Welcome to the NFL, Barack Obama. And let's see how long Robert Gibbs keeps his job--or what job he gets after leaving Obama

The Cable Gamer doesn't know what's going to happen to Sen. Barack Obama's presidential hopes. But after reading "Obama's Grudge Factor" in Mary Ann Akers' Washington Post blog "The Sleuth" today, she wonders if the Obama campaign staff is really up to the task of getting him elected to the White House.

Akers writes, "Sources tell The Sleuth that the Obama camp has 'frozen out' Fox News reporters and producers in the wake of the network's major screw-up in running with the erroneous Obama-the-jihadist story reported by Insight magazine."

And FishbowlDC adds still more detail:

"A FOX News insider adds a bit more details to the story, telling FishbowlDC that it was Senator Obama who called FOX News Chairman & CEO Roger Ailes prior to the freezing out and both calls were made without the knowledge of Obama's staff.

"The insider tells us that, while Ailes did not apologize, the conversations were cordial. Our source said that Obama spokesperson Robert Gibbs made an "error in judgment" by attacking Fox News and now supposedly freezing them out, which makes this Foxie's quote in Akers' story all the more noteworthy: 'If true, perhaps Mr. [Robert] Gibbs should reconsider that ill-advised strategy given his candidate is trailing by 20 points in the polls.'"

So let's put this in perspective: Fox goes with a story that TCG doesn't even think is wrong--Obama did attend a madrasah!--but apologizes for that story anyway, mostly to be nice. And yet now Obama is carrying on a "grudge" against FNC anyway, according to The Washington Post. Since when do candidates win by going to war against the media? Obama's real rivals are in politics, not the press.

Except maybe it isn't Obama who's carrying on this "grudge," but instead, just his staff--specifically, spokesperson Gibbs. Gibbs seems to be the one mucking things up for his boss. Obama and Ailes seem to be getting along fine, but nonetheless, Fox is "frozen out," in the most petty and obvious and short-lived way--no such "freeze" will last long. So either Obama lied to Ailes, or else Obama's staff is running amok.

I know that we're not supposed to point out the obvious, which everyone knows, which is that the Hillary campaign is busy trying to destroy the Obama campaign, without, of course, leaving fingerprints. And so TCG wonder about Gibbs. Gibbs and his actions aren't helping his boss at all. It seems that almost as if he’s a plant by the Hillary campaign. I just don’t see any other explanation of why he’s acting the way he does.

It'll be interesting to see where Gibbs ends up, job-wise, after the Obama campaign implodes.

Jack Welch: Straight Into Jeff Zucker's Gut

It's always been a mystery to me why Jeff Zucker still has his job. After all, NBC is doing badly, and so is MSNBC and, uh, in case you haven't noticed, CNBC is embroiled in a huge institutional scandal. Maybe Telemundo is doing OK--that channel is a little outside of my purview.

But apparently TCG is not the only one who has noticed what a lousy job Zucker is doing: Here's Jack Welch, interviewed in New York magazine by Arianne Cohen.

Cohen asks Welch, "If NBC isn’t doing so well, why is Jeff Zucker still in his job?" And Welch answers, "’Cause I’m retired." Pow!

One wonders why Welch's successor as General Electric CEO, Jeff Immelt, hasn't gotten the message yet about Zucker; or maybe this interview was Welch's way of sending just such a message. But of course, to get to the incompetence of Zucker, Immelt would have to first get through the incompetence of Bob Wright, and that incompetence has been enormous for a long time, such that even Welch himself couldn't deal with it when he was CEO in the 80s and 90s.

Mr. Bartiromo?

It would appear that Todd Thomson, the once-high-flyer at Citigroup if you know what I mean and I think you do, is married, according to this press release. Or make that just, married.

Now that he is tasted honey, and discovered that it's bitter, what will come next for him?

The Mile High Club? How 'Bout Eight Miles High?

A private jet flying to China carrying, say, Maria Bartiromo and Todd Thomson, would fly that high. The New York Post's Cindy Adams, printing what everyone has been suspecting, suggests that the thing, whatever it is, has been going on for 18 months. As Adams describes their relationship, it's "Maria Bartiromo and her good friend, very good friend, like very very good friend Todd Thomson."

So while CNBC and Citigroup each bear substantial responsibility, one has to wonder: what were Ms. Bartiromo--who is also Mrs. Steinberg--and Mr. Thomson thinking? And what, indeed, were they doing?

"I locate the problem with CNBC"

Those are the stinging words of Edward Wasserman, who holds the prestigious Knight Professorship of Journalism at Washington & Lee University, as quoted by Bloomberg News. Wasserman's point was that it's wrong to focus on Maria "Money Honey" Bartiromo in the unfolding "CNBC-gate" scandal. That is, Wasserman is saying, too much of the focus so far has been on Bartiromo's relationship, whatever it was, with ex-Citigroup exec Todd Thomson.

Now the story is taking a different turn, full of implications for The Cable News Game. Not to put too fine a point on it, the emerging allegation is that the flirting--maybe whoring--that went on was at the institutional level, as well as, maybe, the personal level.

Bartiromo might be the leading courtesan (that's the polite word) of financial news, but it's increasingly evident that it was her employer, CNBC, that was avidly encouraging her to, uh, reach out to big-bucks sources and sponsors.

"I locate the problem with CNBC," Wasserman said to Bloomberg reporters Justin Baer and Michael White: "They have obviously been using her and their other high-profile people as brand-creation devices and encouraging them to cozy up to people in the financial community."

If that's the case, then the whole of CNBC's corporate culture could be regarded as corrupt.

And The New York Times story today reinforces that sense of smelliness: As Times media critic David Carr explains, an "implicit contract" was at play between the bank and the network: "By making huge advertising buys on CNBC, Citigroup obtained access to its biggest star." Ah, the old phrase, "obtained access"! Gee, pray tell, what does that mean, to "obtain access" to the Money Honey?

One sure prediction: Now that this story is gaining so much critical mass, we will find out what the "contract" for "access" entailed, in fine and frilly detail.

