CNBC Shills For Wall Street, Trashes Main Street, Part 2. Or, Cramer's Investors Get Booya-ed!

The Cable Gamer should have added Jim Cramer to her CNBC dishonor roll from yesterday. But actually, Cramer is worse: He's not just sticking up for Wall Street at the expense of Main Street, he is actually using his show to lead investors down the garden path.

Cramer, the host of "Mad Money," is surely the faux-est of the faux populists--a millionaire who pretends to be looking out for the small investor. For two weeks now, he has been a leading advocate of the Wall Street bailout. And yet in the meantime, he finds time to make hideously incorrect recommendations to the goats out there.

It seems that Cramer hosted Wachovia Bank CEO Robert Steel, who told Cramer and the suckers in his audience that everything was just fine with his company--never mind the fact that the stock had fallen from just above 50 to just above 10 in the year previous.

But here, let TV Newser, which deserves credit for catching Cramer, tell the story:

On Sept. 15, the day Steel appeared on the Mad Money, Wachovia stock closed at $10.71/share. Yesterday it closed at $1.84/share. Below is the clip from Sept. 15. And after the jump, Cramer's apology: "I let you down, because I wasn't skeptical enough."

Uh, sure, Jim you weren't skeptical enough. And now you're sorry.

Two points need to be made:

First, every cable news host is potentially vulnerable to the moral hazard of treating guests too nicely. That is, if the host gets a good "get," then there's a natural tendency to reward that guest with nice coverage. One wants to be civil and fair, of course, but civility and fairness should not tip over into misleading viewers with their money. Got that, Jim?

Second, Cramer is an active investor, as well as a TV talking head. On Wall Street, there's a phrase: "Talking your book." That is, if you hold a stock, you talk it up. Or if you short a stock (that is, you stand to make money if it goes down), you talk it down.

Now TCG is just asking, as to what games Cramer might be playing. I am not accusing Cramer of anything. But of course, that's easy for me to say, since I didn't lose 80% of my Wachovia money in just two weeks. But maybe the Securities and Exchange Commission, or some plaintiff's lawyer, ought to take a close look at Cramer & Co.

This whole sordid business of TV-touting stocks while holding stocks has been a scandal in the past, and it will be a scandal in the future. And maybe, in fact, it's a scandal right now.

CNBC Shills for Wall Street, Trashes Main Street

Which side are you on? That's an old labor union song, but the words kept seeping into my brain, as I watched the news about capitalism today, thinking about the "which side" question as it applied to the split between Wall Street and Main Street.

But for CNBC, the answer seems clear enough: It's on the side of Wall Street. A strange choice, perhaps. I mean, all this time, I thought that there were more viewers on Main Street. Maybe CNBC thinks that computer terminals are viewers. Or maybe CNBC is just in love with the people it covers on Wall Street--and when I say love, I mean love. And even the CNBC talent that doesn't pull down megabucks salaries seems to have drunk the pro-Street koolaid.

Like anyone else with even a little money in the market, The Cable Gamer was pretty darn focused on today's financial news, as it played out from New York City and from Washington DC. So I resolved to watch CNBC, now that they were back from taking the weekend of. But TCG was shocked by what she saw, especially in the late afternoon, after the Republicans voted down the bailout bill. Now TCG will admit that she is not sure what to do about the Wall Street crisis--just like a woman, she can see the arguments on both sides.

But TCG does know this much: CNBC, like any news network, is supposed to play news stories down the middle, and not choose sides. But that's what we saw today, as CNBC blatantly sided with the fatcats--with Wall Street, which wants the bailout, bad, and with those order-following Democrats and Henry Paulson, the lead spear-carrier for the deal.

In particular, Maria Bartiromo kept saying, to anyone who would listen, that Main Street, which opposed the bailout, should now be made to feel some pain, so that Main Streeters and their representatives in Congress (the Republicans, joined by many Democrats, who today voted down the deal), would come around and vote for the bailout bill when it comes up again, probably later this week.

"The Money Honey" was echoed by most of the others on the channel, including Sue Herrera and Steve Leisman. Their relentless spin-line was that Main Street should side with Wall Street--if Main Street knew what was good for it.

Bizarrely, after trashing Main Street for being so cloddish, Bartiromo would then say, every so often, that in fact, Wall Street and Main Street are the best of friends. Gee, I hadn't realized that, and I bet most Americans hadn't either. I mean, when Wall Streeters were collecting multi-multi-millions in bonuses for outsourcing and offshoring jobs, I am not sure that Main Street then felt the love.

And when John Culberson, a Republican Congressman from Texas, came on CNBC air to defend his vote against the deal, Bartiromo & Co. were little short of abusive toward him. When are the Republicans going to stop being such narrow ninnies and "get with the program?"--that's what one of them demanded to know. (FWIW, Culberson was very focused and polite, despite the visible rage and mockery of the CNBCers--the Republicans ought to use him more on air.)

All in all, it was a galling display of arrogance. CNBC has made its choice: It's with Wall Street all the way.

Oh, and by the way, a special shout-out of praise to a lone CNBC-er Rick Santelli, standing on a trading floor somewhere, who kept saying that if Main Street is so opposed to the bailout--everyone on TV seems to agree that e-mails and phone calls are running 100 to 1 against the bill--then maybe the politicians were right to listen to the people. And maybe Wall Street should heed the folks, too, he added. Santelli's argument was ignored by Queen Maria, but he kept making it. So there's at least one person on CNBC who cares about ordinary people.


 

Update on Social Networking--NPR Edges Its Way Into "Socnet"

"NPR boosts online offerings, seeks larger audience"--that headline points us toward one more entrant into the social-networking marketplace.

The Associated Press' Anick Jesdanun gets right to the point in this story:

National Public Radio, already strong online with free downloads from many of its shows, is boosting its digital ambitions with Monday's introduction of social-networking features akin to Facebook.

As noted here at TCG, social networks increase "stickiness" at a site--the more there is to see and do--and the more people to communicate with--the longer people will stay. And that's good for any online enterprise, public or private. The AP piece quotes Dana Davis Rehm, described as NPR's "senior vice president for strategy and partnerships," laying it out:

Rehm said fundraising is a key source of anxiety [for local affiliates, worried about being crowded by the national outfit], but if done right, a strong Internet presence could bring "more giving from more people."

"Consumers' expectations are changing, and our audience wants more flexibility," said Darren Mauro, a digital media director at NPR. "To be realistic, the Internet is a fast-moving place. That makes everybody nervous on one level, and everyone sees new opportunities on another."

That's for sure.

"Stop hiding your orientation, Anderson Cooper. Everyone knows you're a liberal."

Kyle Smith, opinionating in Sunday's New York Post, offers this funny line:

"Stop hiding your orientation, Anderson Cooper. Everyone knows you're a liberal."

Indeed. AC's liberalism was especially evident on Friday night, after the presidential debate when Cooper mockingly said of Sarah Palin, "don't hold your breath" after Wolf Blitzer wondered whether Palin would be making the press rounds like her counterpart Joe Biden.

Cooper should be careful about being too bitchy. Why? Two reasons:

First, unedited bitchiness is ultimately what got Keith Olbermann in trouble. Only the difference between KO and AC is that KO can always fall back on being a sportcaster. Whereas if AC loses his emo charm, he will lose his Middle America base. There just aren't enough downtown hipsters watching CNN to support his show if AC lets himself be, uh, outed as a liberal.

Second, two can play the bitch game. And come to think of it, two are playing.

Watch Out CNBC and Bloomberg! Fox Business News Tries Harder. And So FBN Owned The Weekend Coverage of the Financial Crisis.

While CNBC spent most of the weekend running inane infomercials, newbie Fox Business News was live throughout Saturday and Sunday, breaking the news of the bailout package at 12:20am on Sunday morning and being simulcasted on Fox News Channel.

Here's Paul Gough, writing in The Hollywood Reporter, under the headline, "Crisis keeps Fox Business rolling":

Fox Business Channel carried live at 12:20 a.m. ET Sunday an update by Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Congressional leaders on the status of the bailout bill, which could be tentatively approved as early as Sunday night or Monday. FBN's coverage of that was simulcast on Fox News Channel, the first time in the channels' history that they have carried the same feed.

That was atop seven hours of live business coverage, aimed at the average investor, from the channel's top talent on Saturday. And Fox Business Network has aired live cut-ins updating Sunday and planned a two-hour special Sunday night.

"It could well be the defining moment for Fox Business," said Kevin Magee, executive vp of the Fox Business Network, on Sunday afternoon from the network's New York City headquarters. "We decided we needed that approach for what we think is the most important business story of our lifetime, and come at it as newspeople."

As TV Newser put it, oh so politely:

CNBC stayed in taped programming.

As in, infomercials. That's right, the biggest Wall Street story of the television age, and CNBC was showing commercial crap, not the news. Puh-thetic.

And what about Bloomberg TV?

Bloomberg employed a lower third banner announcing the tentative deal.

FBN has had an underwhelming start, but if it covers the news, while the other biznets can't be bothered, well, it will be a new world soon enough. FBN will do to CNBC and Bloomberg what FNC did to CNN and MSNBC.

C-SPAN Gets Into Newsy Social Networking--Is There Any Doubt That The Cable Companies Will Be Far Behind?

TCG first saw, on ZDNet, that C-SPAN was creating its own tech-savvy social networking site, called "Debate Hub." As ZDNet's Andrew Nusca explains:

The site allows users to follow the debate in near-real-time on their gadgets and simultaneously see how the Web is reacting to it. On the debate side, the site mashes up a transcript of the debate with video footage — sort of like the New York Times — and allows you to watch and share/embed clips of your choosing as the debate develops (it’s on a 10-minute delay).

