Breaking:The cable news channels are covering the crash of a helicopter belonging to KTRK, the ABC owned-and-operated station in Houston.

CNN is reporting the ABC13 helicopter was en route to an "officer-involved shooting."

A pilot and photographer were on board. Both were killed.

Today's "Politics 2008" conference at Time Warner kicks off with a keynote roundtable moderated by CNN's Campbell Brown. The panel features CNN/U.S. president Jon Klein, Time Magazine managing editor Richard Stengel, Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter and Politico's Jim Vandehei. Here's our Twitter coverage from the event:

Follow TVNewser via Twitter. Click refresh for updates.

Early next year CNN International will launch a live daily broadcast from a new media center in Abu Dhabi. The as-yet-titled CNN International program will be the network's first regularly scheduled program from the region. In addition to the daily, prime time newscast, a new production center in the Abu Dhabi Media Zone will provide infrastructure for expanded newsgathering throughout the Middle East.

"Our UAE expansion is one of our boldest editorial undertakings of recent years and one that builds on our existing newsgathering heritage in the region," said CNNI's managing director Tony Maddox, in a press release.

This is the latest in a series of global initiatives for CNN. Last November the network hired 50 people including 12 new correspondent positions across Africa and India. CNN also announced plans to open new editorial operations in Kabul, Afghanistan, and Santiago, Chile.

• Related: The NYTimes' Tim Arango writes about CNN's presence in the Media Zone along with other western media companies including HarperCollins, Random House, the BBC, The Financial Times and the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

While General Electric's overall third quarter profit dropped 23%, sales income at NBCU gained nearly 10% last quarter. Much of that is due to the division's cable networks including CNBC and MSNBC. In a press release sent out this morning, executives from the networks talked about the growth, despite (or perhaps because of) the financial crisis and faltering economy.

Said CNBC president Mark Hoffman, "We delivered business news, data and analysis in real-time to viewers and users on multiple platforms all over the world while offering our clients unmatched customized advertising solutions that reach the most educated and affluent audience on TV."

MSNBC president Phil Griffin added, "This is an exciting time at MSNBC, as we've experienced historic growth. We've had incredible performance this quarter and the addition of Rachel Maddow has solidified our primetime schedule."

USA, Bravo, Oxygen and Sci Fi also get shout-outs in the press release, after the jump...

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One of the main differences between online journalism outlets and the older journalistic institutions is online's willingness to link to competitors.

The New York Times' Brian Stelter writes how, in some instances, that norm is changing. Stelter cites two examples: NBC's local affiliates and his own newspaper.

"This week NBC will begin introducing Web sites for its local TV stations with links to local newspapers, radio stations, online videos and other sources," he writes. "And The New York Times will soon offer its online readers an alternative home page with links to competitors."

Some tvnewsers who have made their way onto the web do discuss and link to the competition (like FNC's Greta Van Susteren, who gives her take on the Andrea Mitchell disclosure story today).

And although the "link journalism" has translated recently online, on-air "linking" to competitors is still fairly rare.

Two days shy of its first birthday, Fox Business Network is celebrating with increased distribution. Mike Reynolds of Multichannel News reports, "FBN recently signed deals with U.S. Cable and Insight Communications, which next month will begin making FBN available in standard-definition in all of its markets, including Columbus, Ohio, and Louisville, Ky., and its HD feed in many of them."

According to an exec from Insight, FBN has been one of the most requested channels since its launch adding that Dave Ramsey has a strong following in Louisville.

According to Reynolds' sources, FBN is also "closing in on a deal with one of three main holdouts: Dish Network, Cablevision and Cox." Fox Business launched Oct. 15, 2007 with 30 million subscribers. But the end of this month that number will be 43 million. CNBC is in 97 million homes.

TVNewser will be attending, "Politics 2008 — The Media Conference for the Election of the President," co-hosted by Time Magazine and CNN at the Time Warner Center, today and tomorrow (FishbowlNY will be there as well).

After the conference kicks off with a welcome from Time Warner CEO Jeffrey Bewkes, TVNewser will Twitter throughout the keynote roundtable beginning at 12:45pmET, moderated by CNN's Campbell Brown. The panel features CNN/U.S. president Jonathan Klein, Time Magazine managing editor Richard Stengel, Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter and Politico's Jim Vandehei. (Follow TVNewser on Twitter.)

Other sessions today feature panelists ranging from CBS' Jeff Greenfield to CNN's Candy Crowley, and things close out with an interview between Anderson Cooper and comedian Lewis Black.

Tomorrow Dan Rather talks media bias, Christiane Amanpour and Wolf Blitzer discuss the global perception of the U.S. and more.

Stay tuned to TVNewser tonight and tomorrow for video, pictures and posts about the conference.

FBN's Rebecca Gomez has some happy personal news: she got married this weekend. The co-host of "Happy Hour" got hitched Saturday in Manhattan to Brett Diamond, the CEO of a telecommunications consulting company.