Money Honeys (don't sue me Maria Bartiromo!) Jumping Ship from CNBC?

TV Newswer tells us that other women at CNBC feel that they and their careers are being damaged by Maria Bartiromo's antics. And the news that MB is seeking to copyright the phrase "money honey" is the last straw, apparently. So could some of these women--including Sue Herera, Liz Claman and Erin Burnett--be thinking about jumping ship to the new Fox Biz Channel?

Congress, please repeal the First Amendment so we can get rid of Fox News...

...That's the message of the News Hounds.

It's always amazing that some media outlets, which should realize the importance of media freedom in an absolute sense, are nonetheless eager to snuff out the freedom of other media outlets that they don't happen to agree with.

That's the case with News Hounds, which hates Bill O'Reilly and Fox so much that they want to bring back the FCC's "Fairness Doctrine"--a bygone rule created for a bygone era of media scarcity--so that they can shut down O'Reilly's unique voice. But of course, if the left can shut down O'Reilly and Fox, the right could shut down Al Franken or Arianna Huffington. Repression of free speech is a bad business, period. As Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. put it, free speech is not for the speech we love, but for the speech we hate.

Here's the proof that News Hounds is a lousy excuse for a media operation, since it obviously believes in controlled speech, not free speech: "Congress, please bring back the fairness doctrine so that we can listen to something besides this kind of crap."

In the view of the Left, freedom isn't worth it if the Right gets to be free, too.

Jonathan Alter's Alternative Reality

The Mainstream Media are engaged in a Big Lie campaign: The MSM is determined to argue that Fox News, among other outlets, "lied" about Barack Obama's attendance at a Muslim religious school in the 60s.

The latest MSM-er to take a swing at Fox--and to get brownie points from the rest of the MSM and the Eastern Establishment--is Jonathan Alter of Newsweek, who writes that Fox and Insight magazine launched a "pathetic" effort to "swift boat" Obama.

But in fact, as noted here, many certified blue-chip liberals, including Philip Weiss and Juan Cole, have attested that, yes, Obama did attend a madrasah.

But that inconvenient truth doesn't fit the MSM story line, which holds that Fox has somehow maligned Obama by reporting on his schooling in Indonesia four decades ago.

But Alter should know that while the First Amendment protects his right to say incorrect things--to accuse Fox of lying when, in fact, Fox told the truth--it doesn't protect his reputation from being shredded by his own recklessness.

The blunt reality is that Alter, Newsweek, and the rest of the MSM love Obama more than they hate falsehood. Or maybe they hate Fox even more than they hate a lie.

But either way, the country is ill-served by the media's reckless disregard for the truth.

Especially since, in the case of Barack Hussein Obama's presidential campaign, the country is being asked to evaluate someone who is so, shall we say, "non-traditional." Someone who did, in fact, attend a madrasah.

Information Wants to be Free--on Hannity's America

TV Blend's Kelly West reports on a scoop for Sean Hannity's new show:

"Months after ABC aired the controversial mini-series, ‘Path to 9/11’ Fox News has decided to air a 2 ½ minute segment of the film that was cut out before it was broadcast last September. After Democrats and aids to President Clinton demanded that certain changes be made to the mini-series, many people wondered what exactly they weren’t allowed to see.

"Fox news plans to air the brief clip as part of a 15-minute segment during ‘Hannity’s America’, which will air on the network this Sunday night. Reuters stated that Fox News obtained the footage during a screening of the film that took place last January."

Plenty of controversy here, of course, but here's the point: Information wants to be free. And it is free, on FNC.

The Story of the Money Honey not so Funny

The story of Todd Thomson and Maria Bartiromo is starting to look more like a subject for litigation--or even prosecution--and not just titillation.

As reported by The New York Post's "Page Six" earlier this week, Thomson was separated from his big job at Citigroup because of concerns that he was too close to Bartiromo, the CNBC star--aka "The Money Honey." It seems that the two of them took a jet from NYC to Beijing, and there have even reports that they took that long flight alone. Bartiromo, of course, is married, although her husband doesn't seem to be much in the picture, does he? And meanwhile, "P6" keeps discovering more dishy details of more trips they took together.

Now yet more scoop, summed up by the AP's Frazier Moore:

"Questions arose about trips she took on a Citigroup corporate jet - and one she didn't. About a year ago, Thomson was turned down when he asked for the jet to bring Bartiromo to his home near Bozeman, Mont., for a skiing vacation he was hosting for some private-banking clients, according to The Wall Street Journal.

"Among other complaints, Thomson was faulted by Citigroup Chairman Charles Prince for the decision to spend $5 million to sponsor Sundance Channel programming that Bartiromo was expected to co-host. According to the Journal, Bartiromo no longer will host the project.

"Since 2004, Bartiromo has aired 11 major pieces on Citigroup, including four interviews with Thomson, according to the Journal's review of CNBC transcripts."

Cablegame is no expert on these things, but these sorts of dealings seem to be taking this story from the province of the tabloids to the much harsher area of litigators and prosecutors. Watch for a shareholder suit, and also for action from the Securities and Exchange Commission, and other regulatory agencies.

Something tells me that Bartiromo will have a different job in a year. Much different.

Brian Wilson--The Fox Man, not the Beach Boy

The Hollywood Reporter tells us that Brian Wilson's appointment as the new DC bureau chief for Fox News. This Brian Wilson is no beach boy--he's a serious reporter, and I think he will carry on the great work of Fox's DC operation.

And also, this matter-of-fact statement: "Bruce Becker has been tapped to run the company's new business channel." Watch out, CNBC!

The Presidential Game on the Cable Game -- Debate Update

"FOX News and the New Hampshire Republican Party have jointly announced that they will present two 2008 presidential debates, which are expected to attract the top Republican contenders for President. The debates will be presented live on FOX News Channel (FNC) and FOX News Radio.

"The first of the two debates will be held on September 6th at a location to be determined. The second debate will take place prior to the New Hampshire primary, which is tentatively scheduled for January 22nd, and will be a forum for the candidates to make their platforms known.

