The breaking news trickled in from Alaska in bits and pieces. First it was: 'Gov. Sarah Palin Won't Run for Re-Election.' Soon enough the cable news networks were scrambling to confirm that Palin would be stepping down as Governor, which she is, on July 25th. As a news conference - without live transmission - was underway at Palin's Wasilla, Alaska home, the national news media was 4,000 miles away waiting for word.

• At 3:02pmET CNN's Rick Sanchez reported that Palin would not be running for a second term. He would repeat the news a few more times until 3:29pmET when, sourcing Alaska affiliates, that Palin would be stepping down as Governor.

• FNC reported that Palin would not be running for a second term at 3:10pmET. At 3:34pm Gregg Jarrett broke in again to report that Palin was handing over power to the Lieutenant Governor, again sourcing a local Alaska reporter. At 3:42, Jarrett reported that FNC had spoken to Todd Palin who confirmed the news.

• MSNBC first reported the news that Palin would not be running at 3:13pmET. An hour later MSNBC broke in again, this time with the tape of Palin announcing her plans.

FNC's Chris Wallace wondered why the soon-to-be former Governor made the announcement with such little fan-fair, asking: "Wouldn't you have scheduled it in a way that all of the national media could get up there with satellite trucks and broadcast it live and we could be broadcasting it instead of talking about it? This does not feel like the act of a woman who wants to have a national career."

Meanwhile, CNN's Sanchez has his own questions about the step-down:

Fox News Channel is sticking with regular programming on Tuesday for the Jackson memorial which starts at 1pmET/10amPT. Adam Housley and Casey Stegall will be on-site in Los Angeles for live reports. Trace Gallagher and Martha MacCallum will be in New York anchoring Live Desk during the service.

Greta Van Susteren will also be in LA on Tuesday, and will host her show from there Tuesday night.

> Earlier: CBS News Plans for Michael Jackson Memorial

"Meet the Press with David Gregory was #1 again last week and for the second quarter of 2009 - the show's 47th consecutive quarterly win in Total Viewers. But the gap continues to narrow.

"Face the Nation with Bob Schieffer" was second in Total Viewers last week while "This Week with George Stephanopoulos" was second in younger viewers.

Schieffer's show is up 13% in both Total Viewers (3.00m from 2.66m) and A25-54 viewers compared to last year.

"This Week" continued to close the gap with "Meet" for the 21st consecutive week. Averaging 3.15 million Total Viewers, the ABC show is up 15% in Total Viewers and up 7% in the demo versus last year. This was the smallest Q2 gap between "This Week and "Meet" since 1998.

Total Viewers: NBC: 2,750,000 / CBS: 2,480,000 / ABC: 2,350,000 / FOX: 1,050,000

A25-54 demo: NBC: 890,000 / CBS: 720,000 / ABC: 780,000 / FOX: 420,000

Lou Wiley, the longtime Executive Editor of FRONTLINE, has retired. Wiley worked for Boston's PBS station WGBH-TV, which produces FRONTLINE, for 33 years. He was involved in the creation of the show, along with other programming.

Of all the FRONTLINE episodes over the years, Wiley tells TVNewser he is perhaps most proud of 2000's "The Case for Innocence", produced by Ofra Bikel, which investigated cases of the wrongly-convicted. The show generated a strong public reaction.

"Ten months after the broadcast," Wiley says, "all three of the profiled prisoners had been exonerated and freed as a result of new DNA tests. For me this was an ongoing lesson in the power of good reporting to make a real difference."

Wiley will now become a consultant and also focus on his hobbies, art and antiques.

60 Minutes was honored with two Gerald Loeb Awards at a New York ceremony earlier this week.

The program won both of the Loeb television prizes:

• The Television Breaking News award was given for a financial story by Steve Kroft, "House of Cards" (L. Franklin Devine and Jennifer MacDonald produced).

• The Television Enterprise Winner prize went to Scott Pelley's "The Wasteland", which looked into the dumping of electronic waste (Solly Granatstein and Nicole Young produced). This is the "fifth major prize awarded to the story since it was broadcast last November," according to a CBS press release.

The awards, presented by the UCLA Anderson School of Management, were established in 1957 by Gerald Loeb, a founding partner of E.F. Hutton.

While several news anchors are heading to Los Angeles for coverage of you know what, "Good Morning America" Weekend is keeping Independence Day in mind.

Kate Snow and Marysol Castro will report live from two of the country's most historic landmarks tomorrow.

Snow will bring viewers live inside the crown of the Statue of Liberty as the landmark re-opens to the public for the first time since 9/11. Meanwhile, Weather and features correspondent, Marysol Castro, will report live from the very spot where the Declaration of Independence was adopted -- Independence Hall in Philadelphia, PA.

Anchor Bill Weir and news anchor Ron Claiborne will hold down the fort in Times Square tomorrow morning.

In an interview with TheStreet.com, News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch is asked about Fox Business Network rival CNBC:

Question: Are you annoyed you don't own CNBC?

Murdoch: No

Question: Why not?

Murdoch: Because we're going to enjoy the competition. We have to get wider distribution and that takes time. We are further ahead with Fox Business than we were at this stage with Fox News, and Fox News today is one of our very greatest and largest assets.

Question: Why don't you hire away all the CNBC on-air people?

