25-54 demographic (Live +SD)

• Total day: FNC: 250 | MSNBC: 151 | CNN: 131 | HLN: 93

• Primetime: FNC: 333 | MSNBC: 214 | CNN: 176 | HLN: 131

	5p:	6p:	7p:	8p:	9p:	10p:	11p:	12a:
FNC	TheFive:	Baier:	Shep:	O’Reilly:	Hannity:	Greta:	O’Reilly:	Hannity:
	318	279	308	458	282	258	211	184
MSNBC	Matthews:	Sharpton:	Matthews:	EdShow:	Maddow:	Lockup:	Lockup:	Lockup:
	145	175	151	191	267	184	225	239
CNN	Blitzer:	KingUSA:	Burnett:	Cooper:	Morgan:	Cooper:	Burnett:	Morgan:
	135	66	99	130	142	255	132	84
HLN	Special:	Prime:	VelezMitchell:	Grace:	DrDrew:	Grace:	Showbiz:	DrDrew:
	65	100	129	178	134	88	84	63

Read more

Early bird rates for AllFacebook Marketing Conference end Wednesday, March 28. Meet us in San Francisco for two days of Facebook marketing immersion. Held on June 28 and 29, AllFacebook Marketing Conference is a must-attend event for anyone interested in leveraging the power of Facebook to grow their business and take their brand’s social reach and influence to the next level. Remember, early bird pricing is available for only $499 through Wednesday. Don’t wait – register now!

For Time Warner, the pay-per-view boxing matches are a huge investment. So huge, that the company makes it a priority to promote them as widely as possible. One of those outlets of promotion is CNN, which is about to televise replays of the HBO reality series “24/7,” featuring boxers Floyd Mayweather and Miguel Cotto. It will be the third HBO “24/7″ that CNN has replayed since last Summer.

The new season will start on CNN Saturday, April 14 at midnight, with subsequent episodes airing every Saturday leading up to the May 5 PPV match.

Another big investment for Time Warner was the March Madness college basketball tournament, which televises games on TruTV and TBS. It isn’t surprising then that CNN has spent more time than Fox News and MSNBC combined covering the tourney, according to TVEyes.

With NBC News and Matt Lauer reportedly closing in on the terms of a new contract, New York‘s Gabe Sherman takes a look at how the negotiations have unfolded. As ABC’s “Good Morning America” continues to close the gap with “Today” in the mornings, and CBS’ “Face the Nation” trades off the top spot with “Meet the Press” on Sundays, Sherman points out NBC is left “needing Lauer even more than it might have expected to just a year ago”:

Today is a huge moneymaker for NBC, generating ad revenues in excess of $450 million in 2010, according to Kantar Media. Lauer is the key to that haul. After playing the beta to Katie Couric’s alpha, he’s now the linchpin of the franchise, his versatility and likability buoying the program ever since her departure in 2006. Lauer’s worth only increased when Meredith Vieira left and handed the co-anchor chair to Ann Curry, who in the eyes of many television-news executives has experienced a rocky transition to her new role.

With the death of Tim Russert and the retirement of Tom Brokaw, Lauer has emerged as the last NBC News star from the era when broadcast still ruled.

• Dr. Sanjay Gupta will begin recording daily features about medical issues through Cumulus Media Networks. Starting in May, Cumulus will offer four daily features exploring topics relating to health and wellness. Two features are designed for news/talk stations with two features geared to a younger audience on music and entertainment stations.

• Three of the four remaining GOP candidates will be on with Wolf Blitzer this afternoon on “The Situation Room.” Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich will appear for separate interviews. The candidates are campaigning ahead of the next three primaries in Wisconsin, Maryland and DC next Tuesday.

• Kyra Phillips talked with producer/correspondent Lowell Bergman about his upcoming “Frontline” documentary on Rupert Murdoch and the phone hacking scandal. Bergman says he’s gotten no response from News Corp. “No one will talk — period. The only communication that we had was, off-the-record I thought, with Geraldo Rivera that he blogged about.”

ABC News has hired Alex Perez as a Chicago-based correspondent, ABC News president Ben Sherwood announced today.

Perez joins ABC News from WMAQ, the NBC-owned local station in Chicago, where he has been a reporter and anchor for six years. In a memo to staffers, Sherwood called Perez “a skilled and energetic reporter who understands the power of words and images.” He will spend the next few weeks in New York before returning to Chicago.

Perez is the third recent ABC News hire from NBC Chicago. He joins former WMAQ colleagues Ginger Zee, who is the “Good Morning America” weekend meteorologist, and Paula Faris, who is the co-anchor of “World News Now,” at ABC. The three ABC hires have the added benefit of pulling top talent from an NBC station, which competes with ABC-owned WLS in the Chicago market.

Read the full memo from Sherwood after the jump.

