25-54 demographic (Live +SD)

• Total day: FNC: 341 | MSNBC: 142 | CNN: 372 | HLN: 79

• Primetime: FNC: 466 | MSNBC: 161 | CNN: 1.444 | HLN: 96

	5p:	6p:	7p:	8p:	9p:	10p:	11p:	12a:
FNC	TheFive:	Baier:	Shep:	O’Reilly:	Hannity:	Greta:	O’Reilly:	Hannity:
	428	477	507	480	354	564	555	333
MSNBC	Matthews:	Sharpton:	Matthews:	EdShow:	Maddow:	O’Donnell:	EdShow:	Maddow:
	174	225	211	143	154	187	133	138
CNN	Blitzer:	KingUSA:	Burnett:	Debate:	Cont:	Cooper:	Debate:	Cont:
	180	140	209	1.717	1.717	892	437	437
HLN	Special:	Prime:	Issues:	Grace:	DrDrew:	Grace:	Showbiz:	DrDrew:
	24	68	71	97	101	97	82	56

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CBS’ “Face the Nation” was the most-watched Sunday morning public affairs show by a wide margin on January 15. Bolstered by a pair of GOP contenders (Gingrich, Santorum) and the author of the book The Obamas, the program handily placed first in both total viewers and adults 25-54.

NBC’s “Meet the Press” placed second in both categories, with ABC’s “This Week” not far behind in the demo. With George Stephanopoulos anchoring, “This Week” was seen by more viewers than any broadcast since March, 2011.

“Fox News Sunday” placed fourth in both categories, followed by “Al Punto.”

Cable replays for “Fox News Sunday” added 1.787M total viewers, and 368,000 demo viewers.

The numbers for January 15:

Network	Program	Total Viewers	A25-54
CBS	“Face the Nation”	3.54M	1.31M
NBC	“Meet the Press”	3.12M	880K
ABC	“This Week”	2.66M	780K
FOX	“Fox News Sunday”	1.25M	529K
Univision	“Al Punto”	959K	459K

Univision, along with U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, has scheduled a “Meet the Candidates” event in Miami for January 25, with Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum committed to attend. The network said it has extended invitations to all of the candidates.

Rather than use a debate format, each of the candidates will be interviewed individually, with the conversations streamed online. Excerpts will run on Univision’s news properties, as well as on a special edition of “Al Punto” on January 29. The forum is not expected to replace Univision’s scheduled debate for January 29.

Jorge Ramos and Maria Elena Salinas will conduct the interviews.

NBC News has announced a new addition to the standards and practices department: Kevin Keeshan has been named ombudsman for the 10 NBC owned-and-operated stations.

Keeshan will report to to David McCormick, who has been NBC’s executive producer of broadcast standards and ombudsman since 1993. He will be responsible for “ensuring that the high standards for news gathering and reporting set by NBC News are applied consistently across all 10 NBC-owned stations,” according to an NBC statement on his hire.

Keeshan joins NBC from ABC-owned KGO in San Francisco, where he has been news director since 2001. As TVSpy reports, Keeshan will also be reunited with his former boss at KGO.

While it began with fireworks, last night’s GOP debate on CNN did not go out with a bang, drawing 400,000+ fewer viewers than Monday’s debate on Fox News. According to Nielsen data, the debate drew 5.02 million Total Viewers. But with 1.72 million A25-54 viewers, the debate did top the two most recent debates on Fox News and NBC/MSNBC in the younger demo. (Updated to reflect final numbers)

This was also CNN’s most-watched debate in younger viewers and second most-watched in Total Viewers, this primary cycle.

The next debates are right around the corner: Monday night at the University of South Florida in Tampa, moderated by Brian Williams on NBC and Thursday night at the University of North Florida in Jacksonville moderated by Wolf Blitzer on CNN.

Debate	Network	Total Viewers	A25-54
Jan. 19	CNN	5,022,000	1,717,000
Jan. 16	Fox News	5,475,000	1,573,000
Jan. 8	NBC/MSNBC	4,715,000	1,649,000
Jan. 7	ABC	6,250,000	1,730,000
Dec. 15	Fox News	6,713,000	1,865,000
Dec. 10	ABC	7,630,000	2,100,000
Nov. 22	CNN	3,599,000	1,041,000
Nov. 12	CBS	5,480,000	1,520,000
Nov. 9	CNBC	3,332,000	993,000
Oct. 18	CNN	5,468,000	1,651,000
Oct. 11	Bloomberg	NA	NA
Sept. 22	Fox News	6,107,000	1,701,000
Sept. 12	CNN	3,600,000	1,100,000
Sept. 7	MSNBC	5,411,000	1,728,000
Aug. 11	Fox News	5,053,000	1,430,000
June 13	CNN	3,162,000	918,000
May 5	Fox News	3,258,000	854,000

It’s getting dirty in South Carolina.