"In making this announcement, FOX News Executive Producer of Political Programs Marty Ryan said, 'We look forward to presenting these debates from the "first in the nation primary state." Fox News is proud to commit air time, production and technical resources to the 2008 presidential election.'"

Ratings Update and Reality Check: Or, CNN and MSNBC and the desperate struggle for second place, behind Fox

A quick look at the ratings for Tuesday night's State of the Union address remind us who stands where in the Cable Game pecking order.

First, Anthony Crupi of Media Week reported, right up front in his lede:

"Fox News Channel on Tuesday night averaged 4.56 million total viewers and 1.41 million adults 25-54 with its coverage of President Bush’s State of the Union Address, nearly doubling the delivery of rival CNN."

Second, Anne Becker of Broadcasting & Cable detailed how "CNN took second in total viewers with 2.12 million, while MSNBC took third with 1.63 million. MSNBC, however, took second in news' target 25-54 demo with 751,000 viewers to CNN's 668,000." Fox, of course, was first in the "demo."

Third, the AP points out something interesting: Bush's "SOU" actually outdrew "American Idol" in the ratings.

As The Cable Game has pointed out before, the news is the ultimate reality show. "Idol" is fun, but if you want true drama, you're still better off watching cable news: That's where you see not only the news of the world, but also the dynamic of live television. The only thing that's not much of a drama is the ratings. As these data remind us yet again, when it comes to FNC and CNN and MSNBC, it's not much of a contest.

Other than, of course, the desperate struggle for second place.

Where's the fairness? Where's the balance at The New York Times? And who's the Paris Hilton of The Cable Game?

The New York Times seems determined to remind bloggers why we need more diverse points of view in the media: The Times can't get the simplest story right, mostly one might conclude, because it doesn't want to.

Oftentimes in journalism, it's easier to print the controversy than it is to figure out what the truth is. That is, if Party A and Party B disagree about the facts of a given situation, it's certainly easy for a lazy reporter to write that "A and B disagree." Indeed, it's hard, sometimes, to figure out whether A is telling the truth or whether B is lying.

But in the case of CNN v. Fox, the digging should be easy, because the facts are clear: Young Barack Obama did, in fact, attend a madrasah in Indonesia. Philip Weiss of The New York Observer didn't seem to have any trouble getting to the truth about that particular question.

It's not against the law to attend such as school, nor is there anything inherently wrong with being a Muslim. But nevertheless, it is, shall we say, an interesting data point about Obama, as the American people are getting to know him, sizing him up for possibly entering the White House. And so that's why Fox, among other outlets, went with the madrasah story. But the Obama for President campaign staff hit the roof, and the Hillary Rodham Clinton campaign was upset, too, because they were tagged, in some reports, as the source for the madrasah story. Well, come now. Everyone knows that the HRC campaign is tough and smart, and so of course they are dishing dirt on their campaign rivals. That's the American Way of Politicking. And yet CNN, eager, of course, to whitewash the Democrats of everything, went high and hard with the story that Fox had gotten the madrasah story wrong.

So what did The New York Times do? Did the "Paper of Record" get to the bottom of the truth about Obama & madrasah? Not hardly. The Times is so invested in its liberal ideological worldview that it can't deal with information, which would make Obama, Hillary, and CNN look bad. Or Fox to look good. So Bill Carter, writing for the Times, chose to simply treat the Fox vs. CNN story as a tiff--headline, "Rivals CNN and Fox News Spar Over Obama Report"--without getting into questions about the actual truth.

Which is to say, if you want to cover a media rumble, without regard to the facts, the Times is a good paper for you. But if you want the actual facts, ma'am (or mister), you will have to go elsewhere.

The Times is rather biased. It can't be trusted.

One amusing side note: Anderson Cooper had better give some thought to his little digs at Fox, because Fox can certainly dig back. And so Fox spokeswoman Irena Briganti showed that she had Cooper's number when she said of her--I mean him--in the Times, “Yet another cry for attention by the Paris Hilton of television news, Anderson Cooper.”

Ouch! Cooper has a perfect right to live his life anyway he wishes. But the golden rule of media applies even to him: If AC he wants people to be nice to him, he has to be nice in return. And slurring FNC isn't nice. AC might have the Times in his back pocket--although Briganti was quoted in the same edition of the Times, which shows that even the Gray Lady can't resist a good bitch-slapping. And in the meantime, the rest of the world, with access to different media voices, is likely to have a different opinion, based on a full airing of all the releveant information about the "360" man.

Olbermann that wit

Called Fox News the "Fox Noise Channel" tonight.

Get it?

And then, a few minutes later, spoke breezily of "white trash."

What a guy.

Maybe if CNN paid me $4 m. a year, I'd rag on Fox, too. But I couldn't be as bitchy about it--or as inaccurate--as Anderson Cooper...

...if you know what I mean and I think you do.

Last night on "360," AC attempted to do a highstep all over Fox News.

But in fact, not only is AC being a bitch, but he should be slapped--because, in fact, Fox got the story right.

The issue is whether or not Sen. Barack Obama attended a "madrasah" in Indonesia. Fox said that he did, and that was enough to send AC into full-bitch mode.

Here's the transcript, as transcribed at MediaBistro: "'Barack Obama's Muslim education in Indonesia -- others are reporting the heat. We are sticking to the facts.' ... Then, introing John Vause's segment, he said: 'Other news organizations ran with Insight's story. They didn't check the facts. We did.' And after the package, Cooper concluded: 'Well, that's the difference between talking about news and reporting it. You send a reporter, check the facts and you decide at home.'"

Oh I see. AC, huh? This is the same "journalist"--a "method anchor," Neal Gabler calls him--who milks stories for personal gain and is nothing but an overexposed media darling who STILL can’t beat Fox News after more than a year of going up against Greta Van Susteren.

Keep bitching away, Anderson. You are, after all, gettting paid $4 million a year now. And who knows: Maybe you and your overpaid preeny CNN cabaret show can at least stay on top of those more macho folks at MSNBC. In the meantime, at least, you have CNN.com covering up for you!