Which is to say, Debate Hub has a lot in common with VoterWatch.org, mentioned in my previous post.

For his part, ZDNet's Nusca is enthused:

From what I’ve seen thus far — it’s tough, because the site won’t really heat up until the first scheduled debate (9:00PM EST Friday) — it’s a great resource and a really neat way to text, Twitter, blog and otherwise engage on debate night on a much grander scale. C-SPAN’s mission is to be in the public service, and it’s clearly doing so here — spotlighting the public discourse happening via mobile devices, with some fancy interactives for those who stop by.

And indeed, a look at DebateHub suggests that it's plenty cool.

But TCG can't help but think that there is more going on here than just C-SPAN-ish "public service." Don't get me wrong: I love C-SPAN, and I think that it is a public service, of the highest order. And so I welcome Debate Hub.

But the social-networking function is so powerful--and so lucrative--that TCG wonders if the cable companies, who finance C-SPAN and now Debate Hub, are also looking for a way in to the social-networking field.

And if that's the case, then Debate Hub is a pretty good way to start entering. Social networking, at its best, fulfills a function: It helps you do things that you are already doing, only better. By contrast, social networking, at its worst, is a distraction: You are bombarded with crap, and so it slows you down--it is not a utility, it's a disutility.

Linkedin.com is a good example of a social network that helps you network--if you wanna find old friends, old classmates, colleagues, etc., Linkedin offers a very efficient way to do just that. By contrast, Classmates.com is horrible--it's all spam and upsells and crap. Indeed, Classmates.com is one of the few web services that I have actively and enthusiastically UNSUBSCRIBED from, because it was so lousy.

The point here is that a social network should be organized around some purpose. Linkedin is a genuine career-assist tool, while Classmates was just a way to get harassed. I have no doubt that Linkedin is just as profit-minded as Classmates, but I also have no doubt that Linkedin is smarter. By respecting its customers, Linkedin gains customer loyalty, which is worth a lot.

And so back to Debate Hub. People who watch C-SPAN are serious-minded politicos; it would be natural for them to be able to find likeminded souls on a C-SPAN-spawned site. Which is a lesson of the Net age: Media proliferation has turned us all into not only channel surfers, but also web surfers--if something bores us, we can switch immediately. So the answer, for each content provider, is to put up more material that holds people's interest for a longer time. That's stickiness. Social networking is just one more way to be sticky.

The cable companies continue to grope their way into content-providing and other forms of programming--curiously, Comcast even offers a "browser upgrade."

So don't be surprised if Debate Hub proves to be the thin edge of the wedge. If so, good! News junkies, including Cable Gamers, could use a good place to hang out online.

A New Way to Watch--and Interact With, and Have Fun With--the News

The Cable Gamer first became aware of VoterWatch.org from Dick Morris, who e-mailed around that he would be participating in a debate-watching session on the voterwatch.org site. As the site teases:

Want to Make Your Voice Heard? Now You Can.

Instead of simply displaying video content on your website or blog, you can blog, comment,link, fact-check and interact with political video.

What Morris and Voterwatch.org are offering is a form of mashup, much discussed on TCG. Mashup is part of the future: It can be used to annotate the news, add commentary and footnotes, but it can also be used for satire--you can draw horns, for example, on people you don't like.

And this is the missing element in the news: People getting to have fun with the news.

Let's face it: If we are plugged in, we already know the news by the middle of the day. After that, we want to have our say, and we want to have some fun, commenting, forwarding, mashup-ing.

"Obama Campaign: Watch The Debate On CNN"--What Did MSNBC Do Wrong?

The Cable Gamer had to do a double-take when she saw
this headline on Huffington Post: "Obama Campaign: Watch The Debate On CNN." Huffpo's Danny Shea posted this earlier today:

I just received the following text from the official Obama text message number (62262) which first sent out the Vice Presidential news:

Watch Barack debate John McCain tonight at 9pm Eastern on CNN. Also, remind friends to register to vote at VoteForChange.com. Please forward this message.
This is particularly odd given that the debate will be airing on every network, both broadcast and cable, at 9pm Eastern. Has the Obama campaign officially endorsed CNN?

When contacted, an Obama staffer said it was "shorter than saying 'on cable news,'" and that they were "not trying to make news."

A CNN representative told me, "It was a complete surprise to us."

In July, the campaign blasted a text promoting Obama's speech in Berlin saying, "The speech will be live on CNN."

Two points about this:

First, can you imagine the heartbreak at MSNBC? I mean, the Olbermann network has been trying so hard to be the Obama Network, and then to get this punch in the gut!

Second, can you imagine what would have been the reaction if John McCain had texted his supporters, saying, "Watch Fox"? Well, the roof would have caved in, media-criticism-wise.

As it was, the liberal media just shrugged it off. Shea updated his story this evening:

Update 6:30 PM: The Obama campaign must have revised its message. I've just now received a follow-up text saying,

Watch Barack Debate John McCain tonight at 9pm ET on any of the major networks or cable. Fwd this msg & remind friends to register to vote at VoteForChange.com
Looks like the campaign figured out how to speak SMS short-hand and thus free up enough characters to type out "any of the major networks or cable" vs. "CNN."

But I will preserve the moment as a screen-grab, above.

Campbell Brown Is So Clever -- Posing As An Outraged Feminist So She Can Better Bash A Woman!

If John McCain is a sexist, as Campbell Brown alleges, then why did he pick Sarah Palin to be his running mate?

Brown host of a low-rated, low-buzz CNN show, tried to stir the pot last night, maybe ginning up some ratings, by posing as a feminist. "Free Sarah Palin," she said, being oh so clever. She denounced "male chauvinists" for allegedly "keeping her hidden from the press."

Well that's a nice try, Campbell. You think that you have found a new way to package the de rigeur CNN Republican-bashing. But of course, it's obvious what you are really doing: You are doing the Democrats' dirty work for them. The McCain-Palin campaign has its press strategy, which is to control press access to both candidates--the man, and the woman.

Now one can like or dislike that strategy, but it's absurd to call it sexist. It's an equal opportunity policy of rationing the media--especially since so much of it is hostile.

You'll have to try harder, Campbell. Nobody can make you like Palin, and CNN is paying you to dislike her, but don't pretend it's an issue of genuine feminist outrage. This is about politics: her conservatism, vs. your liberalism.

UPDATE: Liberal bloggers fall into line, behind the new line. Cambpell Brown is on her way to better liberal ink, and who knows, maybe an Emmy.

CNN.com Wins Online Excellence Award

The Cable Gamer is not a big fan of awards and prizes inside the news industry, mostly because she has seen up close that they are small "p" political--the award givers tend to give them to their friends and ideological soul-mates.

Yet TCG doesn't disagree that CNN.com has a pretty good website, and that it deserves some sort of prize, such as this one, from the Online News Association.

Here's the writeup, conveniently written by CNN! But again, if you don't toot your horn, who will?

The General Excellence award honors sites that successfully fulfill their editorial mission, effectively serve their audience, maximize the Web's characteristics and represent the highest journalistic standards, according to the organization.

CNN.com won the award for large sites, with the panel commenting that the site "made substantial changes in the past year, making it one of the more dynamic destinations out there."

The judges also remarked that CNN.com "takes user content seriously and integrates it into the whole, opening a new era of networked content."

Last summer, CNN.com relaunched the Web site, pioneering integrated multimedia story-telling online, enhancing the presentation of live video, offering quick links to local news and providing new features to make coverage more accessible than ever.

Chickaboomer Blasts CNBC

I will admit that I have been looking for an excuse to show off this logo, from the blogger Chickaboomer.

And here's my chance, taking note of her dissection of CNBC's ratings:

CNBC’s supposed amazing ratings (TV Newser can’t help but lay down for an NBC property)488,000 viewers and a lousy 125,000 in 25-54 on an historic, monumental day on Wall Street with the Dow down 500 is hardly a success. Fox News (1,245,000) and CNN (852,000) both kicked their ass doing the same story all day. CNBC was even beat by the Cartoon network which averaged 839,000. A competitor noted, “If this is a success for them on a day like this, what exactly qualifies as a failure?”

Good point, Chickaboomer, but I will admit that I still more impressed by your logo.

MSNBC Plays The Race Card

You would have to figure that Rachel Maddow would try to one-up Keith Olbermann on the race-baiting front. That's right, I said race-baiting, because the Left, too, can play the race-baiting game. Maddowite liberals can simply declare that something is racist--maybe everything that isn't actively pro-Barack Obama is racist--confident that no editorial control at MSNBC/NBC/GE will stop them from making ridiculous slanders, and equally confident that MSNBC's tiny but zealous audience will lap it up.

Maddow asked her guest, Newsweek's Jonathan Alter, if he didn't agree that the McCain campaign playing the race card by showing a picture of Franklin Raines, who Maddow asserted, had no real connection to Obama. Well, actually, Raines has been an adviser to Obama, and Fannie Mae was a big contributor to Obama's campaign--Obama was, in fact, Fannie's second largest recipient of campaign cash. That's a pretty close connection. To his credit, Alter disagreed with Maddow's reachy assertion; Alter declared that it was fair for McCain to connect Obama to Raines.

But then, to his discredit, Alter volunteered his own stretch, which was much stretchier than anything Maddow had said. Alter said that a McCain ad defending Sarah Palin was reminiscent of Emmett Till, because the spot included a picture of Barack Obama. Now Emmett Till, of course, was the black teenager lynched in Mississippi in 1955. That terrible and tragic incident received enormous attention at the time, a half century ago, and is widely credited with stoking the civil rights movement.