Murdoch: We don't think they're all that good. There are some good ones, but that'll be up to [FNC/FBN chairman] Roger Ailes. We create or we discover previously undiscovered talent and make them into stars.

Today at NoonET, with the markets closed for the 4th of July holiday, CNBC will broadcast a new special called "The Ultimate Power Lunch: 50 Years of the Four Seasons."

CNBC's Bill Griffeth, a co-anchor of the weekday "Power Lunch" hosts today's special which is all about Manhattan's Four Seasons restaurant (not to be confused with the Four Seasons hotel a few blocks away). The famed restaurant is celebrating 50 years of feeding the biggest names in finance, politics and fashion.

CBS News sent us their plans for Tuesday's Michael Jackson memorial Service at the Staples Center.

Monday, July 6

• THE EARLY SHOW (7:00-9:00 AM, ET) broadcast live from Los Angeles

• CBS EVENING NEWS WITH KATIE COURIC (6:30-7:00 PM, ET) anchored by Couric from the Staples Center

Tuesday, July 7

• THE EARLY SHOW (7:00-9:00 AM, ET) anchored by Maggie Rodriguez and Harry Smith from the Staples Center

• CBS EVENING NEWS WITH KATIE COURIC (6:30-7:00 PM, ET) anchored by Couric from the Staples Center

• 48 HOURS (10:00-11:00 PM, ET) anchored by Couric from the Staples Center

	5p:	6p:	7p:	8p:	9p:	10p:	11p:
FNC	Beck:	Baier:	Shep:	O'Reilly:	Hannity:	Greta:	O'Reilly:
	515	396	428	665	524	458	460
CNN	Blitzer:	Blitzer:	Dobbs:	Brown:	King:	Cooper:	Cooper:
	236	237	243	288	525	457	313
MSNBC	Matthews:	EdShow:	Matthews:	Olbermann:	Jackson:	Jackson:	Olbermann:
	185	127	176	261	252	190	137
HLN	Prime:	Prime:	VMitchell:	Grace:	Dobbs:	Grace:	Showbiz:
	167	188	260	339	268	339	301

continued...

TVNewser hears former Today show and MSNBC meteorologist Sean (it's pronounced Seen, don't call him Shawn) McLaughlin will be back in New York this weekend filling in for Dave Price on the "Early Show." McLaughlin will be on the show tomorrow, Saturday and Monday.

McLaughlin left NBC in Sept. 2006 and returned to Phoenix as chief meteorologist and news anchor at CBS affiliate KPHO.

FBN's Shibani Joshi appears on the cover of The Indian American magazine.

In an an article titled "Finance at Her Fingertips" in the May-June 2009 issue, Joshi discusses her childhood in Oklahoma, her career path, and two of her role models: Oprah Winfrey and fellow Indian-American tvnewser Dr. Sanjay Gupta.

Joshi is also asked for her thoughts on March's brouhaha between CNBC's Jim Cramer and Jon Stewart. "Look, I felt for Jim Cramer watching him on 'The Daily Show': he was set up to take the fall for the entire media industry...Cramer has made a number of calls that have been totally wrong. Jon Stewart was simply making him accountable for his own words. But to pin the financial crisis on the oversight of journalists isn't appropriate."

Shibani is scheduled to report live for FBN from India July 14-15, on how the country is faring during the global economic downturn.

Following up on our post yesterday about cable news audience retention in the days following the death of Michael Jackson - Fox News continues to hold its audience far more than its competitors and, in one measurement, at twice the rate of CNN.

• Total Viewer retention (Thurs., June 25 vs. average of Mon., June 29 & Tues., June 30):

Total Day: FNC 99%, CNN 59%, MSNBC 68%
Primetime: FNC 85%, CNN 38%, MSNBC 65%

• A25-54 viewer retention (Thurs., June 25 vs. average of Mon., June 29 & Tues., June 30):

Total Day: FNC 73%, CNN 44%, MSNBC 47%
Primetime: FNC 54%, CNN 33%, MSNBC 40%

Buoyed by their health care special with Pres. Obama and two days of coverage on the death of Michael Jackson ABC's "Nightline" was #1 among Total Viewers last week, outperforming NBC's "The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien" and CBS' "Late Show with David Letterman." Conan was still tops in younger viewers.

The last time "Nightline" bested both CBS and NBC among Total Viewers was election week, November 2008. The last time "The Tonight Show" was not the number one program at 11:35pm two weeks in a row, not including the writers' strike in 2007, was in 1996, when "Nightline" placed first.

For the week of June 22, 2009:

	5p:	6p:	7p:	8p:	9p:	10p:	11p:
FNC	Beck:	Baier:	Shep:	O'Reilly:	Hannity:	Greta:	O'Reilly:
	575	396	486	879	665	539	488
CNN	Blitzer:	Blitzer:	Dobbs:	Brown:	King:	Cooper:	Cooper:
	269	218	212	352	633	778	536
MSNBC	Matthews:	EdShow:	Matthews:	Olbermann:	Maddow:	Olbermann:	Maddow:
	183	140	170	337	247	202	77
HLN	Prime:	Prime:	VMitchell:	Grace:	Dobbs:	Grace:	Showbiz:
	152	213	277	400	353	347	313

continued...