And in point of fact, FNC wasn't wrong to refer to Obama's school as a "madrasah"--FNC was right, and here' proof.

Here's an explanation from Juan Cole, a lefty blogger, and no fan of Fox, who speaks Arabic:

"First of all, let's explain about the word madrasah. In Semitic languages like Arabic and Hebrew, words are mostly made up of three-letter roots. In Indo-European languages, words tend to have two-letter roots. In roots, you don't count short vowels. So in Arabic, the root for to learn (as in school learning) is d* r *s*. Arabic is an elegant, almost mathematical language. If you put those three-letter roots in certain 'molds,' it produces a linked vocabulary. Dars is a lesson. Darrasa with a doubling of the 'r' is 'to teach.' You make a noun of place by putting an 'm' in front and a soft 'h' at the end. Thus, madrasah is the place where you study. Thus, madrasah means . . . school." [emphasis added]

In other words, FNC was right to call Obama's school a "madrasah," because, as FNC said, "madrasah" is a synonym for "school." Now, if Fox had said that Obama was tutored in terrorism at that madrasah, that would have been wrong--presumably. But that's not what Fox said: It merely reported that young Obama attended a madrasah, and that's accurate. But don't take TCG's word for it: take a Fox-bashing blogger's word for it.

UPDATE: Philip Weiss, blogging for The New York Observer, makes the same point.

A Career Drowns in the Money Honey's Trap?

The New York Post's "Page Six" reports, you decide:

"Financial giant Citigroup was strangely mum last night on why Todd Thomson, its 45-year-old fair-haired head of wealth management, left the firm suddenly in a management shakeup yesterday. Sources close to the Wall Street giant say Thomson got on the bad side of CEO Chuck Prince by shuttling personal friends - including CNBC's anchor and 'Money Honey' Maria Bartiromo - around the world on the company's corporate jet. Sources said that Thomson, whose unit was a financial success story inside the firm, had been warned about his high-flying ways - but that the tipping point came when Bartiromo joined him on the Citi corporate jet between New York and Beijing last year. A CNBC spokesman later said: 'Maria sought and received approval in advance to fly to Asia on Citi's jet. Billing was handled between CNBC's corporate parent and Citi.' Bartiromo, reached via e-mail in Davos, Switzerland, said any connection to Thomson's departure was 'flat-out wrong.'"

Interestingly enough, The New York Times prints pretty the same story this morning.

The Cable Game would be the first to admit that it doesn't know much about High Finance. But it does know something about High Maintenance women! And so TCG recognizes Maria "Money Honey" Bartiromo as a kindred spirit. Go, girl!

And so whatever the truth about the relationship between Bartiromo and Thomson--and that's a lo-o-o-ng trip from NYC to Beijing!--we can now fully expect that relationship to get the full juicy + dishy treatment from Vanity Fair, Radar, The New York Observer, etc.

And it'll be fun!

O'Reilly, Colbert Both See Ratings Spike On "Showdown Day"

Bill O'Reilly enjoyed a 46% increase among total viewers, to nearly three million, while Colbert enjoyed a 50% increase, to around 1.6 million. The Huffington Post has the whole story, with lotsa good links.

O'Reilly and Colbert will no doubt want to do this again, but there should be other opportunities for strange bedfellows to get together: how 'bout Sean Hannity and Al Franken?

"24," The Cable Game, and the Ultimate in Reality TV

Roger Ailes once offered this McLuhanesque statement: "The story of the second half of the 20th century is the story." That is, the medium isn't just the message, it provides the structure for the narrative of reality itself. As TCG has often said, the news is the ultimate reality show.

That point was taken a step further in Neal Gabler's book from a decade or so ago, Life the Movie: How Entertainment Conquered Reality.

Speaking of Neal Gabler, the subject of reality and fiction and reality-based fiction came up on "Fox News Watch" over the weekend; the subject was the nuking of America, as seen on the Fox broadcast show "24." As Jim Pinkerton, a fellow panelist alongside Gabler, put it, "An attack like that is coming, and we all know it."

So is it good or bad to talk about it on cable news? TCG thinks it's good to think about the bad, and here's why. Thinking back to the Tom Clancy novel, Debt of Honor, which imagined a suicide jet-liner crashing into the Capitol, it's worth reflecting that if our homeland defenders had had more imagination, they might have seen the 9-11 attacks coming, and taken better precautions against them.

And so today, with "24," we might study fiction yet again, with the idea of keeping this particular "movie" from playing out in real life.

Thanks to Mark Finkelstein and NewsBusters for catching the quote, and providing the link!

John Gibson, Artiste?

Did you know that John Gibson was once a self-declared "long-haired music writer," in addition to gigs at The Hollywood Reporter and at Atlantic Records?

I didn't, till I read this profile of the Fresno High School grad, by Rick Bentley, in The Fresno Bee.

O'Reilly-Colbert Wrap-Up

Thursday night's double-joint appearance continues to generate buzz, here, there, and everywhere.

Chris Matthews Jumps the Shark

In TV, and now in life, "jumping the shark" means that you've lost it--that you've passed, once and for all, from seriousness into ridiculousness.

And so it is with Chris Matthews. He has always been a full-of-himself pundit, who could never stop talking to let anyone else, including his guests, answer a question, but now he has descended into publicity-whoring self-parody: He is going to be a judge at the Miss America pageant.

I am not making this up. A newsman is to be a judge at a beauty pageant. Why would Matthews do this? If you have to ask, then you, yourself, aren't ready to jump the shark. But as for Matthews, you will find him deep in the salt water.

But it's still a question for NBC, parent of MSNBC, to answer: Is this really what legitimate news organizations do?

O'Reilly + Colbert Should Make This a Regular Feature

It was great last night, to see the two together. Peter Johnson of USA Today, who has aced this story all week, has the best writeup.