Someone sent out a fake CNN Breaking News alert early Thursday morning claiming that Newt Gingrich pressured his ex-wife to have an abortion.

CNN says did not send out the email alert which was sent from fake account made to look like a CNN email address: “BreakingNews@mail.cnn.com.” CNN Political reporter Peter Hamby reports:

It’s not clear how many people received the fake email, though at least two members of the South Carolina GOP Executive Committee, who did not want to be named, were among those who found the missive in their inboxes this morning

The fake email read:

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In its first week on the air, “CBS This Morning” was not able to match the viewership of the same week last year, which was the second week on the air for the then-new “Early Show” team.

“CBS This Morning” was down -10%, but added viewers throughout its first week, +8% from the beginning of the week to the end.

In its 3,120th week (60 years) NBC’s “Today” remained #1.

But of the three broadcasts, only ABC’s “Good Morning America” grew both Total Viewers and younger viewers compared to the same week last year. And GMA continues to cut the gap with “Today.” Last year “Today” held a 1.13 million viewer lead, last week it was 677,000. “GMA” has also narrowed the A25-54 gap -52%.

The averages for the week of January 9:

• Total Viewers: NBC: 5.54M / ABC: 4.86M / CBS: 2.72M

• A25-54 viewers: NBC: 2.43M / ABC: 2.01M / CBS: 1.12M

ABC News is fighting back against a claim made by Newt Gingrich at last night’s debate.

In the course of answering John King‘s question about ABC’s interview with Gingrich’s second wife Marianne, and her claims that he asked her for an “open marriage,” Gingrich said, “The story is false. Every personal friend I have who knew us in that period says the story was false. We offered several of them to ABC to prove it was false. They weren’t interested because they would like to attack any Republican.”

ABC Senior Vice President Jeffrey Schneider says of Gingrich’s remarks: “That’s just not true. His daughters (right) were interviewed for our ‘Nightline’ story last night and we sought interviews with Gingrich or surrogates very aggressively starting Tuesday morning. We would have been happy to interview anyone they put forward.”

On Tuesday, ABC News contacted the Gingrich campaign for comment. Reporter Brian Ross talked with the New York Times which reported that the campaign told him: “we’re going to provide somebody who will answer point by point everything she says,” but had not done so as of Thursday morning.

Last night, even as the question was being asked at the CNN debate, Ross was on Bill O’Reilly‘s show on Fox News. In his introduction, O’Reilly pointed out Ross’s fairness in investigating all candidates, not just Republicans. “Mr. Ross as you may know broke the Jeremiah Wright story during the last presidential campaign and he is also reporting on Mitt Romney’s off shore investments now.”

Here’s Ross’s appearance on O’Reilly and after the jump, Ross’s report on “Nightline”

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When Katie Couric‘s new talk show premieres on ABC this Fall, there will be a familiar face in the control room. Former “Today” EP and NBC Universal CEO Jeff Zucker will be running day-to-day operations at the program, at least through the first year, he tells B&C‘s Paige Albiniak. Zucker had previously committed to serving as an EP on the show, but his daily role was unclear.

Zucker also revealed a number of new details about the program.

“There are a lot of great shows on in the afternoon: Ellen’s your entertainer, Phil is your therapist, The View is your editorial page, but there’s no best friend in daytime right now. That’s the role that Katie can fill.”

…

“We’re not going to do Today in the afternoon, but we are going to hopefully take advantage of the hole that we think exists in the afternoon marketplace for honest, elevated conversation.”

As for his role:
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During the handoff from “Squawk Box” to “Squawk on the Street” this morning, CNBCers Joe Kernen, Becky Quick, Andrew Ross Sorkin, Carl Quintanilla and Melissa Lee were chatting about the new CNBC set at the New York Stock Exchange, which Alex got a look at Wednesday. And it was that story which gave Kernen his first look at the set:

Quintanilla: Have you been down here yet to see it in person?
Kernen: No. I saw it on TVNewser.
Lee: Your source for news about CNBC is TVNewser?
Kernen: That’s where I saw it. I’m too honest.

Not too honest, Joe. Just honest enough.