The NYT’s Bill Carter, covering MSNBC’s panel this morning at the Winter TCA, reports political analyst Pat Buchanan may not be returning to MSNBC afterall. Buchanan, who has been a frequent guest for much of the network’s 15 years, hasn’t been on for months. MSNBC president Phil Griffin asked Buchanan “not to be on” while he’s promoting his book, “Suicide of a Superpower.”

“Pat and I are going to meet soon and a decision will be made.” Griffin added, “Pat is a good guy. Some of his ideas are alarming.”

The book describes how America has become “a multiracial, multicultural, multilingual, multiethnic stew of a nation that has no successful precedent in the history of the world.”

“The ideas he put forth aren’t really appropriate for national dialogue, much less the dialogue on MSNBC,” says Griffin.

InsideCableNews, which, earlier this week raised the question about Buchannan’s prolonged absence, concludes that this says less about Buchanan and more about MSNBC.

Pat has not changed. He may be a bit more vocal and shrill about it but he hasn’t changed his positions. On the other hand, MSNBC has changed. It openly courts Progressive views and news. It puts out job ads asking for candidates with a progressive news background. Its pundit host class is all progressive and the network lets them show up en masse at the White House for off the record get togethers.

In our online Nonfiction Book Writing: Master Class starting January 10, you’ll workshop your sample chapters or manuscript for submission to agents and learn how to navigate the publishing world with Leslie T. Sharpe. Learn more.

A question from a viewer, Phil in Virgina, read by Diane Sawyer during tonight’s GOP debate on ABC culminated with Newt Gingrich taking a shot at the news media, which got a round of applause from the audience at St. Anselm College. At issue: gay marriage. After candidates Gingrich, Santorum, Huntsman, and Romney had their say — all opposed to it — Gingrich added:

I just want to raise the point about the news media bias. You don’t hear the opposite question asked. Should the Catholic church be forced to close its adoption services in Massachusetts because it won’t accept gay couples? Which is exactly what the state has done. Should the Catholic church be driven out of providing charitable services in the district of Columbia because it won’t give in

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MSNBC’s Dylan Ratigan gets profiled by the New York Observer, and the host seems very glad to be in a position to share his true feelings on world issues, something that he says he couldn’t do at sister network CNBC.

As for financial journalism’s role in the economic meltdown, he said, “It’s grossly disappointing.” He laughed. “What do you want me to tell you? It’s embarrassing.”

Mr. Ratigan left CNBC in April 2009. “I’m happy to not be a journalist,” he said, noting that the constraints of the profession had made it impossible to see the big picture. “My old style was, ‘Well, this is a sport [in which] we try and figure out what’s the best idea to put money into,’” he said. In his new role, he can step back and impart a larger point, namely: “This is a fundamentally corrupt global system that people don’t understand.”

Ratigan also talks about the Nucor incident, as well as his early life. You can read the entire profile here.

Turner Broadcasting has promoted CNN ad sales chief Greg D’Alba to president, news and Turner digital ad sales.

In his new role D’Alba will continue to oversee ad sales for the CNN networks, and will add oversight of Turner’s entire digital portfolio. As part of the move, Katrina Cukaj has been promoted to EVP of CNN ad sales, responsible for managing sales for the CNN networks.

Turner also added MediaVest president Donna Speciale as president of Turner entertainment and animation ad sales.

More information, after the jump.

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OWN, the cable channel owned by Oprah Winfrey and Discovery Communications, has ordered “Beyond Belief” to series. “Beyond Belief” started as a series of primetime “Nightline” specials last year.

The hour-long series will debut Tuesday, January 24 at 10 PM, and will be hosted by author Wes Moore. Moore will be joined by ABC News correspondents Elizabeth Vargas, Bob Woodruff, Jay Schadler, Bill Weir and JuJu Chang in presenting the stories, which focus on amazing and unusual people and events.

A spokesperson for OWN says that the series will combine new segments, as well as re-purposed segments from the “Beyond Belief” series on ABC.