If The Cable Gamer could be allowed a point of personal privilege, she would add that the big winner in this is Bill O'Reilly, who proved that he had a sense of humor. Colbert was funny, but of course, he's supposed to be funny--that's his job. It was O'Reilly who proved that he could rise out of his normally serious metier (good French word, that!) and play along with the joke.

Meanwhile, Keith Olbermann simply slagged on O'Reilly yet again last night. Nothing new or clever there.

O'Reilly + Colbert? Or O'Reilly vs. Colbert?

This is going to be huge tonight! Stephen Colbert on "The O'Reilly Factor," and Bill O'Reilly on "The Colbert Report."

I think that Peter Johnson of USA Today first had this story, on Monday.

In any case, it's good to see Fox News and Comedy Central cooperating like this--to see a serious commentator, O'Reilly, up close to a serious satirist, Colbert--even if each really wants to clobber the other!

King Zings Grace

Larry King has been in broadcasting for 50 years, and you've gotta give him credit for that. And so Glenn Garvin, the ace TV writer for The Miami Herald, does a nice sum-up of King's career.

But Garvin gets some juicy quotes from King, too. In the course of a wide-ranging interview, he includes King's zinger at Nancy Grace.

"Nancy Grace, I don't think she has an 'interviewing style.' She's a prosecutor. It's a prosecutorial style. Very accusatory, harpoonish. I don't think it's fair to the judicial system. I believe in the presumption of innocence. When I do a show, I make sure both sides are represented."

These harsh comments are a little bit surprising because King normally never attacks anybody. It's not that King doesn't have opinions, he has made it clear that he does. But instead, King has made a career decision to not express them. And yet here he unloads on Grace.

And of course, The King Zing is all the more surprising because Grace is his fellow CNN--CNN Headline News, close enough--TV anchor.

It'll be interesting to see how these words of King's reverberate inside Turnerland. No doubt King, 73, is past caring, but Grace will note, and remember, and prepare yet another of her harpoons.

YouTube: The TV Channel

YouTube is already a big player in The Cable Game, and the news game overall. That is, just about anything that happens on the news--from the latest about George W. Bush to the latest about Paris Hilton--ends up on YouTube. So YouTube is part of the "buzz machine" of the modern media: Even if you don't see the event directly, you know about it soon enough, thanks to buzz. And when a video clip goes "viral," that usually means that it's on YouTube in a big buzzy way.

It's apparent that the TV channels have been slow to fully appreciate the power of YouTube--YouTube has become, in effect, a sort of shadow TV channel, in which if you miss something on TV, you can catch it on YouTube, because somebody uploaded it there. Yes, there's lots of controversy about this process, and even some litigation, but there's also the realization that these video operations aren't going away; even if YouTube disappeared tomorrow, something else would take its place.

And now I see, thanks to the delightfully named Jemima Kiss, writing in The Guardian, the UK newspaper, that YouTube is thinking about creating a new "TV channel," to formalize, if you will, its ever-enlarging role in the mediaverse. And yet it's interesting that YouTube officials feel the need to describe their new venture as a "TV channel"--a reminder, yet again, that the overwhelming instinct of people is to make the shock of the seem old and safely familiar. As the 18th century British political philosopher Edmund Burke put it, the challenge before the wise leader is to "channel the tides of change in the canals of custom." (That's channel as a verb, not as a noun!) People want new technology, and new things, but they also want to keep their old and familiar things. It's a paradox that smart politicians, and smart marketers, can figure out how to manage.

And YouTube is playing it smart: They are couching their new approach to the media in the old form of the media. In effect, to borrow a somewhat unfortunate phrase from Bob Dole's 1996 presidential campaign, YouTube is "building a bridge to the past."

By the same token, of course, the older media, including cable news, have the chance to "build a bridge to the future." That is, starting from their strong base in here-and-now TV, they can expand their own video operations, which will have the additional value of helping them profit from the content that they are providing now, much of which ends up, already, on YouTube.

So even though YouTube got out front first, there's still plenty of time for the TV networks to recover--but they have to get with the video program.

TMZ comes to Fox -- Synergy Alert!

TMZ has always been an extremely cool website, one of the few cool things about AOL + Time-Warner, in fact. And so TCG wasn't surprised to see that T-W has unloaded the gossip-and-buzz oriented site, selling to Fox, as reported by Chris Pursell of TV Week.

And the exact language chosen by Frank Cicha, senior v.p. of programming for Fox Television Stations: "What we are buying into is a proven, immensely successful Internet brand," he said. "The unique combination of broadcast and broadband this project brings makes it extremely attractive."

Yes indeedy. That's the future, the future of television, and also the future of the Net. It's called synergy, and it's really upon us, coming to a screen--any screen--near you.

"Ailes Hailed for First Amendment Leadership"

Fox News and Roger Ailes are finally getting credit, and deservedly so, for FNC's energetic reimagining of cable news and rejuvenation of the once-stale cable game format.

Once again, the above headline on this blog-post is a verbatim headline from an MSM publication, in this case, Broadcasting & Cable. The article, by John Eggerton, notes that the 2006 First Amendment Leadership Award from the Radio-Television News Directors Foundation at its annual awards dinner March 8 in Washington DC will go Ailes, because, as the RNNDF wrote to Ailes, "The news organization you have built offers, just as the framers intended, a variety of viewpoints, independent voices, and probing investigations that hold important institutions accountable."

Indeed.

"Hannity's America Starts Strong"

But don't take my word for it. That's the headline atop the story in Multichannel News. As the story details, ratings for Fox are up 65 percent.

Free Republic Busts CNN For Yet Another Clinton Suck-Up

CNN announced a new "polling partnership,", with Opinion Research Corporation, but Free Republic gets the real story.

It seems that ORC is owned by one Vinod Gupta. And as the photo above makes clear--and many other photos, all on display on his website, Gupta is, in fact, a hardcore Clintonista, an unabashed fan of both Bill Clinton and Hillary Rodham Clinton.

In the words of Freep, "Based on the history of the people who recently acquired Opinion Research Corp., we believe that the true purpose of the CNN/Opinion Research partnership is to rig the poll results to benefit Hillary Clinton in her 2008 presidential campaign."

