25-54 demographic (Live +SD)

• Total day: FNC: 358 | MSNBC: 141 | CNN: 172 | HLN: 88

• Primetime: FNC: 567 | MSNBC: 269 | CNN: 213 | HLN: 115

	5p:	6p:	7p:	8p:	9p:	10p:	11p:	12a:
FNC	TheFive:	Baier:	Shep:	O’Reilly:	Hannity:	Greta:	Baier:	Baier:
	411	413	458	594	513	594	472	405
MSNBC	Matthews:	Sharpton:	Matthews:	EdShow:	Maddow:	O’Donnell:	EdShow:	Maddow:
	142	164	165	242	280	277	179	143
CNN	Blitzer:	KingUSA:	Burnett:	Cooper:	Morgan:	Cooper:	Burnett:	Morgan:
	271	223	217	214	195	230	170	113
HLN	Special:	Prime:	VelezMitchell:	Grace:	DrDrew:	Grace:	Showbiz:	DrDrew:
	65	78	103	160	95	92	89	104

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In Mediabistro’s Social Media 101 interactive online workshop, you’ll learn best practices for Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Google+, Foursquare, YouTube, and Flickr with social media experts from VH1, Contently, and AllTwitter. Register by April 19 and save.

• Fox News has hired Jesse Jackson‘s daughter, Chicago radio host Santita Jackson, as a contributor, the Washington Examiner reports. She will debut on Friday during the 7 amET hour of “Fox & Friends.”

• Neil Cavuto, who suffers from multiple sclerosis, says one of the side effects of the disease is blurry eyesight. “I deliberately opt for shows without scripts, shows that I can wing or do on the fly,” he tells NIH MedlinePlus. “It drives my producers crazy.”

• Life on the campaign trail has changed in many ways since Carl Cameron started his career in television. Political journalists used to be “cigar smoking, bourbon-drinking journalists who played poker with the candidates on the campaign bus,” he tells Men’s Health. “Nowadays it’s bottled water and yogurt.”

Today is “National Hug an Anchor Day” and news anchors across the country are embracing the, uh, warm embraces of strangers.

WTVD in North Carolina used our weekend post focusing on the holiday to share the news with viewers:

In honor of “NHAAD,” we decided to dig up the original video that started it all. After the jump is the clip from “Fox & Friends, all the way back in 2009.

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CBS News correspondent Clarissa Ward was in a refugee camp on the Syria-Turkey border today when she found out she won a 2012 Peabody Award.

“I feel absolutely thrilled, humbled, shocked,” she tells TVNewser. “It’s the achievement of a lifetime.”

“CBS Evening News” staffers gathered in the newsroom this afternoon as anchor Scott Pelley (below) offered a toast to Ward, and to the team that put the stories together. The three-part report, “Inside Syria,” was Ward’s first assignment at CBS. She snuck into Syria on a tourist visa and shot her own footage on a small digital camera.

“Most of all I feel an incredible sense of gratitude and awe at the incredible bravery of the activists who risked their lives to take care of me and to take me under their wing,” she said. “They really faced life or death risks, but they’re so committed to their goals and to their cause and all they want is for the world to see and to pay attention.”

Ward said winning the Peabody Award comes “at a very important time” for Syria, noting the country faces an April 10 U.N.-imposed deadline to halt fighting.

“If nothing else, I hope it’s another reminder to people that this story is very current,” she said. “There’s no resolution. The suffering goes on, the brutality goes on.”

In addition to that Olbermann guy, Allison Williams was on “Late Show” last night. Williams, who is staring in the upcoming HBO show “Girls” is the daughter of NBC Newsman Brian Williams. “He is a wonderful dad. It’s been very cool to have him as a dad. A Newsman is a very cool job, I think,” said Williams, who also revealed the family kitchen comes equipped with a police & fire scanner.

“Face the Nation” expanded to an hour last Sunday, but about a quarter of  the nation didn’t see it. They couldn’t have, at least not on their local CBS station.