We know many of you have been reading TVNewser, or CableNewser as it was first known, since the start — when it was launched by that college kid Brian Stelter (whose face you’ve seen across the mediabistro sites recently for our Social Media 101 course).

Well, we just wanted to thank you for sticking with us for the last 8+ years. And thanks to the millions more who’ve joined along the way. 2011 was a great year for us. It was our best year ever in both page views and unique visitors: up +31% in page views and up +40% in uniques vs. 2010.

To celebrate, TVNewser along with our sister blog TVSpy will be throwing a party Wednesday night at Tonic in Times Square. A welcome to 2012, welcome to the election year, just-because kind of gathering.

Click here if you’d like to attend. And if you can’t, consider this a toast to thank you for stopping by all these years and for a bountiful 2012!

As we reported earlier, the holiday week between Christmas and New Year’s is traditionally a slow time for the morning shows.

All three programs were down in Total Viewers and A25-54 viewers from the previous week; NBC’s “Today” and CBS’ “The Early Show” were also down in both ratings measurements compared to the same week last year. ABC’s “Good Morning America” was down in total viewers and up in A25-54 viewers.

Numbers this week for all three shows are based on a four-day (Tues-Fri) average.

The averages for the week of December 26:

• Total Viewers: NBC: 4.75M / ABC: 4.16M / CBS: 2.05M

• A25-54 viewers: NBC: 2.04M / ABC: 1.45M / CBS: 788K

In the increasingly competitive ratings battle between NBC’s “Today,” the perennial leader of the morning shows, and ABC’s “Good Morning America,” which is continually relegated to second place, every little bit counts.

During the week of December 26, ABC re-titled four editions of “Good Morning America” so the ratings — traditionally low during the week between Christmas and New Year’s — would not count toward the weekly and seasonal averages. (Due to the Christmas holiday on December 26, all three morning shows were coded as specials and did not count toward the averages.)

Nielsen allows shows to be re-titled as long as the newly created title is used at least four times during the course of a season. An ABC spokesperson declined to comment on the name change, but noted that the holiday week is usually a low-rated one for all the morning shows.

While re-naming shows is occasionally done to exclude a single broadcast, a holiday, for example, excluding an entire week from the average is uncommon. An NBC spokesperson calls it “unprecedented.”

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25-54 demographic (Live +SD)

• Total day: FNC: 326 | MSNBC: 131 | CNN: 137 | HLN: 112

• Primetime: FNC: 586 | MSNBC: 254 | CNN: 211 | HLN: 172

	5p:	6p:	7p:	8p:	9p:	10p:	11p:	12a:
FNC	TheFive:	Baier:	Shep:	O’Reilly:	Hannity:	Greta:	O’Reilly:	Hannity:
	312	327	366	668	603	488	432	263
MSNBC	Matthews:	Sharpton:	Matthews:	EdShow:	Maddow:	O’Donnell:	EdShow:	Maddow:
	129	152	227	283	266	213	138	147
CNN	Blitzer:	KingUSA:	Burnett:	Cooper:	Morgan:	Cooper:	Burnett:	Morgan:
	129	162	138	188	201	241	182	157
HLN	Special:	Prime:	Issues:	Grace:	DrDrew:	Grace:	Showbiz:	DrDrew:
	66	86	148	229	179	116	99	118

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CBS’ “Face the Nation” was the top Sunday public affairs show in total viewers on January 1, though NBC’s “Meet the Press” was tops in the key news demo of adults 25-54. Both programs were very very close, with NBC placing just behind CBS in total viewers, and CBS right behind NBC in the demo.

A placeholder “This Week” on ABC (George Stephanopoulos starts this week) placed third in both categories, followed by “Fox News Sunday” and Univision’s “Al Punto.”

The numbers for January 1:

Network	Program	Total Viewers	A25-54
CBS	“Face the Nation”	3.12M	925K
NBC	“Meet the Press”	3.05M	954K
ABC	“This Week”	2.43M	718K
FOX	“Fox News Sunday”	1.03M	390K
Univision	“Al Punto”	815K	387K