Sounds about right. Hats off to the Freepers, and now let's see who, if anyone, in the MSM picks up on this story.

A Pause that Refreshes and Relaxes

Amidst all the difficult and challenging news--news of war, news of new technologies--it's fun to think that some folks in the media are taking time out for mellower pursuits. Case in point: wine connoisseur Jim Angle.

Scarborough Whores for MSNBC, and MSNBC Whores for NBC

Joe Scarborough has reached a new low. Remember last night when I posted that the MSNBC host was a "conservative"? Tonight, here's what I saw on the show: Scarborough trashing Bill O'Reilly. Then a segment on Barbara Walters vs. Rosie O'Donnell. Then a totally potty mouth woman, Chelsea Handler, who offered leeringly unfunny double entendres to Scarborough.

And oh yes, a long teaser segment on "Warrior Nation"--a new show that's on right now on MSNBC. It's a show about "Ultimate Fighters," and it's not much different than the WWF.

Remember when the "N" in MSNBC stood for "News"? Not anymore. This is just exploititive crap. Now MSNBC is just a platform for tabloid trash. Maybe NBC shareholders are happy, so long as they don't have to watch what's on their air.

MSNBC = Manifestly Seeking to Nuzzle the Bi-coastal Crowd

If you live in New York City and Los Angeles or San Francisco, or thereabouts, the chances are pretty good that you are loving the new editorial line that's emanating from MSNBC--bicoastal blue-state all the way.

To be sure, there are plenty of conservatives in those parts of the country, albeit nowhere near a majority. But above all else, "bicoastal" is a state of mind: It involves, of course, a certain de rigeur liberalism, combined with a certainly equally chic disdain for ordinary folks in the heartland.

A case in point comes courtesy of Media Matters, the George Soros-inspired lefty media watchdog outfit. MM is a great resource for transcripts and videos, but its analysis is simply not to be trusted. For example, MM chronicled, lovingly, all the Fox News-bashing going on at MSNBC, and got the words right, then got it all wrong at the end when it tried to guide the reader toward a palpably wrong conclusion. Here's what MM posted tonight:

"On the January 8 edition of MSNBC's 'Tucker,' Newsweek senior editor Jonathan Alter compared Fox News' Bill O'Reilly to a 'blimp ... balloon in one of those parades,' adding that O'Reilly is 'so full of himself' and is 'so inflated, it's coming out of his ears.'" That's pretty good analysis, huh? Really gets down to the essence of O'Reilly. One doesn't have to like O'Reilly to insist upon more intelligent commentary than Alter's.

But Alter's ad hominem attacks were good enough for host Tucker Carlson, who had earlier asked Alter what he thought of "the meltdown occurring in public of Bill O'Reilly." Carlson added that fellow MSNBC-er Keith Olbermann, host of "Countdown," has, Carlson's words, "set out to drive Bill O'Reilly crazy, and apparently he's succeeded."

Well that settles that, doesn't it? O'Reilly is crazy because Olbermann made him so. And Carlson provides the proof. Any more questions of the sages at MSNBC?

Just one question, actually, for MM: Why is that you wouldn't know a real conservative if one fell on your head? And proof that MM has no answer to that question comes from its attempted defense against one of O'Reilly's attacks. Quoth MM: "O'Reilly falsely claimed, 'There isn't one conservative ... not one conservative commentator that works for NBC News at this time.'" Well, in TCG's opinion, that's not true: Pat Buchanan is a genuine conservative.

But MM offered an absurd answer: It declared that Carlson and Joe Scarborough are conservatives.

Well, Carlson and Scarborough have a right to think whatever they want, but they certainly don't have the right any more to call themselves conservatives. Those two ex-conservatives (although Carlson was always a wink-wink double dealer) are simply too deep in the tank of MSNBC and Olbermann and all the rest of MSM liberals--you know the folks concentrated in the Northeast and in California--to have any remaining claim on the word "conservative."

And if MM says that they are conservatives, well, that's just MM being a) delusional or b) trying to reassure unsuspecting readers that MSNBC is anything other than what it is: a third-rate, third-place network Manifestly Seeking to Nuzzle the Bi-coastal Crowd.

"Titanic," Avatars, Fox, and the News (Corp).

Readers of The Cable Game know that in TCG's humble opinion, at least, the world of news is about to be transformed by the next communications revolution. And the big revolutionary force is going

If, as noted here in recent days, communication is about to take a quantum jump, to be as much as 260 times faster, then that's just one more reason while it will be possible, indeed, inevitable, that avatars are moving beyond such avant-garde outlets as Second Life, to more cautious users such as the Centers for Disease Control. (The picture above comes from Sitepal, an avatar vendor.)

And now, the latest evidence comes legendary director James "Terminator," "Titanic" Cameron. He is making a movie entitled, simply, "Avatar," and here's how The New York Times' Sharon Waxman described the forthcoming film:

"Sam Worthington, a young Australian actor, has been named to play the lead, as a paralyzed former marine who undergoes an experiment to exist as an avatar, another version of himself. The avatar is not paralyzed, but is an alien — 10 feet tall and blue."

"10 feet tall and blue"? You might laugh, but of course, if I described the plot for "Terminator" to you, back in 1984, you might've have laughed then, too. And of course, if I had told you back then that the star of "Terminator," Arnold Schwarzenegger, would be the two-term governor of Caleefornia, well, we all would surely have had a good belly laugh at the ridulousness of that prospect. So, having been humbled by events, we'll have to wait and see on Cameron's movie, although we do know that Cameron, who directed "The Abyss" when CGI technology was absolutely at the cutting edge, has a way of cutting ahead of the line, both technologically and also financially.

Yet what's really interesting to TCG is that Cameron is back, once again, in the 20th Century Fox fold. Which tells me--and the TCG has good intuition sometimes!--that there's more corporate synergy on avatars, as well as "Avatars," to come.

Underneath the News Corporation umbrella, now, are "Avatar," Myspace.com, the single most creative and imaginative mind in media, Rupert Murdoch, and the most dynamic force in television news, Roger Ailes. We can expect all these streams of synergy to come together, one of these days--one day soon, in fact.

