justin Dial, who will be head of U.S. newsgathering, and Wendy Brundige, who will be West Coast bureau chief. Dial and Brundige join Bloomberg from CNN and ABC News, respectively.

Dial was senior producer for “American Morning” at CNN. He will be tasked with managing Bloomberg’s domestic newsgathering and field reporting, including coverage of the 2012 election, from the network’s global headquarters in New York City.

Brundige has been with ABC News for seven years, most recently as the Seattle bureau producer for breaking news. In her new role, she will oversee content and production from “Bloomberg West,” the 6 p.m.ET show anchored by Emily Chang and Cory Johnson from San Francisco.

Read the full release from Bloomberg after the jump. Read more

Now Leading GOP Polls, Expect to See More of Herman Cain

Now that Herman Cain has shot to the top of the latest polling…

  • NBC News/WSJ:
    Cain – 27%
    Romney – 23%
    Perry – 16%
  • Rasmussen Reports:
    Cain – 29%
    Romney – 29%
    Gingrich – 10%

    …expect to see the Godfather of Pizza on TV more in the coming days.

Cain was on “Good Morning America” yesterday following Tuesday’s debate in New Hampshire. That was followed by interviews with Chuck Todd on MSNBC and on Fox News with Martha MacCallum. And that was all before the NBC News/WSJ polling came out. Tonight he’s on “Erin Burnett: OutFront.”

The pollsters for NBC News and The Wall Street Journal asked respondents why they feel a certain about a candidate. “Cain gives direct answers. He is succinct. He isn’t a politician,” said a male respondent from Washington. “He is plain-spoken and down to Earth,” said a woman from Texas. “I have to be personally honest: I rely a lot on talk-show hosts, people I listen to and respect — and they respect him. Rush Limbaugh, I listen an hour a day,” said a female from Washington.

How popular is Cain right now? At the moment on Google Trends, he’s the 8th most popular search term in the U.S. In rarefied air with David Ortiz, NLCS and the Cardinals.

Pres. Obama to Ed Henry: ‘I didn’t know you were the spokesman for Mitt Romney’

FNC’s Chief White House Correspondent Ed Henry got the first question at today’s joint news conference between Pres. Obama and Lee Myung-Bak, President of South Korea. Henry asked the president about the alleged Iranian terror plot, and used a quote from GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney who had criticized Obama’s leadership.

Obama responded with, “I didn’t know you were the spokesman for Mitt Romney.”

In an interview later with Megyn Kelly, Henry explains, “I was trying to put it in the broader context of not just Mitt Romney, but there are a lot of Republicans out there who would charge that this president leads from behind.”

“He decided not to engage with Mitt Romeny,” said Henry. “Instead, he decided to go after me a little bit.”

Ted Koppel Named Special Correspondent For NBC’s ‘Rock Center with Brian Williams’

In a move that has been widely speculated, NBC News has named Ted Koppel as a special correspondent to “Rock Center With Brian Williams.”

Koppel, who left ABC News in 2005, began his career as an NBC page. During his 42 years at ABC, he was a weekend anchor, the chief diplomatic correspondent, and anchor and managing editor of “Nightline.”

“While his place in the history of television journalism is already established, his work here is just beginning,” Williams said in a statement. “This is the next chapter, and it’s an enormous honor to work with this giant and former competitor.”

Koppel — who has been outspoken on the state of today’s news coverage — joins Harry Smith, Meredith Vieira and Kate Snow as a contributor to the newsmagazine, which premieres Oct. 31.

Read the announcement from NBC after the jump. Read more

MSNBC’s ‘Audience Split’

MSNBC is seeing an opportunity for some of its left-leaning talent in the coverage of Occupy Wall Street, writes Reuters’ Paul Thomasch.

“Big events turn careers, we’ve seen that throughout journalism history,” said Rich Stockwell, executive producer of Ed Schultz‘s show.

But former NBC News president and ABC News executive Richard Wald, (and the father of “Piers Morgan Tonight” EP Jonathan Wald), says MSNBC has a problem on its hands.

“MSNBC has a problem because of the apparent split in liberal ranks between those who believe Obama has stayed true to his message and those that think Obama has not been a great help to their causes. Once an audience splits, it isn’t as neatly predicable as it used to be.”

A Brief History of the TV Newsmagazine

“One night a week is plenty for us right now,” “Rock Center” EP Rome Hartman tells THR‘s Marisa Guthrie. “We neither want to be considered filler nor do we have any plans for world domination.”

With the launch of “Rock Center” a little more than two weeks away, it occurred to us that this will be the first launch of a new broadcast network newsmagazine in nearly a decade, when FOX launched “The Pulse” anchored by Shepard Smith in 2002. “The Pulse” ran that Summer and returned briefly in the Winter of 2003.

Spinoffs of established shows have been the norm for the last 20 years on network television. Mostly, newsmagazines have been filler for networks when more expensive scripted shows fail.

The granddaddy of them all, CBS’s “60 Minutes,” debuted in 1968. Its spinoff, “60 Minutes II” debuted in 1999. In 2004, the show’s name was changed to “60 Minutes Monday (and later Wednesday).” That name lasted until the following summer, but by then the show was on the chopping block because of “RatherGate.” At the time CBS Chairman Les Moonves said the cancellation, “was a ratings call and not a content call.” “60 Minutes II” had its last broadcast in September 2005.

ABC’s “20/20″ debuted in 1978. A second ABC Newsmagazine, “Primetime LIVE” with Sam Donaldson and Diane Sawyer, left, launched in 1989. In the late 1990s ABC put the shows together, using the “20/20″ branding. There was a “20/20 Monday,” “20/20 Wednesday,” “20/20 Thursday,” and the original “20/20″ on Friday. That lasted until 2000, when ABC relaunched “Primetime.” But even today, the brands are muddled. “Primetime” runs occasionally with Diane Sawyer interviews or true crime hours, while “20/20″ airs on Fridays and reports news of the day, newsmaker interviews as well as crime stories which are ratings grabbers.

NBC got into the newsmagazine business in 1992 with the launch of “Dateline NBC” anchored by Jane Pauley and Stone Phillips. For years, it has been used to plug holes in NBC’s primetime. NBC News had another brief run in primetime with “Now” which was anchored by Katie Couric and Tom Brokaw. The show would last a year in 1993-94 and would later be folded into “Dateline.” As you can see by the show’s open, right, it also used the iconic symbol of Rockefeller Center, the Prometheus statue.

Current TV CEO: ‘Our Three Competitors are About Breaking News, and We’re About Fixing It’

For Current TV, the addition of former Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm to the primetime lineup was an easy decision.

“When Joel [Hyatt] and I sat down with her and sort of began a conversation, we were blown away at the way she lit up the room and, frankly, took charge,” Current TV President David Bohrman said on a conference call announcing the show Wednesday afternoon.

Granholm’s “The War Room” is the finishing touch, at least for now, on a primetime schedule that includes Cenk Uygur at 7 p.m.ET/PT and Keith Olbermann at 8 p.m.ET/CT. Bohrman called it “the best primetime lineup, starting this January going into the election year, that can be found on television.”

“Our three competitors are about breaking news, and we’re about fixing it,” Current TV CEO Joel Hyatt added. “We believe we’re going to have the intelligent, insightful, experienced commentators who can do that. And all the early signals are that there’s a large audience waiting for it.” Read more

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