So for Alter to throw that name around is nothing less than an attempt to wrap McCain in all the baggage of all the racists and murderers of the Deep South. Now is that fair? Of course not.

But Alter said it, and Maddow didn't disagree.

That's the bad news: Alter violated elementary fairness. The good news, for Alter at least, is that he redeemed himself in Maddow's eyes after contradicting her, so perhaps he can continue to come back on her show.

H/T Breitbart.tv

The Cable Game: Where the TV News Action Is

Cable News dominates TV news, and thus drives the political agenda. And Fox dominates cable news.

That's the considered opinion of Glenn Garvin, the veteran TV critic for The Miami Herald, who takes apart the claims of broadcast TV.

Here's part of Glenn's argument, in which he demolishes the wishful thinking of Eric Boehlert,a liberal media gadfly :

As for the Fox-News-is-dead school of thought, of which lefty pundit Eric Boehlert was the primary exponent, consider the year-to-date Nielsen numbers: Fox News is not only the highest-rated cable-news network all day long, but, during prime time, the fourth-most popular channel in all of cable. (CNN is 19th; MSNBC 27th.) Its average prime-time audience of 1.8 million is almost as big as that of the other two cable news channels combined.

Why the dominance of cable? Lots of reasons, but one big reason is the ubiquity of cable: It's always on. Sort of like a dial tone. And if not the TV, then the web. Tom Shales, the TV critic for The Washington Post, elaborates, in his own quirky liberal way, about multimedia:

We don't watch television; instead, we access program material through content providers. Viewers accustomed to the cellphone and iPod and DVR and OnDemand don't watch TV the way earlier generations did. We don't even receive it the way our foreviewers did, via the old cathode-ray tube-in-a-box. TV now seeps into our lives through hand-held gadgets and laptops, on "webisodes" and YouTube snippets and fragmented downloads.

The Cable Gamer believes that the next network for news already exists: It will be built on TV, on the Net, and will be distributed in a thousand ways to a thousand different kinds of machines. But someone will come along to connect all those dots. And then, behold! that will be the new paradigm of news.

"But this is stuff you normally find in the darkest corners of Yahoo Finance chat boards, not supposedly reputable financial journalism broadcasts"

The Cable Gamer freely admits that she has been watching CNBC a lot lately, because of the financial crisis. And yet I had noticed a sometimes strangely overwrought tone in the programming, but couldn't quite put my finger on it.

So I was glad that Ryan Chittum, writing for The Columbia Journalism Review, published a smart piece, "Note to CNBC: Breathe/ Burnett suggests shorts are unpatriotic; Cramer says it may be terrorism" taking CNBC to task for its over-the-top tone, especially from Erin Burnett and and Jim Cramer.

Well, everybody knows that Cramer is a loon, but maybe his looniness has spread to others at the cabler.

As Chittum observes, this is not the time for craziness:

Look, we know this deepening crisis has everybody, including financial commentators, spooked. And understandably, so.

But this is stuff you normally find in the darkest corners of Yahoo Finance chat boards, not supposedly reputable financial journalism broadcasts.

Time to take a deep breath.

Indeed.

From Cyclorama to Sensurround to Full Immersion to Virtual Reality

The Battle of Gettysburg: See It Now!

It's possible, thanks to technology from the 19th century, now updated for the 21st century. And that's a reminder that while the cutting edge of entertainment is always moving forward, sometimes one must look backward for inspiration.

A couple of weeks ago, TCG took note of a marvelous book, Shivers Down Your Spine: Cinema, Museums, & the Immersive View, which chronicled "big" displays of art and effect, from medieval cathedrals to contemporary planetariums.

And now I read in The Washington Post that a giant cyclorama, depicting the Battle of Gettysburg during the Civil War, is about to be re-opened. A cyclorama is a 360 degree painting of a place or an event; the style was popular in the 19th century, until it was displaced by movies.

But it still looks pretty cool, even if it is more than a hundred years old. And what could new technology do to soup up the look? That is, if people have seen movies and TV on a flat screen, could media companies show auds what they want to see in some sort of surrounding, 360-ing, environment?

And the answer is, of course they could--they just have to want to bad enough. If they do, they will find a way.

Grim as it sounds, what could a company such as Obscura Digitaldo with news such as this?

Could Roger Ailes Have Saved MSNBC?

That article by Ben Grossman in Broadcasting & Cable is causing big ripples.

Here's Chickaboomer quoting an NBC insider:

Here is an interesting take on that article emailed to FTVLive from an NBC insider: "Want to know the buzz today at NBC News about the B & C opinion piece? First, if MSNBC had remained under Roger Ailes and the 'America's Talking' banner the success we are now just experiencing 12 years later would have come in 1998, and the threat of NBC News being tarnished by opinion/talk TV would be ZERO. NBC News saw the success of 'America's Talking', which remember included a Chris Matthews show, and decided to add the 'credentials' of NBC News with a since failed relationship with Microsoft. When they saw the clearance that Ailes had achieved for AT, they strong armed him to give it up, and changed it to MSNBC. Ailes left disgruntled to start FNC and within 2 years cleaned their clock. Finally NBC begins to copy FNC (going left instead of right) and experiences some level of success BUT at the risk of tarnishing and undermining NBC News, the crown jewel of the news division. Bottom line - We work for a bunch of idiots who make it up as they go along, and realize only when it's too late that they have created major hazards. As for the notion that the two could NOW be separated - it's a crock. Ben Grossman suggests that MSNBC could go under the umbrella of Universal while NBC News continues to program big news events and correspondents continue to appear on the network. As far as the viewing public goes, that is not separation at all. There can be NO crossover of any kind if NBC News wants to avoid confusion with its audience, and at this point it will take years and years for the viewing public to separate the two. After all NBC is in the name!"

It's an interesting question.

Twittering the Presidential Debates--From Commentary to Commentating

Do you ever talk back to the TV? OK, dumb question. Well, now you will get your chance--and everyone else can know about it, too, thanks to Twitter, and Current TV.

The Cable Gamer has never thought much of Current, which always seemed to be sort of a vanity project for Al Gore, and his rich friends, as opposed to being a real business, but now Current is doing something interesting--it is going to Twitter the presidential debates.

Here's the word from the Associated Press, outlining the basics:

Current TV is handing over feedback on the upcoming presidential debates to those who make up so much of the network's programming: its audience.

During the debates, the network bent on viewer-created content will broadcast Twitter messages -- or "tweets" -- from viewers. In close to real time, Current will display comments on the screen while John McCain and Barack Obama face off.

It's an all the more interesting new kind of interactivity in political discourse given that Current was co-founded by former Vice President Al Gore. Joel Hyatt, CEO of Current, said the technique -- dubbed "Hack the Debate" -- was not Gore's idea, but he and Gore both share a dim view of post-debate punditry.

"He certainly shares the belief that the punditry aspect of the process has not been enriching to American democracy," Hyatt said. "We're trying to empower young adults to participate in the process, to have their voice heard, to join the conversation."

Hyatt lamented the limiting nature of debate coverage, populated by experts with axes to grind and predictable partisan arguments to make: "We want our audiences to take over the process," he said.

Comments will be filtered, but Hyatt said they will be filtered only to suit broadcast standards.

The first presidential debate is planned for Sept. 26, with two more debates and a vice presidential debate to follow. Current, partnering with Twitter, will have a similar live stream on its Web site, Current.com.

It's easy to make fun of Twitter, but in fact, silly and narcissistic as Twitter might sound, the idea of the "Now Web" is extremely powerful, and fully backed by some of the biggest vc's in the biz.

Yes, people want to hear commentary, but they also want to be commentators. That's what Twitter has going for it, and that's now what Current.com has going for it.

In a sense, most blogging is a kind of Twitter. Genuine scoops in the blogosphere are rare; what we mostly see is people commenting on the news, or an anything else that strikes their fancy. Fair enough: nothing wrong with self-expression. But blogging about the news presupposes that people know the news. That is, people know that there's a war in Iraq, or a presidential election, or a financial crisis, and then they react to that news, hopefully adding some value.

Thus TCG's "Twitter" on this news: We are going to see more of this in the future.

Social Networking Converges On The Cable Game, As Does Amazon.com

So The Wall Street Journal, owned by the News Corporation, which also owns Fox News, is about to venture into social networking.

Here's the way Dow Jones (the technical name for WSJ Inc.) puts it:

The Wall Street Journal will launch a redesign of its Web site Monday night, marking the latest transformation at the newspaper acquired by News Corp. (NWS) in its $5.6 billion takeover of Dow Jones & Co.

Gordon McLeod, president of The Wall Street Journal Digital Network, declined to specify how much News Corp. invested in the redesign of WSJ.com but said the company made "a big financial commitment." He added that the new site will be more effective in monetizing the newspaper's online content, with larger display advertisements and more sponsored sections of content.

News Corp. Chief Executive Rupert Murdoch has overseen many changes at the newspaper since the acquisition, but the site redesign may represent the most crucial effort as print media struggles to find its footing in an increasingly digital age.

"Rupert Murdoch wants The Wall Street Journal to be the preeminent brand for news everywhere in the world and on any technology platform, and this is one step towards that goal," said Alan Murray, deputy managing editor of The Wall Street Journal.

The preem is tonight!

NWS is familiar with social-networking, of course, having bought Myspace three years ago. But it's clear that the "socnet" phenomenon is destined to stay strong for the foreseeable future, as companies seek to build a closer relationship with their customers. That is, in a world of lots of choice, branded entities need to give their customers a greater reason to stay on the site (or channel), because it's so easy to click away, and there are so many choices. As they say, sites must become "sticky," keeping eyeballs glued for longer periods of time.