Update: By coincidence, or whatever-ence, movie director M. Night Shyamalan also has a movie in the works, with Paramount, called "Avatar." The prospect of litgation aside, TCG can only say, "When it rains, Zeitgeistially, it pours!"

The Cable Game in the Age of Media Ubiquity, Or, The New Conscience

The AP's David Bauder offers a thought-provoking piece this morning about how technology is changing The Cable Game. Taking note of the cell-phone videos that figured so prominently in the news stories about comedian Michael Richards and his onstage meltdown and then, of course, Saddam Hussein and his see-it-now hanging, Bauder noted that 70 percent of Americans have cell phones, and of those, a quarter have cell phones with video capability. That's some 55 million people, just in the US. That's a lot of new content for cable news to process. (The other big source of new video would seem to be security cameras, but that's a separate phenomenon, to be considered more fully another time.)

Obviously there are issues of quality and reliability--not to mention that such phones don't (yet) have audio capability--but the reality is that today, tens of millions of potential newsmen, and newswomen (and newschildren), now patrol the streets, ready to put news on cable, or YouTube, or their own personal blog. It's going to prove to be a paradigm-shifting phenomenon, with two obvious impacts that we can at least begin to grasp now:

First, it's going to continue to change cable news. Obviously there will be more "hand held" stuff submitted to cable gatekeepers, some of it quite compelling, such as the footage from the Corey Lidle airplane crash site in NYC that Fox News managed to air using a satellite transmission.

But at the same time, media ubiquity, and its handmaiden, cornucopia, will put a huge burden on those gatekeepers to decide what to show--indeed, to be sure that it's totally real. I think that cablers made the right decision to show the lead-up, but not the conclusion, of the Saddam hanging. (It was, of course, possible to watch the whole thing on the Net.) But inevitably, there will be issues of fraud. For example, three was the case in Indonesia of the plane crash, in which authorities initially said that they had found the wreckage, and some survivors, only to retract that claim a day or so later. But in the meantime, if someone had produced cell phone footage of aircraft parts strewn around the ground, would cable news outfits--and other media outlets--been able to resist showing it? Fortunately, nobody did, but the combination of a hot but bogus news item, plus video, might well be irresistible to some newsers.

Second, if the revolution--and everything else--will be televised, then it puts a premium on the visual management of everything. The Saddam hanging was a p.r. disaster for the Iraqi government and, indirectly, the U.S. Saddam was one of the worst dictators and mass-murderers of the last century, and yet his ill-treatment, mild as it was in context, played poorly in the cell-phoned media. So yes, there was a little bit of sympathy for this devil, as we watched him in his last moments, knowing, as we did from other news accounts, that he was mocked by his hangmen.

Jim Pinkerton made a good suggestion about this on "Fox News Watch" on Saturday night. He said that what the authorities--Iraqi, American--should have done was to set up an image gallery of Saddam's many crimes, for worldwide consumption. That is, not just pictures of the Shia in that village, the ones that he massacred, but also pictures of the Kurds that he gassed, and all his other crimes, including two wars that he started, against Iran in 1980 and against Kuwait in 1990.

Imagine the difference in the perception of Saddam's execution if the condemned man had walked the Last Mile past pictures and other evidence from those who were condemning him--the hundreds of thousands of people he had killed. As Pinkerton said, the authorities should've set it up like the Nuremberg trials in 1945-6, when the elaborate presentation of evidence and testimony made it crystal clear to all what the Nazis had done. That high level of thought about it going to be needed again, all the more, when everyone has a cell phone, then everyone is always going to be one step away from being "on the air," at least potentially.

Or to put it another way, if you know that you might be on TV on a moment's notice, it will behoove you to keep up your appearance--and also, hopefully, behave better. That close-up, as well as history's verdict, could be just a few seconds away.

They say that your conscience is that which guides you when nobody's looking. Well, increasingly, the odds are that somebody is looking, and watching, and recording, and even broadcasting.

What Happens When the Media Move, Say, 260 Times Faster Than Now?

What will see you see at the next media revolution? You know, the one that's a couple of years away--no more?

Here's an interesting story out of Japan that reminds us that the next revolution is already rumbling and tumbling, thanks to the leading Japanese telephone company, NTT DoCoMo: "DoCoMo spokesman Nobuo Hori confirmed the company's plans to develop a Super 3G services, possibly by 2010, but declined to comment on details such as cost. DoCoMo will begin testing the technology this year, he said. The new system will have speeds of roughly 100Mbps, making Super 3G about 260 times faster than DoCoMo's FOMA service, which tops out at around 384 Kbps, Hori said."

So what does that mean for The Cable Game? And for the media in general?

Short answer: Nobody knows. Long answer: Some heavy traffic is coming along the Info Superhighway. If we have communications occurring at 260 times faster than what we have now--and this is just one news item plucked from the headlines, there are many such Moore's Law-inspired news items, just about every day--then we are likely to see a blow-up, or blow-out, of the existing media paradigm, one way or another, just as computers blew away typewriters, and the automobile blew away the horse & buggy. Communication won't just be faster, it will be "thicker," as in, interactive video, virtual reality, avatars, who knows what else beyond that.

Hannity' America, and America's Hannity

"Hannity's America" premieres on Fox News this Sunday night at 9 pm ET, and there's lotsa buzz. There should be, because Sean represents something positive and wholesome in America:
By all accounts, he's a nice guy, loyal to his family, his faith, his country, and Fox News--which gets a lot of work out of him!

And so to his next gig: The Hollywood Reporter's Paul Gough
puts it,"Sean Hannity, the conservative half of Fox News Channel's highly rated debate show 'Hannity & Colmes,' is getting an additional gig on the cable station. Sunday marks the debut of 'Hannity's America,' a weekly live, hourlong show that will allow him to do more than just argue about the day's big issues." Cool!