Read more

A rope-line confrontation Sunday between presidential candidate Rick Santorum and New York Times reporter Jeff Zeleny is making news today. At one point during the nearly two-minute exchange Santorum called Zeleny’s question “bullshit.” A CBS News camera caught the moment which was played out on “CBS This Morning.” Charlie Rose and Erica Hill then interviewed Zeleny who called Santorum losing his cool “a common tactic for Republican presidential candidates or even Democratic presidential candidates to try and use the media as a foil.”

Meanwhile, Santorum, a former Fox News political analyst, went on “Fox & Friends” this morning and summed it up this way: “If you haven’t cursed out a New York Times reporter during a campaign you’re not a real republican, is the way I look at it.”

Watch, after the jump…

Read more

Tampa Bay Times TV critic Eric Deggans, raised this question on “Reliable Sources” yesterday about the Rev. Al Sharpton both covering and participating in the Trayvon Martin story.

Is [George Zimmerman] going to feel like he can talk to NBC News or MSNBC and be treated fairly when one of their signature on-air personalities has spent weeks talking about how he should be arrested and he should be in jail?

After his segment, Deggans emailed MSNBC spokesperson Jeremy Gaines about, as Howie Kurtz puts it, “playing on both sides of the camera.” Gaines:

“When Rev. Sharpton joined MSNBC, it was with the understanding that he would continue to do his advocacy work. We’re fully aware of that work and we have an ongoing dialog. His participation in these events is very public and our audience is completely aware of where he stands on the issues. It’s because of this work and his decades of activism that Rev. Sharpton brings such a unique perspective to our line up.”

The American Prospect profiles MSNBC anchor Rachel Maddow in this month’s issue, and the result is mostly fawning. Along the way, the magazine notes how she quietly slipped past Keith Olbermann to become the network’s star:

Early on, Maddow was a protégé of Olbermann, who, in both his brilliance and self-destructiveness, is the Orson Welles of talking-heads TV. His work on SportsCenter reinvented the sports newscast (and, some bemoan, set a template for today’s political journalism). His work on Countdown didn’t just reconceive the news show—every moment was as self-consciously worked as a European art film—it rebranded MSNBC, transforming it from a dreary cable backwater into a network people talk about. Although not the TV genius Olbermann is, Maddow is also not the Most Difficult Person In The World, which is why she slipstreamed into MSNBC’s lead anchor chair, while he’s in overpaid exile on the Elba of Current TV.

While the piece is overwhelmingly positive, it does criticize MSNBC for placing politics so far ahead of news:

Read more

As the national media intensified its coverage of the Trayvon Martin killing last week, the coverage of the coverage is also going under the microscope.

Geraldo Rivera‘s conclusion on Friday that “the hoodie is as much responsible for Trayvon Martin‘s death as George Zimmerman was,” resonated all weekend long. Rivera went on with Bill O’Reilly Friday night and doubled down: “My thesis is, parents don’t let your kids go out wearing these damn hoodies because they could attract not only the attention of  the cops but of nut jobs like this George Zimmerman.”

“Fox News Watch” and CNN’s “Reliable Sources” discussed the coverage with “Watch” spending about seven minutes talking about the racial undertones, Pres. Obama’s entry into the discussion and whether it met the threshold of being a national story. The show did not mention their colleague Rivera’s comments.

Rivera’s hoodie thesis did make news on CNN and MSNBC. CNN analyst Roland Martin (among the first to bring the story to the national stage via his voluminous Twitter stream) wore a hoodie during his segment. MSNBC’s Melissa Harris-Perry created a tongue-in-cheek “dress code for black safety.” “If you follow these simple rules, you too, can be safe, and even be considered safe to be around,” said Perry.

Howard Kurtz discussed Rivera on “Reliable Sources.” “It’s so ridiculous it almost doesn’t bear commenting on,” said guest Derek McGinty, former ABC News anchor now with WUSA.

And both “Fox News Watch” and “Reliable Sources” mentioned competitor MSNBC and its show host Al Sharpton who is both covering the story and working as an activist on behalf of Trayvon Martin’s family. “How on Earth can Al Sharpton go there, be an activist and stand with the parents and ask people to contribute money and then he does his show and then he speaks at the rally again? How can MSNBC allow that?” asked Kurtz.

The answers after the jump…

Read more

And then there were four. Teams that is. The NCAA March Madness basketball tournament is nearing its conclusion, with only four teams left vying for the championship.

With the end in sight, it is a good time to check in our TVNewser Bracket Challenge. Joe Kernen has held on to the top spot, although the competition is fierce. Randi Kaye, Brooke Baldwin, Liz MacDonald and Kyra Phillips are all right behind him, with a number of others still within striking distance.

In last place at the moment, regrettably, is your TVNewser editor. This is what happens when you go to a Division III school.

Update: On “Squawk Box” this morning, Kernen noted that he was in first place in the TVNewser challenge, and took issue with me for not posting an update late last week.

WATCH (6:30 in):

The Final Four games will be played next weekend, with the championship set for April 2.

The full rankings, after the jump.

Read more