Such stickiness is obviously important to media companies, but other companies are doing the same thing. Amazon.com, for example, recently bought Shelfari.com, which is a social site for booklovers. (The Internet is often said to be bad for print, but this is not so--the Net has led to a surge of writing and reading--it's just not on paper, it's online.)

Meanwhile, the old-line book business is going through an upheaval of its own, as detailed by Boris Kachka in a must-reader inNew York mag. It's march into the future, or die, for the paper-based pubsters.

Otherwise, the same Amazon.com will eat the publisher's lunch, not only by discounting books, (and accelerating the market for used books, from which, of course, the publishers get nothing) but also through such products as Kindle, the first really cool e-book device.

Amazon is moving toward its own kind of vertical integration: Having also acquired Booksurge, Amazon is now virtually a book publisher. And we know that it sells books. And with the Kindle, it also sells its own book-reading machine, which, in many ways is a significant improvement over a traditional book. In addition, Kindle can be used for magazines, newspapers, and even blogs.

In a way, then, Amazon is starting to resemble Apple--a company that sells you the hardware and software for a closed proprietary system. And there's nothing wrong with that, unless, of course, you are on the outside of that closed system, as is the case with the New York City-centered publishers.

This discussion of Amazon is relevant to The Cable Game in two ways.

First, both FNC and CNN are inside parent companies with substantial print-publishing interests--everything from HarperCollins to Time magazine.

Second, one can look at the Kindle and see that within a few years, it will be possible to watch video, or even streaming TV, on an upgraded Kindle device.

That's the point of Convergence. At all times, through the history of technology, people invented different tools to do different things. And then, with total predictability, someone came along and said, "Why don't we combine several functions into one tool, so that there's less to lug around, or otherwise deal with." And so the spear and the musket became the musket with a bayonet in the 18th century. Similarly, the radio and the phonograph became one in the early 20th century. And in this century, the computer, the telephone, and the TV will be Converged.

So Amazon looks to be a pretty big player in not only the book game, but also the entertainment game--and maybe even The Cable Game.

UPDATE: NWS' Myspace is reportedly doing a deal with Amazon:

MySpace Music is expected to launch with a song download service provided by Amazon.com but few other details of the new venture's attempt to be a comprehensive player have emerged.

Which is a reminder: You can be sure that Jeff Bezos is looking at his Kindle, and thinking to himself, "How can I get this thing to become a music player"? If he can, he could have another iPod on his hands.

Spin Off MSNBC? So That Olby Can Find His Brokaw-Free Bliss?

Ben Grossman, writing for Broadcasting & Cable, has an interesting idea: Spin MSNBC away from NBC News, making it instead a stand-alone network within NBC-Universal, such as the entertainment channels Bravo and USA.

Unless he is a grandmaster of irony, Grossman seems ideologically sympathetic to MSNBC: He praises the channel for having "forged a fantastic programming groove." [sic!]

But in praising MSNBC for moving way to the left with the likes of Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow, Grossman concedes that MSNBC is now threatening to damage the NBC News brand. So make 'em completely separate, he advises, so that Olbermann & Co. would be free to do whatever they wished on their air, free from such old-school nags as Tom Brokaw and Andrea Mitchell.

Yup. Olby and Rachel and all the rest could do whatever they wished: They just couldn't call it straight news.

Convergence Watch: Meet "TheBigMoney.com." But Don't Worry, It Needn't Be A Very Long Meeting

The Cable Gamer is always looking around at new news products, because she knows that some day soon, all media will be Converged. That is, you will be looking at a screen, and it won't really matter to you whether that screen is from a TV channel or an Internet site.

So I was eager to take a look at TheBigMoney.com, put out by the folks at Slate.com. And yup, there's a "TBM Weekly Video Report," which will be worth keeping an eye on.

But what about TBM now? TCG has always liked Slate, even though it leans way to the left. But TBM is lousy, regardless of ideology, at least on its first day.

For one thing, it's sloppily written and sloppily edited. The screen grab above is from an article by the big-name writer Michael Lewis, but he obviously wrote the piece in a hurry, and then nobody edited it: The first line reads, "As important at it seems right now on Wall Street..." Note the offending "at," italicized in the preceding, which should, of course, be an "as." That's not very good--not good writing, not good editing.

OK, OK, just a typo. But here's a bigger thing: The two top dogs at TBM, James Ledbetter and Jacob Weisberg, collaborated on an article entitled "The SAGA Manifesto," which praises the "SAGA" companies. What's that? Let Ledbetter and Weisberg explain their little acronymic conceit:

Aside from the companies where you or members of your family work, how many do you actually care about? We think that for a lot of us, there are only four: Starbucks (SBUX), Apple (AAPL), Google (GOOG), and Amazon (AMZN)—call them the SAGA companies.

Got that? Those four companies are cool, and the rest of corporate America is pretty much uncool. What snobbery! And even more, what insularity! Where's Wal-Mart, or for that matter, Target? Where are any media companies? Where are companies that people love, such as L.L. Bean, or Patagonia? Or trusted standbyes, such as McDonald's or Applebee's? It might be hard for Manhattan-based espresso drinkers to believe it, but some people really love Harley-Davidson, and Ruger, and even plain ol' Ford Motor Company.

But TBM is oblivious to all that. This new site, run by liberals, for liberals, is content to just heap praise on over-praised companies, and their culture, all the while ignoring the rest of the country.

Revealingly, TBM includes a "socially responsible investing" feature, so that trust-fund babies can feel good about themselves. (Of course, TBM offers a distinctly liberal view of "socially responsible investing," heavy no gay rights, dismissive of family rights. But again, what else is new.

TCG projects a dim fate for this site, which looks likely to Converge nothing more than New York City and San Francisco, which are already plenty Converged.

MSNBC: "A Perfect Storm of Problems"

The two Cable Game media-critique shows, CNN's "Reliable Sources" and FNC's "News Watch," both commented over the weekend on the MSNBC meltdown.

Interesting that MSNBC doesn't have such a show. Probably not a good time for it to start one.

h/t -- TV Newser.

MSNBC:

Why Does The Huffington Post NOT Heart Keith Olbermann?

The Cable Gamer has noted in the past The Huffington Post seems curiously immune to the charms of Keith Olbermann.

Now why is that, do you suppose? I mean, Huffpo and the Big O are mostly in the same trendy-left camp, ideologically, so why is it that HP always seems to be dinging Olbermann, with headlines such as this: "O'Reilly's Obama Interview Crushes Olbermann's In The Ratings"? (See screen grab above.)

Could it be that Huffpo knows Olbermann too well? Or could it be... that Huffpo likes... Bill O'Reilly?

Or maybe Huffpo is simply trying to build a solid reputation for calling 'em as it sees 'em.

And of course, the facts bore that headline out: Silicon Alley Insider featured an even sharper headline, "Fox News' O'Reilly Stomps MSNBC's Olbermann With Obama Interview." Indeed, it's hard to spin reality any other way: O'Reilly got 4.6 million viewers for his interview with Barack Obama, while Olbermann got just 1.9 million for his.

The MSNBC Rap...

...James Kotecki of The Politico does tha rappin', inspired by MSNBC's David Shuster, you do tha decidin'.

And the meantime, note the subtle Politico bug in the lower third. Politico, which is already actively syndicating its content to struggling newspapers, is now on its way to creating its own micronetwork.

When the Convergence comes, Politico aims to be there with the big boys.

MSNBC Meltdown Update--The Towering Network Inferno! What Did Jeff Immelt Know, and When Did He Know It?

Just yesterday, The Cable Gamer was lamenting her lack of solid inside information about the Towering Network Inferno, aka NBC Headquarters at 30 Rock in NYC. Well, proving, once again, that there is a Gossip God, benevolently dishing out our daily dish, here comes a TCG fave, Felix Gillette of The New York Observer, to deliver the scoop--and maybe the coup de grace-- on MSNBC/NBC/GE.

The key news here--more like the smoking gun--is that the decision to move MSNBC way to the Left--and to put a serrated edge on the leftiness, thanks to Keith Olbermann's sharp tongue--was well known to the top brass at not only MSNBC, but also NBC, but also General Electric. In other words, MSNBC's decision to climb on board with the Netroots Nation crowd was not some rogue decision from a lower-down, it was well known to the higher ups. It wasn't just Olbermann plotting and scheming with MSNBC chief Phil Griffin, it was Olbermann & Co. working under the benign gaze of NBC News president Steve Capus, NBC-Universal honcho Jeff Zucker, and most strikingly of all, GE Chairman and CEO Jeff Immelt. As Gillette sets the scene, below, all those corporate worthies flew down to Washington, a month or so ago, to schmooze with their news gang over dinner; but when they got an earful of complaints from Andrea Mitchell, they just listened. Why? Because, obviously, Capus/Zucker/Immelt were happy with the way things were going at MSNBC.

Roughly a month ago, on a hot summer evening in early August, a small crowd of reporters, anchors, and producers from the Washington bureau of NBC News descended on Café Milano, a seen-and-be-seen watering hole in Washington, D.C., for a night of martinis, braised baby octopus, and frank conversations with their bosses—including Mr. Capus, Mr. Zucker, and Mr. Immelt.

Mr. Immelt served as host of the night’s festivities, which was nothing new. Every year, the 52-year-old executive of the massive multinational company, uses the annual dinner to touch base with his news division in the nation’s capital and to gossip about politics, business, and the economy in a relaxed private setting. This year, the get-together had special significance. Less than two months earlier, the news division had lost their beloved bureau chief, Tim Russert, to a sudden heart attack. Mr. Russert had not only been a close friend of nearly every guest in the room but was also the unquestioned leader, guiding the ambitious and high-strung pack of journalists along the tumultuous campaign trail and keeping the collection of big egos working together for the good of the collective team.

As the dinner got under way, Mr. Immelt praised the D.C. staffers for pulling together through the crisis. Later, according to sources at the network, he also praised the work of their colleagues at the sibling network, MSNBC. When the floor eventually opened up for questions, according to sources, Andrea Mitchell, the veteran political correspondent and wife of Alan Greenspan, noted on behalf of her colleagues that there was some ongoing uneasiness about having Keith Olbermann—MSNBC’s liberal pundit and caustic anchor of their hit show Countdown—co-anchoring (along with Hardball’s Chris Matthews) the network’s coverage on big political nights. What happened to the traditional firewall between news and opinion? There were risks involved with blurring the distinction.

Such complaints were not new but had increased significantly over the past year, as more and more seasoned NBC News reporters (following Mr. Russert’s lead) had started playing significant roles on the cable-news channel. “After years of ignoring the place, they came into the tenement and decided that they needed to clean up the building,” said one source familiar with the inner workings of the newsroom.

At Café Milano, the bosses listened. But for the time being, nothing changed—that is, until this past weekend, when Mr. Griffin confirmed news of the switch to reporters at The New York Times and The Washington Post.

Of course, all this corporate blase-ness was before the multiple on-air confrontations at the Republican and Democratic conventions, featuring Olbermann (of course) and also Chris Matthews, David Shuster, and Joe Scarborough. (And who knows what else behind the scenes; if karma bites on screen, no doubt it is biting, too, off screen.)

Now, of course, MSNBC has blown up, and Olbermann, many predict, is on his way out the door.

And in the meantime, Gillette keeps piling on the sauce, detailing Tom Brokaw's role in the leashing of Olbermann. Once again, note that Capus, Zucker, and Immelt all had plenty of advance warning:

The drama began on Sunday, Aug. 24, at a panel discussion in Denver among Sunday political talk show hosts. There Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell asserted that throughout the primaries MSNBC had favored Barack Obama over his preferred candidate Senator Hillary Clinton. Afterward, Tom Brokaw defended NBC News reporters but acknowledged feeling that certain anchor-pundits had crossed a line. “I think Keith has gone too far,” said Mr. Brokaw. “I think Chris has gone too far.”

Behind the scenes, Mr. Brokaw had been saying the same thing to NBC bosses for months. He could accept that cable news was all about opinion. But shouldn’t you at least try and balance opinions from both sides of the political aisle? “After Russert died and Brokaw appointed himself the custodian of the Russert legend, he began beating on Steve Capus and Jeff Zucker and Jeff Immelt that MSNBC was an embarrassment,” said the aforementioned source familiar with the inner workings of the newsroom. “It wasn’t a platform that Brokaw found dignified enough for his presence.”

For his part, Griffin is unapologetic:

“MSNBC just had its biggest year ever in terms of revenue, and is contributing—I don’t want to tell you the number—but let’s just say, a significant part of the revenue base of NBC News, which helps make this division better able to cover news around the world,” said Mr. Griffin. “It’s all working.

Well, yes. It's working to pump up MSNBC a little bit, but it's also working destroy to the NBC brand, and to pollute the entire company. And mark my words, it's going to give NBC/GE trouble with regulators, who tend not to like wildly ideological companies (and I am not just referring to John McCain, here--I am also thinking of Hillary Clinton).

And now, thanks to Gillette, we know that this leftward lurching was all done with the full understanding, and blessing, of the top leaders at NBC/GE. We know what veteran journalists such as Andrea Mitchell and Tom Brokaw think of this journalistic degradation, but TCG also wonders what Jack Welch thinks about that. Forget that Welch is a Republican--the real point is that he is a shareholder value guy, and it's just that, shareholder value, that all this media floundering is costing the company that Welch once loved.

And in the meantime, GE stock continues to decline. It's long been believed that Immelt is looking for a graceful exit from GE, and that perhaps a President Barack Obama would give him a nice job in the government to "lure" him away from his crumbling company. And that would certainly be a fair payback to Immelt--after all, Obama owes MSNBC bigtime for helping him secure the Democratic nomination. But of course, the way things look now, there might not be an Obama administration, and so Immelt might be out of luck.

In any case, there is much more to come here, probably not long after the November election. The Cable Game continues to predict that the final chapter of this soap opera will be written in Fairfield, not Manhattan. And soon.

Dangerous Liaisons at GE/NBC/MSNBC: Or, How The Two Jeffs Learned What an Overdose of Olbermann Will Do!

The Cable Gamer has never been able to figure out exactly what's going on at GE/NBC/MSNBC. I mean, a couple things are clear:

First, Keith Olbermann is a lefty hothead, who had a good thing, in terms of positioning his network where he himself wanted it to be--but then, Olbermann Overdosed, and pushed it all too far.

Second, MSNBC is still ranked third among the cable newsers.

Third, GE stock is still below 30. And trust me, folks, that third reason is the mother of all reasons. GE stock was 60 eight years ago, and that's the transcendent metric by which pension funds and shareholders--the true owners of GE--measure the performance of CEO Jeff Immelt.

Those three things are crystal clear. Now what's murky is what's happening there on a daily basis: Who is stabbing whom?

Here's Jossip's take: It's a corportate powerplay between Immelt and his alleged subordinate, Jeff Zucker.

Once again, it's hard to separate out the leaks and agendas, the finger-pointing and the blame-shifting, so let's go back to three crystal clear facts, and venture three transparently obvious predictions:

First, Olbermann is so radioactive, by his own thermo-design, that he will blow up his next employer, too.

Second, MSNBC won't get out of the dumpster anytime soon.

Third, Zucker and Immelt are not going to stay in the same corporate structure for long. Even if the Two Jeffs are BFF's, the pressure on GE to get the stock price up will be overwhelming, and a significant restructuring is coming. As in, breakup.

And in the Cable Gamer's humble opinion, such a breakup would actually be good news for both entities, GE and NBC (which is technically NBC-Universal, so NBC-U). GE would get a nice spinoff bump, and for its part, NBC-U could be sold to some egomaniacal tycoon, maybe someone already in the industry, or perhaps an egomaniacal tycoon from the outside. And they would pay a big premium for the right to own a blue-chip media company.

Anybody ready for Al-NBC?

Olbermann Countdown

The Cable Gamer has been saying for a long time that MSNBC's lefty idyll, in which all the on-air talent fell in love with Barack Obama, wouldn't last long. Sorry, Rachel Maddow, but you climbed aboard a sinking ship. (OK, actually, I am not sorry.)

Why did I know that MSNBC's Bolshevik period prove to be a brief encounter?

Two big reasons:

First, GE execs, and GE shareholders, wouldn't put up with such lefty antics, in which even Hillary Clinton was scorned. And now we see plenty of confirmation.

Second, Olbermann himself would blow up. He and his act are getting plenty of criticism, and Portfolio's Jeff Bercovici agrees with me: It's just a matter of time before Olbermann departs. Exit, stage left, you might say.

Shivers Down Your Spine Update: Mesh Reporting

ZD Net blogger Jason Perlow alerted The Cable Gamer to a new show, featuring a new kind of history, coming this Thursday from The History Channel. Perlow calls it "mesh reporting," and that's a term that's likely to stick.

THC is presenting "102 Minutes that Changed America/Witness to 9/11," which the channel describes as:

Discover rarely seen and heard archives that document the 102 minutes between the first attack on the World Trade Center to the collapse of the second tower. This commercial-free special uses unique material from sources ranging from amateur photography and video to FDNY, NYPD, Port Authority and emergency dispatch radio recordings, photography and video. Also seen is footage broadcast outside the US, electronic messages and voicemails and "outtakes" culled from raw network footage. Then, watch interviews with individuals who provided videos of the events of that day. The interviews with the filmmakers will provide context for the circumstances they were in, why they shot video, what the footage means to them, and where they were on that day.

ZDNet's Perlow adds:

There have been numerous documentaries and specials about 9/11, but none of them have been as gripping and frightening as this one. Why? Because this show was produced using video sources from real people that were on the scene at the time, shooting as it was happening, and with material that hasn’t been seen before, in all its graphic and horrifying detail.

Over the span of 102 minutes, the video clips are shown in sequential fashion as the events actually happened. It is absolutely disturbing and horrifying, in an almost surreal — or “super real” fashion. If we didn’t all know 9/11 actually occurred, it almost seems like a faux-reality first-person documentary along the lines of “Cloverfield“. The editing and first rate source material results in an incredibly disturbing but beautifully preserved historical record, something that everyone should be forced to see in the coming decades, especially for those that will only know of the attacks like people of my generation know of the Hindenburg, Pearl Harbor or the liberation of Auschwitz through old movies, if only to understand the full significance of the events and feel the sadness and the true horror of what happened.

And then Perlow adds some useful technical insight:

That a program like “102 Minutes” could be produced in this day in age is an testament to the fact that more an more amateurs are able to be used as ad-hoc reporters due to the prevalence of VGA-quality or better video-record mode on cheap digital cameras and increasingly better resolution on cell phone cameras, not to mention that camcorders themselves are now smaller and smaller than ever.

What’s amazing is that all this source material for this special used 2001-era technology. God forbid, but if an event like this was to happen again, the amount of documentation we would have now from people in the field would be incredible. This with the combination of 3G wireless HSDPA and WiMax technology that is now emerging will allow a news network to potentially have THOUSANDS of cameras and data sources, in a term I would like to call “Mesh Reporting”.

And so other events will get covered like this. Hopefully not as sad as 9-11.

"MSNBC...has tried to position itself as a left-wing alternative"

Howard Kurtz reports, you decide.

Shake Up At MSNBC: Olbermann and Matthews Demoted! But Is It Jeff Zucker--Or Jeff Immelt--Doing Damage Control?

Ace Cable Gamer Brian Stelter scoops in The New York Times that Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews have been demoted:

MSNBC tried a bold experiment this year by putting two politically incendiary hosts, Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews, in the anchor chair to lead the cable news channel’s coverage of the election.

That experiment appears to be over.

After months of accusations of political bias and simmering animosity between MSNBC and its parent network NBC, the channel decided over the weekend that the NBC News correspondent and MSNBC host David Gregory would anchor news coverage of the coming debates and election night. Mr. Olbermann and Mr. Matthews will remain as analysts during the coverage.

Stelter presents this as an NBC-driven decision, overseen by MSNBC chief Phil Griffin, NBC News chief Steve Capus, and NBC overall prexy Jeff Zucker. Stelter has certainly done his reporting:

In interviews, 10 current and former staff members said that long-simmering tensions between MSNBC and NBC reached a boiling point during the conventions. “MSNBC is behaving like a heroin addict,” one senior staff member observed. “They’re living from fix to fix and swearing they’ll go into rehab the next week.”

And here's some more:

“They have banked the entirety of the network on Keith Olbermann,” one employee said.

Yikes! Tell that to some GE exec trying to sell electrical equipment somewhere: Your cable-news subsidiary is dominated by someone who thinks that Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton is a dangerous right-winger, and also writes for Daily Kos--you know, the wackoes who claimed, for example, that Sarah Palin was Trig Palin's grandmother, not mother.

And so this juice, too, from Stelter:

Tom Brokaw and Brian Williams, the past and present anchors of “NBC Nightly News,” have told friends and colleagues that they are finding it tougher and tougher to defend the cable arm of the news division, even while they anchored daytime hours of convention coverage on MSNBC and contributed commentary each evening.

A little liberal bias is par for the MSM course, but MSNBC overdid it, casting its ideological shadow over NBC and CNBC, and making the issue of bias a concern for the general public, not just a few conservative media watchdogs. And that's he point where pension-fund managers, and other fiduciary types, get nervous about a company making enemies and perhaps generating boycotts.

Indeed, The Cable Gamer has it on good Wall Street authority that the MSNBC crisis goes higher than NBC. Zucker's boss, GE CEO Jeff Immelt, has become increasingly concerned about the MSNBC soap opera.

And well he should, since it's GE that's taking the hit; the stock price, which closed at $27.88 on Friday, got no lasting bounce from the Olympics; it is now basically back where it was in early August before its slight run-up during the Beijing games.

Meanwhile, here's a TCG prediction: Olbermann will not take this lying down. Yes, MSNBC pays him $4 million a year, but KO is a hothead. TCG predicts that he will quit, or arrange to get fired.

When all this ends, Immelt will be relieved to be rid of Olbermann. Of course, TCG continues to think that GE will be happy to be rid of NBC altogether.

MSNBC: Loser on TV, Winner on the Net?

MSNBC the TV channel might be "the Lohans," in the brutally funny formulation last week of Jon Stewart, but MSNBC the website is doing very well.

Here's the way MSNBC spun it:

"More consumers get their political news from msnbc.com than any other online site. One out of every four people surveyed who said they got their campaign news online named msnbc.com. Of the hundreds of sites users mentioned as sources for political news, msnbc.com was the only site to get over a 25% response."

That's something of a paradox, isn't it? The channel is melting down, but the website is going strong. And that's a reminder: technology is always the big driver in entertainment. And MSNBC has always had, deep in its DNA, not only Microsoft, but also General Electric--two companies that have always been more about technology than show business. Those non-showbiz origins might hurt MSNBC on the air, but they help online. And while it is still the case that probably 90% or more of a cable news network's profits come from TV as opposed to online, that's sure to change, as more and more action migrates to the web.

To put it another way, technology matters. In a country where more than half of people have broadband, where 80% or more of Americans have mobile devices, and where the phone/PDA is turning every handheld into a multimedia center, the old idea of "keeping up with the Joneses" has taken on a whole new techno-meaning.

Here's the bottom line: If people have cooler technology at home, on their computer screen (big or small), than they see on the TV screen in front of them--well, that's eventually going to cause a huge shift in media consumption patterns.

A look back at past techno-breakthroughs in entertainment underscores that point:

In the early days of movies, a century ago, you could make a bad movie--but you still had a movie. And to most audiences in 1908, it was more fun/affordable to go to a movie than to see a live stage show. The novelty of movies was a big selling point, and so was the fact that you were seeing new things, from around the world, not just the world of limelight and greasepaint. And the same techno-imperative, in latter decades, held true for radio and TV--it was something cool to behold. Even a bad radio or TV show was better than what was old.

As TCG has pointed out many times, The Cable Game is in the process of becoming The Convergence Game. MSNBC TV has been a steady third in the cable wars since Fox came along in October 1996, but MSNBC.com could be a whole different story.

The Media Techno-Arms Race: From Cathedrals All the Way To Movies, TV, the Net.

What's the next step in Cable Game technology? OK, so that's not a question asked very often, but it should be. Because the whole history of technology shows that people always want more. And news is not exempt, nor should it be.

So television--or Convergence-vision, after TV and the Net become one--will end up giving people what they want.

Indeed, The Cable Gamer is reading a fascinating book, Shivers Down Your Spine: Cinema, Museums, & the Immersive View, by Alison Griffiths, an associate professor at Baruch College in NYC. Professors are not known for writing accessible books about any topic, and there's some jargon in Shivers (perhaps the academic author still needs to get tenure), but for the most part, Griffiths tells a fascinating tale and tells it well.

She takes us back to the Middle Ages, and their cathedrals. We think of Notre Dame, Chartres, and all the rest of those Gothic structures as great monuments of past faith, and they are--even if they seem to be more like tourist attractions today.

But as Griffiths points out, in their time, cathedrals were the shows, and the showcases, of the age. That is, they were designed, at least in part, to be both impressive and persuasive. That's what all the stained glass, and statues, and incense, and music were for--not to mention the grand architecture.

As Griffiths puts it:

Cathedrals were intrinsically multimedia, multisensory spaces (the apotheosis of the sensorially rich pilgrimage), if we can appropriate a twentieth-century concept to describe a thirteenth-century edifice. The mixed media forms on display in the cathedral were the collective effort of artisans and craftsmen...Gothic artists disclosed a a world of incredible intensity and color, constructing richly embellished three-dimensional objects into which people could enter psychologically.

With all due respect to God--because it was He, after all, who endowed us with the basic skills that makes anything possible--all these production elements sound like showbiz to me! And as Griffith tells us, cathedrals were very much a showcase for the show:

The architecture and visual logic of the interior design formed the the perfect backdrop for rituals involving the stimulation of aural, haptic [touch], olfactory, and oral senses. Spectators experienced their faith not only iconographically but corporeally, since attending the liturgy and receiving the communion in a Caholic Mass was, and still is, an elaborately detailed theatrical performance.

Once again, some might take offense at the equation between faith and theater, but every religion uses the techniques of communication to propagate and perpetuate the faith. What was an eye-opener to TCG was the degree to which the medievals used the then-state-of-the-art technology.

They presented their religious rituals--not just the Mass, but also Passion Plays and other feasts and festivals--inside grand cathedrals designed to "shock and awe." And they went further: They used stage tricks, such as fake blood spurting out of actors, to recreate, for example, Christ's death on the cross. As Griffith adds, the bloodier the better, because we remember vivid better. And as she noted, that's a lesson that was well remembered in Mel Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ."

Since then, the secular has muscled out the sacred; most entertainment is aimed at making a buck, not saving souls. And so while we still have churches and church-pageants, obviously, pop culture and the profit motive are the overwhelming drivers.

Yet the basic injunction--make the show powerfully persuasive--always applies to all forms of show biz. And that means using the latest and greatest techniques. Griffiths carries her tale from churches to dioramas to planetariums, but in each case, the rule is the same: If you want butts in seats, if you want eyeballs glued to the screen, you gotta send shivers down their spine.

It's a never-ending story--the quest for the best. In movies, for example, one can think of all the techno-evolutions of cinema: from the first nickelodeons to full-length dramas, then to sound, then to color, 70 mm, and so on. And then, fitfully, into 3-D and Imax. Techno-evolution is not steady; it starts and stops. But it never reverses course.

And so to today--actually Thursday, in Variety, under the headline, "Studios wary of big budget auteurs/ 'Avatar,' 'Benjamin,' 'Wild Things' are gambles," Anne Thompson provides us with a look into the future of the media, not just movies.

Her story is about three big-budget films using cutting edge technology. The most interesting of the trio seems to be the long-awaited James Cameron movie, "Avatar."

Here's some Variety dope:

Fox execs are sweating as Cameron again pushes the frontiers of f/x and motion picture technology with the CG/motion-capture/live-action 3-D "Avatar." The filmmaker worked on advance R&D for six years -- incredibly, studio execs say they plowed only $10 million into that, gambling that Cameron's new process would even work.

The director, working with VFX whiz Rob Legato, showed the studio advance pre-viz footage demonstrating how high-def video cameras could track actors moving inside a virtual CG set. Initially budgeted at $200 million, the sci-fi epic was pushed back from May to December 2009 to give the director more time to combine in the computer all necessary elements: 3-D motion-capture data of the actors on bare sets, CG environments, and final animation of the human avatars (Sam Worthington and Sigourney Weaver) and alien characters (Teresa Saldana, CCH Pounder). The photo-real digital film is 20% live-action with humans shot on location and 80% live-action mixed with CG elements. "It's a CG film with live-action in it," Legato says.

Sources close to the studio admit there was a time when it was terrified that Cameron's process wouldn't work. Execs relaxed a tad when they got to see finished footage. Giving Cameron and Weta Digital in New Zealand (where substantial rebates make everything cheaper) extra post-production time made sense.

TCG remembers, long ago, when everyone pooh-poohed Cameron's "Titanic"--which, of course, proved to be the greatest box-office hit of all time. But Cameron's true love has always been sci-fi ("Terminator," "The Abyss"), and the technology to go with it (he has always been playing around with filming documentaries under sea, and in space). And so now, "Avatar," which should prove to be another blockbuster. Why? Because people always want to see something new. Show 'em something they haven't seen before, and they will reward you for it.

As Variety's Thompson says of Cameron, "His goal is to change motion pictures as we know them. Fox could score another global commercial blockbuster."

And so now television. Just in the last few years, many networks and channels have shifted over to HD. And CNN paid for a Sky-Cam to cover Barack Obama's speech in Denver.

That's all very nice, but audiences will be soon be saying, "What's next?" That is, the same never-tiring force of technology will force television to make better screens, show better effects, add dimensionality--and who knows what else.

As Griffiths might put it, it's only a matter of time before TV evolves to stimulate the "aural, haptic, olfactory, and oral senses."

TCG believes that this techno-inevitability will apply not just to televised entertainment, but also to TV news. And why shouldn't it? What's more compelling than reality? If there's news from near or far, why not present to TV viewers--and, of course, web-surfers--in the most compelling way possible?

If history is any guide, some media players will resist this techno-inevitability. Some will be smug and complacent, saying, "What we're doing now is good enough."

But others will be smart enough to see that the future never stops. There's always more to do, because there's always more that people want.

Those visionaries will be the big winners.

The Medium is the Messenger: The Real Dynamic of the Palin Candidacy

OK, so we all know that the presidential race is between the tickets of Barack Obama & Joe Biden, on the Republican side, and John McCain & Sarah Palin on the Democratic side. Right? Well, sure, but there's more to it than that.

TCG believes that the real contest is between McCain-Palin, on the one hand--and the press, on the other. And many Americans seem, instinctively, to agree. This story by Joseph Curl, from today's Washington Times, headlined, "Small-town residents boo media with McCain," is a reminder that ordinary folks don't much like the media,

And the cartoon, above, captures the same truth. (Strangely enough, the MSM don't seem to have picked up on this news!)

The truth, of course, is that the Republicans have been running against the media for half a century or more--it's just that Republicans don't always know it. Richard Nixon and Spiro Agnew knew it, and it worked pretty well for them, as they ripped into "nattering nabobs of negativism" in the run-up to the 1972 election. (Yes, scandals engulfed both men soon thereafter, much to the delight of the media, but the subsequent fate of Nixon and Agnew doesn't change the reality that they won in a landslide by attacking the media.

And now, the McCain-Palin ticket is doing it. It's a high-risk strategy, because the media do have real power. But the payoff for the strategy could be a huge GOP landslide.

Because with apologies to the late great Marshal McLuhan, the medium isn't the message, the medium is the messenger. The medium is the messenger of liberalism, and people don't like it.

This is CNN, Slyly Trying To Make Sarah Palin Look Like a Nazi, According To Gawker's Nick Denton

Nick Denton, the founder of Gawker.com and a whole host of websites, covering everything from gossip to technology to sci-fi to porn, is a big deal in the media. Which is to say, he is kinda busy, running his cyber-media empire. So if he personally puts up a post on one of his sites, it must mean something to him.

So here's Denton's take, in Gawker.com this morning, on the picture above, in its entirety:

There are only two explanations for the sieg-heiling image of Sarah Palin that appeared briefly on CNN's website earlier this morning: a mischievous web producer thought to make a connection by photo selection between the Republican vice-presidential nominee and right-wing rabble-rousers of an earlier era; or he or she was so entirely clueless as to miss the allusion. Either way, the choice of image was clearly an embarrassment to a cable news channel which is already under attack from the McCain campaign for aggressive questioning and perceived bias. The front page of CNN.com was changed within minutes; but not before one of our tipsters grabbed a screenshot.

TCG has read in the past that Denton is Jewish, so that might explain his sensitivity to jokes about Hitler salutes. Although, of course, who knows--maybe CNN isn't joking.

But in fact, every fair-minded American should be similarly offended about flip references to Hitler, whether they are made for partisan purposes or simply for numbskull purposes.

NBC = Nothing But Contempt. And The Feeling Is Mutual! Plus, The Latest From the MSNBC Soap Opera.

TV Newser keeps us abreast of the ongoing soap opera, which we might call "Days Of Our MSNBC Lives."

MSNBC is doing its best to tamp down the rampant rumoring, but Phil Griffin et al. can't explain why Keith Olbermann is "anchoring" the GOP convention from New York City.

And Chris Matthews didn't do anything to lessen the tension when he said of Olby:

"He's very professional, very orderly in his way," Matthews says of Olbermann. "He operates in a very professional, predictable...well he's obviously a strong performer. But he obviously operates in a very orderly...and I don't mean this as a put-down but...predictable. He's a very strongly predicable person in the way of his professionalism. I'm uneven and, what's the right word, flamboyant and impulsive."

C'mon Chris: Next time, say what you really think: Kommisar Keith is a Kontrol Freak.

And FTV Live adds this:

Many long time NBC staffers feel that the crew at MSNC is dragging them through the mud.

Last night at the RNC, Veep pick Sarah Palin in her speech said that she was not going to Washington seeking the opinion of "reporters and commentators."

At that point the crowd started angrily chanting NBC, NBC, NBC.

Republicans obviously hate NBC--not just because it is the parent to MSNBC (don't try to pretend otherwise!), but for the snarky anti-Republican attitude that fills such NBC talent as Andrea Mitchell.

So NBC = "Nothing But Contempt." That's the attitude that NBC/MSNBC show toward Republicans and conservatives, and as we saw last night, both on the stage and in the audience, the feeling is mutual.

MSNBC Mugs Its Own Guests--Because They Are Conservatives?

Now this is interesting: Peggy Noonan and Mike Murphy are on MSNBC, thinking that they are off camera and off mic--but they're not. And just a little while later, the video ends up all over the blogosphere, including huge on The Huffington Post (see screen grab above).

Noonan and Murphy, of course, are Republicans. Could that have anything to do with the quick "turnaround" on this embarrassing footage?

Noonan quickly issued a graceful statement of apology, but that still doesn't answer the question of how in the heck did that video get out so quickly? And to all the right--I mean left--places?

"Obama vs. O'Reilly should be a ratings blockbuster for Fox"

That's the headline on Bloggingstocks.com. And TCG will predict that Bill O'Reilly treats Barack Obama with respect.

Having watching O'Reilly over many years, TCG has observed that he goes after people is when they get evasive--violating the no-spin zone rules. But when someone gives a straight up-or-down answer, O'Reilly usually treats them well, whether he agrees with them or not. And he always gives them an opportunity to say their full piece.

And that's a sharp contrast, of course, from Keith Olbermann,who bans everyone but adoring, agreeing lefties from his show--and increasingly, from his network.

TCG assumes that Obama understands this dynamic. After all, there's plenty that they will agree on--for example, Obama's comments about the importance of fatherhood.

And so TCG predicts that Obama will also be a big winner, because in proving that he can deal with O'Reilly, he will help convince folks that he can stand up to John McCain, and then whoever the world throws at him, if he wins. And winning is more likely for Obama, if he learning how to talk to red-state America, and also purple-state America. That's the way to win.

A Tale of Three O's: Obama Shows Guts By Going On O'Reilly, Olbermann Shows Gutlessness By Hiding Back in Manhattan

Interesting item about Keith Olbermann, from FTVLive this morning:

Last week we told you that Keith Olbermann was demanding better security at the Republican National Convention or he wasn't going.

Word is that Olbermann was paranoid that some crazy right winger was going to assassinate him.

Olbermann demanded his bosses protect him, or he and his sandbox were going to stay in New York.

It looks like the suits could not get enough body amour and security guards rounded up for little Keithy.

Olbermann says he is staying in New York to help cover the Hurricane Hanna.

Las we looked the Hurricane was not expected to hit the Big Apple. So, how covering it from NYC or St. Paul is any different, we have no clue.

Do you get the feeling that Olbermann is, simultaneously, both a bully and also prissy? You know, a prissy bully, who sure can dish it out, but hides behind mama's apron when confronted with the consequences of his bullying. Not an attractive combination.

Meanwhile, speaking of O's, Barack Obama has done the stand up thing. He has agreed to appear on Bill O'Reilly's show Thursday night. Smart move by Obama. He'll find some votes, potentially, among the Factor Fans.

And some interesting byplay on Obama's relationship with Fox and Rupert Murdoch, here.

Update on Tucker Carlson: If He Can't Be on MSNBC, Then At Least He Can Be on 23/6, The Huffington Post's Humor Channel

This snippet speaks for itself. Tucker Carlson at his smirky, smarmy best.

Carlson, obviously pleased with himself--for no evident reason, other than being a member of the lucky sperm club--is an easy useful-idiot target for Huffpo's Eugene Mirman. But hey, at least someone is putting him on the air.

This is CNN: Jack Cafferty Slimes Republicans (But What Else Is New?)