The Houston Chronicle's Mike McDaniel scored an extended interview with Sean, in which the Fox man related his conservative values to his own background: "My grandparents came here from Ireland with $10 in their pockets. They always worked really really hard and instilled in my parents a great work ethic. My parents' attitude was, you've always got to work hard, you've always got to work that extra job, you've got to take advantage of every opportunity you've got."

And The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel's Tim Cuprisin reveals that the first airing of "Hannity Hotseat" will feature Sean debating anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan. There'll be some fireworks on that one!

One reason why CNN had so much trouble--its boss was a moonbat. And here's proof!

Ever heard of "Moonview"? Remember Gerald Levin? Well he's back in the news, with a new New Age gig that sheds some light on how CNN got to be the way it is: wacky, effete, liberal, and out of touch with ordinary American values.

Levin was the CEO of Time-Warner from 1993 to 2001, during the time when Time-Warner took over CNN, in 1996, and also merged with AOL, in early 2001. As the stock chart above shows, the stock soared to over $100 per share in 2000, and then plummeted steeply, as investors realized what a turkey the merged-up Time-Warner was. So Levin "retired" in 2001. Today the T-W stock sits at around 20, which is to say, about a fifth of its peak.

And so it's revealing to see what some of those media geniuses have been doing with themselves since leaving Time-Warner and CNN in the dirt. There's Ted Turner, of course--he's totally crazy.

And now an update on Levin. The New York Post takes note of an article in W magazine about his resort, Moonview (that's the real name, I am not making this up!) in Santa Monica, which is now opening a branch in NYC.

Here's the Post's ace media reporter, Keith Kelly:

"Levin and Laurie [his wife] give a rare inside view of Moonview, where for an annual fee of $175,000, they give celebrities, corporate honchos and other high rollers a huge helping of their new age healing - everything from shamanism, acupuncture, yoga and hypnotherapy sessions to brain painting, which uses the brain's electric signals to create designs on a computer screen. Three medical doctors are on staff and 80 new age practitioners are on call."

Is that what America needs? Probably not. It might be what billionaires need--and they can afford it. But one could not ever expect to see a better symbol of CNN's limousine-liberal view of the world.

More Biz Buzz

The Financial Times' Joshua Chaffin reports that Rupert Murdoch and Fox have secured cable rights for a possible Fox Business Channel on Time-Warner's cable system in New York City. This is BIG.

Those with long memories--back to the days when Time-Warner was the biggest media outfit around with such then-hot properties as CNN--might remember that back when Fox News was just getting going, one of the key issues was whether or not FNC could get cable "carriage" in the all-important NYC market. Ted Turner and T-W resisted Fox, but ultimately, Murdoch and Roger Ailes succeeded in getting FNC on cable. And the rest, as they say, is history.

So with that history in mind, it's interesting that Time-Warner struck this deal, to let yet another Murdoch channel come into full flower. Of course, CNN no longer has CNNFN to defend against a Fox Business Channel onslaught, because CNNFN died a couple of years ago. Now the immediate rivals are CNBC and Bloomberg--they should be nervous.

It looks like this FBC is going to happen, folks. It's going to be a big year in The Cable Game!

Fox Biz Buzz--Experts Predict Success. Now All They Need is a Channel!

USA Today's David Lieberman has pulled together a fascinating feature, on expert predictions for 2007. The experts he polled were: Marla Backer (Research Associates), Mark Greenberg (AIM Capital Management), Richard Greenfield (Pali Research), Hal Vogel (Vogel Capital Management), and Tom Wolzien (Wolzien LLC).

Lieberman asked them 15 media-related questions in all, ranging from the likely future of The Wall Street Journal's circulation to the likely future for YouTube growth and Harry Potter book sales. But one question of the 15 jumped out at me: #7, concerning, “Which of these new ventures will be seen as the biggest success in 2007?” The choices were, “a) Allbritton's multimedia political news venture, The Politico; b) CBS Records; c) Condé Nast's business magazine Portfolio; d) Fox's business news cable channel; e) a YouTube-like video website created by the Big Four TV networks.”

Interstingly, four of the five chose d), the Fox business channel. Interesting! Now, of course, all that needs to happen is for it to happen! Sources tell TCG that the biz channel green light is no sure bet. In which case, the whole question could go down as one of the great psy-war operations of all time. It’s so good that it’s got even hardnosed financial experts not only convinced that it’s going to happen, but that it’s going to be a big success.

But let's face it: The expectations game on Fox is escalating. All eyes are on Roger Ailes.

Where's CNN's Quality Control?

The Charlotte Observer, among other outlets, takes note of CNN's editorial problems, confusing "Osama" and "Obama." Mistakes happen, but not like that, not to steady news operations.

Mike + Juliet!

Look out Regis & Kelly! Here comes Mike & Juliet, and the reviews are already positive, such as this nice piece in The Birmingham News and this notice in TV Week.

There's no way to know how the show will do, of course, but I will say this: Having watched them on "Fox & Friends" and then on FNC's "Dayside," the two of them have a great chemistry. If the show keeps its FNC-like 'tude, even on Big Fox, it should be a hit.

Is the LA Times Right about Rupert? And Other Predictions for '07

The Los Angeles Times offers a fascinating passel of predictions today. Some are clearly tongue-in-cheek and designed to provoke or amuse, but others seem plausible, including:

* CBS strikes a deal with Google, thus making CBS the star of Google's YouTube.
* Bob Wright retires from NBC Universal--better late than never for the much overrated, and very starstruck, plastics salesman who created MSNBC--but Jeff Zucker’s succession to succeed him is not so assured, now that the GE chiefains are start
* Yahoo merges with someone—AOL, Microsoft, eBay. Yahoo recently did a deal with Fox News, but the pioneering website needs to do more to put the exclamation point back into its corporate life.
* Sony finally gets rid of Howard Stringer—‘bout time! Stringer was another of those who parlayed modest success in the MSM in its glory years into a second career in a real corporation, where, of course, Stringer failed.
* Rupert Murdoch buys The Wall Street Journal, thus fortifying the Fox business channel. This could be pretty cool, if true!