The New York Times' Brian Stelter picks up on a recent Columbia Journalism Review article about how MSNBC afternoon anchor (and NBC's chief foreign affair correspondent) Andrea Mitchell covers the financial crisis given that Mitchell is married to former Fed chairman Alan Greenspan. Essentially, she doesn't.

Stelter writes, "Greenspan's name has come up dozens of times on MSNBC in the last month, but never during the 1 p.m. hour." That's the hour Mitchell anchors.

Says NBC News president Steve Capus, "To me it's a pretty easy balancing act. She knows where to draw the line."

As someone who spent a year producing for Mitchell, I can tell you that line was drawn a long time ago. I produced Mitchell's MSNBC show in 2000. The Mitchell Report was primarily about the presidential primaries and general election, but these were also the heady days of the markets and when Greenspan himself made news. CNBC even began the Greenspan Briefcase Indicator — a wholly unscientific way to forecast whether the Fed would raise or reduce the interest rate based on the thickness of Greenspan's briefcase as he arrived at the Fed. On any given day when Greenspan was in the news, Mitchell would always tell us in our pre-show meetings, "We're not doing the Greenspan story." And we wouldn't.

This morning on CNN's Reliable Source, Howard Kurtz asked Politico's Roger Simon whether he thought Tom Brokaw lost control of last Tuesday's debate?

Simon: No. I think he really was trying to play by the rules. And if he appeared to lose control, it's because it's live TV, and both the guys on stage are good enough at using live TV that they know they can get away with anything.

The rules say you can only go five feet from your chair, they'll go 10 feet. What, is Tom supposed to wrestle them to the ground? If it says you can't respond to your attacker, they'll respond to your attacker. What, is he going to stuff his tie in their mouths?

They will do what they want to do. They are good players on the stage. They know how to game the system.

CNBC has added two hours of live programming tonight. David Faber and Michelle Caruso-Cabrera will anchor, "Is Your Money Safe?," from 9-11pET. The network will then pick up live CNBC Asia coverage at 11pmET.

• Earlier: Overtime, Again, For the Biz Channels...

Politico's Michael Calderone has a question about MSNBC's Chris Matthews after Matthews made a trip to his old stump, er, stomping ground.

Former CNBC and Headline News anchor Renay San Miguel has found life after TV news, and it includes writing about TV News. San Miguel writes an opinion piece for for TechNewsWrold about FNC's and CNN's attempts at live Webcasting. On FNC, The Strategy Room; on CNN, the AC360 Webcast. San Miguel writes:

Lest I give you the impression that "Strategy Room" is Roger Ailes' take on "The View," it's not all females all the time. The hosts rotate among Fox News' stable of anchors and correspondents, and sometimes after the pre-roll ad ends, there's no real introduction from said host. It's like being parachuted into the middle of a discussion...

As for CNN...

Pencil in the "AC360" webcast as a work in progress. Correspondent Erica Hill (a former Headline News colleague) hosts a live stream broadcast at CNN.com during the commercial breaks in Cooper's show. This gives her a chance to show off plenty of off-the-cuff personality and also sneak in more questions of in-studio guests...

> Update: Greta Van Susteren is keeping us honest (her words, not mine). From her GretaWire blog:

I just read an article on tvnewser.com about webcasting and OOPS they forgot GretaLiveWire!! (I just realized they also forgot Tammy Haddad who does live coverage of big political events on the web. She is the one of the best known webcasters in the business but they forgot her, too. OOPs. Click here.)

Well, Greta, the blog post was a pick-up of a story that reviewed just the FNC and CNN Webcasts. There are others out there too, including Katie Couric's convention and post-debate Webcasts discussed in this Saturday New York Times story about Couric.

Dr. Sanjay Gupta takes off his surgical scrubs and puts on his investigative journalist hat for CNN Presents: Fit to Lead. Dr. Gupta interviews four former presidential press secretaries and three presidential physicians about what it takes to be medically fit for the nation's highest office.

Dr. Gupta also reports on little-known medical decisions involving past presidents going back to the administration of Abraham Lincoln and continuing through to the current campaign.

The special premieres tonight at 8pmET/PT and reairs at the same time tomorrow night.

TVNewser has obtained a cease & desist letter sent by lawyers from Fox News Channel to AirNet Group Corporation, the company that hosts John McCain's campaign Website.

The copyright infringement notification stems from this ad currently playing on the McCain-Palin site. It includes grainy images and audio of reporting from Fox News correspondent Eric Shawn. The notification states, "Fox News requests that you immediately cease and desist from any further use of the copyrighted material and that access through the Website to the Material, and any other Fox News materials, be immediately disabled."

Two weeks ago, NBC sent a cease & desist to the Obama campaign after it used images of Tom Brokaw and Keith Olbermann in a campaign ad.

Click continued to read the email...

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