CNN can post a highly airbrushed photo of Jack Cafferty on its website, but it's impossible to hide the man's extreme bile.

Here's a sample:

McCain surrounds himself with people like former Republican Sen. Phil Gramm who called America a "nation of whiners" and said we are only suffering a "mental recession."

That's the same problem the Republican Party has. It has lost track of what it used to stand for: small government, a disciplined fiscal policy, integrity.

In a way, the perfect storm of a rapidly changing population -- old white people aren't going to be in the majority very much longer (and isn't that who most of the Republicans are?) -- has combined with the total abdication of principles, Republican or otherwise, of arguably the worst president in the nation's history to mark the beginning of the end of the Republican Party as we know it.

This isn't analysis, this is just slander, piled on wishful thinking. If there was someone saying the exact opposite on CNN's air, just as prominently and frequently, then maybe this sort of barstool spluttering would be OK. But Cafferty is by himself.

And that sends a loud-and-clear message to the half or so of the country that counts itself as Republican, and/or conservative. What's that message? REPUBLICANS, DROP DEAD.

MSNBC's Scarborough Takes An Indirect--But Still Distinct!--Swing at MSNBC's Olbermann

The Cable Gamer missed it live this morning, but thanks to the always alert Real Clear Politics, TCG got a belated chance to see Joe Scarborough take a swipe at Keith Olbermann, albeit not by name.

The set-up here is a little complicated, so please bear with me. It seems that Cong. Robert Wexler (D-FL) attacked Pat Buchanan, the columnist-turned-MSNBC analyst, for being a "Nazi sympathizer." OK, that's kinda strange; there aren't too many Nazi sympathizers in the US, and certainly not Buchanan, who served in three different presidential administrations. But then the Obama campaign got in the middle of this spat, echoing Wechsler's charge.

That led Scarborough to go on "Morning Joe" this morning, to defend Buchanan. Scarborough sort of gave Wechsler a pass, dismissing him as a "hothead," who would apologize soon enough. (TCG isn't so sure about that.) But then Scarborough went on to really rip into the Obama campaign spokesman, one Mark Bubriski. And here's what Joe said, aiming his comments directly at Bubriski--and also, unmistakably, at Olby:

Get a life...Stop being a little kid. If you want to write for Daily Kos, go write for Daily Kos, if you wanna put America in the gutter, then keep it up.

OK, so Scarborough is sticking up for Buchanan. Fine. But when he suggests that writing for Daily Kos is like being "a little kid," that's sure a slam at Daily Kos, as well as Bubriski. And who do we know who writes for Daily Kos as well as does TV for MSNBC? Why, the same Keith Olbermann, that's who!

But wait, there's more! Much more!! Scarborough goes on to say, "If you want to write for Daily Kos, go write for Daily Kos, if you wanna put America in the gutter, then keep it up." Now doesn't that seem to imply that writing for Daily Kos is the same thing as "putting America in the gutter"? That sure is the way it looks to me.

So what gives? TCG sees two possibilities:

First, Scarborough got a pep talk from some higher-up, such as Phil Griffin, urging him to stand up for himself more forcefully on the air, as part of a general corporate pushback against Olbermann's excesses.

Second, Scarborough has lost the internal fight against Olbermann's excesses, and is now in his I-don't-give-a-shit phase, as he is being pushed out the door.

Only time will tell which is true.
And then check this out: When

More Discord at MSNBC? Say It Ain't So, TV Newser! Say It IS So, Broadcasting & Cable!

TV Newser reports that Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews, who were co-anchoring the conventions, are now going their separate ways. That is, now that Gustav has proven to be something of a fizzle, Matthews will be in Minneapolis, while Olbermann will be back in Manhattan. Interesting way to cover a convention.

TVN, of course, never puts a bad spin on anything to do with MSNBC story, but Marisa Guthrie, of Broadcasting & Cable, is not so constrained. She adds this context:

Much has been made of the tension between MSNBC anchors Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews during the Democratic National Convention in Denver last week.

“Infighting boils over,” noted the Huffington Post.

“Brawling Anchors on MSNBC,” read the Page Six headline in The New York Post. The story went on to detail not only Olbermann and Matthews’ infamous oil-and-water chemistry but a DNC dustup between anchor David Shuster, who earlier this year was suspended for saying that Chelsea Clinton was being “pimped out” on the campaign trail, and Republican congressman cum pundit Joe Scarborough.

And then this dishy comment:

So perhaps conspiracy theorists could be excused for reading something into NBC News’ decision to redirect Olbermann from St. Paul back to New York for the Republican National Convention this week.

Guthrie dutifully gets a quote from an NBC suit:

“You shouldn’t read anything into that,” said Steve Capus, president of NBC News.

But Guthrie clearly isn't buying any of it, even as she lets Capus run on a little bit:

Capus chalked up the on-air disagreements as the inevitable theatrics of opinionated people working in a highly charged environment.

“You’re bound to get some disagreements,” he said. “I think you’ve seen little things blown out of proportion.”

Why yes.

Great Cable Gaming, Marisa!

Tucker Carlson Tries to Winch Up The Courage to Say What He Really Thinks, But Can't Do It. So He Sinks Into Weasel-Wording. This is Punditry?

As Howard Kurtz detailed this morning, Tucker Carlson has been slapped around pretty good by the lefties at MSNBC. Carlson, a rich kid used to having things his way, must surely be steaming. And indeed, he doesn't look happy in the picture above, from The Politico. And his now-rare smirk will be even rarer after Komissar Keith read this piece.

And as Politico's Alexander Burns explains in the accompanying article, straight from the GOP convention in St. Paul, Carlson is clearly edging up to the precipice of complaining publicly about the way he has been treated--and then is edging back away from the precipice. But hey, let Burns report, you decide:

Carlson, whose network has been criticized for a perceived* liberal slant, said television would suffer if it did not maintain some pretense of objectivity in its reportage.

“I’m not going to attack Keith Olbermann,” Carlson said, but continued: “I profoundly disapprove and am troubled by the model, on any channel, that lacks a neutral anchor or someone who poses as a neutral anchor.”

While true objectivity might be impossible, the former anchor said, “We should pretend. … One thing we always agreed on was, we may not have reached the ideal of objectivity but we’re all striving toward it.”

So what's Carlson's game? He might have thought that he was covering himself by weaseling around, trying to avoid naming names, not citing specifics, trying to associate himself, however pathetically, with "objective" quality journalism. I mean, jeez, a guy who suggests that we "pretend" to be objective? Who aspires Fakery? That's the standard to which journalists should aspire? Maybe in the sort of punk'd jackass alt.universe that Carlson inhabits, but not in the real world of serious reporters.

But in fact, Carlson will make even more enemies at MSNBC by what he said here. His statement, "I’m not going to attack Keith Olbermann," isn't going to fool anybody. In fact, Carlson is using the rhetorical device known as paralipsis--the Nixonian device of bringing up a topic by saying that you won't bring it up, e.g. "I would never accuse my opponent of being a wife-beater."

Thus the correct translation of Carlson's declaration about Olbermann is, "I AM going to attack Keith Olbermann." And of course, Olbermann knows it. Tucker, you aren't as crafty as you think you are. So expect to see Carlson on MSNBC even less--like, a lot less.

What's the end-game here? The Cable Gamer assumes that Carlson is looking for a way out of MSNBC. Perhaps he can land a gig at another news network, although that's unlikely. Or maybe he can write a tell-all book about his years in the business. That's much more likely. I wonder what security is like at MSNBC--you know, intranets, files, discs, zip drives, that kinda stuff.

*My only quibble with Burns' reporting is the word "perceived," at the beginning. I mean, come on now!

Phil Griffin: "our audience hates Bush" -- So MSNBC gives 'em the GOP-bashing red meat (or should it be blue meat?) that they want!

Howard Kurtz of The Washington Post reports, you decide. It's quite an interesting tale that Kurtz tells, detailing how MSNBC has deliberately avoided using Tucker Carlson and Mike Murphy because of their right-of-center views. Why? Because, as MSNBC chief Phil Griffin told a staffer, "our audience hates [George W.] Bush." And so any sort of conservative presence would drive the audience away.

(Although maybe Carlson is getting a bad rap here. After all, he has made a career out of being the useful-idiot "conservative" that liberals most want to see and hear, because he reliably damns Republicans with faint praise and equally reliably says something nice about the Democrats, allowing Dems to begin sentences with "Even the conservative Tucker Carlson admits..." But if even Carlson is verboten in Olbermann's MSNBC, then geez, they must really being going left.)

Olbermann defended his network to Kurtz, citing the omnipresence of the highly opinionated Pat Buchanan on MSNBC. But of course, Buchanan, too, hates Bush and the neoconservatives who dominate the Bush administration and the McCain campaign--albeit for somewhat different reasons than the Moveon-ers and Kos-sacks who have taken over MSNBC. Still Buchanan and his paymasters at MSNBC are objective allies--they hate the same people.

Griffin gamely attempted to defend MSNBCers Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews as "neutral," but Kurtz shot that down. How? By quoting them:

On his "Countdown" program, which almost never includes conservative guests, Olbermann has told President Bush to "shut the hell up," urged McCain to "grow up," and mocked the Arizona senator with such headlines as "McSame" and "Double Talk Express." ...

After Hillary Clinton spoke, Olbermann said: "Grand slam, out of the ballpark, across the street." And after Obama's acceptance speech, Olbermann said: "Not a sour note and spellbinding throughout."

Interestingly, for all these craven efforts at seducing an audience by traducing what's left of NBC News' reputation, MSNBC is still mired, as Kurtz notes, deep in third place.

Still it's hard not to admire MSNBC for stiffing Carlson.