The one-hour edition of the public affairs show airs, in full, in 62% of the country. Another 14% of CBS stations carry the hour, but split in two. KHOU in Houston airs the second half hour Monday morning at 2am. Same goes for New Orleans’ WWL and Memphis station WREG. Other stations have decided to pass on the second half hour altogether, including Cedar Rapids, IA, Dothan AL, Flint, MI, and Wheeling, WV.

Because it does not have full U.S. clearance the show will continue to be rated for its first half hour only. Competitors have complained this is CBS’ way of keeping up their average. CBS says they have no choice, since the show has incomplete clearance.

Many CBS affiliates are contractually obligated to carry other Sunday morning programs — most of the religious variety. And since the extra half hour is coming from time that belongs to the affiliates, some may be in no hurry to give up the extra dollars.

But CBS execs have faith that clearance will increase. And when it does, the show will begin to use an hourly average.

If you have watched cable news for any extended period of time, you are certainly familiar with TaxMasters, the company that claims that it will help you resolve all of your tax issues. Perhaps TaxMasters could have benefited from its own advice, as it has filed for bankruptcy protection following a massive $200M fraud settlement.

As part of the filing, the cable news channels (among others) have been left in the lurch to the tune of more than five million dollars.

As noted by Forbes, TaxMasters’ largest creditor is CNN, which it owes a staggering $2.6 million. The company owes Fox News Channel more than $938,000 and MSNBC nearly $260,000. When you add the money it owes to History, Discovery and The Weather Channel, among others, the bill is over $5 million.

Last year ABC’s Brian Ross investigated the firm and found (shocker!) that they may have been engaged in some shady practices.

(H/T Johnny $)

NBC’s “Today” show maintained its lead after day two of Katie Couric‘s return to morning TV.

With Sarah Palin as a special co-host “Today” drew 5.497 million total viewers according to Nielsen Fast National data, that’s +356,000 more than #2 “Good Morning America” which drew 5.141 million. Half way through the 2011-12 season, the gap between the two shows is +528,000, so “GMA” continues to chip away at “Today’s lead.

In A25-54 viewers, “Today lead by +249,000 viewers (2.209 vs. 1.917). The season-to-date gap in that demo is +449,000.

The “Today”show also won Monday’s face-off with a +333,000 Total Viewer lead on “GMA.”

This morning, “Today” show anchors reflected on Palin’s drop-by and shared Twitter reaction from viewers:

The 2012 Peabody Award winners have been announced, and there are lots of winners from the world of TV news.

CNN is taking home three Peabodys, one for its coverage of last year’s Arab Spring uprising, another for “CNN Heroes” and the last for “Fareed Zakaria GPS.”

ABC News and Brian Ross received a Peabody for the investigative report looking into the Peace Corps, while the “CBS Evening News” and correspondent Clarissa Ward won a Peabody for her coverage of the Syrian uprising.

Al Jazeera English won a Peabody for its coverage of the Arab Spring uprisings, and the BBC won two awards, one for a documentary examining Somalia and a second for BBC.com.

As usual, plenty of entertainment programs won Peabodys as well, including “The Colbert Report,” “Portlandia,” “Parks & Recreation,” “Homeland,” “Game of Thrones” and “Jeopardy!”

“The range of the Peabody Awards’ search for excellence has never been wider or deeper than this year,” said Horace Newcomb, Director of the Peabody Awards in a statement. “Local news organizations covered stories with international import as well as those significant within their communities. Documentaries and news reports on issues missed or overlooked by big organizations were available on websites. Comedians engaged in political actions. Radio proved again the power of the individual human voice. Drama took on issues of power and control. Images of disaster appeared alongside images of hope and freedom.”

The full winners list, after the jump.

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Back in February Fox News correspondent and son of Robert F. Kennedy Douglas Kennedy was charged with child endangerment and harassment following an altercation in a Westchester County hospital.

Today, the New York Post has word that all of the endangerment charges have been dropped.

“We can now inform you that as a result of the assessment made by the local child-protective services, no credible evidence was found to believe that the child has been abused or maltreated. Therefore, the report has been determined ‘unfounded,’ ” Linda Joyce, of OCFS’s Division of Child Welfare and Community Services, said in a March 30 letter to Kennedy.

Kennedy’s lawyer appeared on “CBS This Morning” to discuss the case: