Ratings: "CNBC Is On Life Support"

...That's the word from an industry source, who wonders if Jeff Zucker has seen Thursday's ratings:

Capital Report: .1/87,000 HH/104,000 viewers   (Why isn't it re-aired?)

Dennis Miller: .3/218,000 HH/211,000 viewers   (Relatively good!)

McEnroe: .1/114,000 HH/ 103,000 viewers   (Yes, it scratched, again.)

When Dennis Miller is your top-rated primetime show (Apprentice reruns don't count!), you know you're in trouble...

Thursday Ratings: 'After Hours' Improves MSNBC 9pm, But Trails Larry, Sean & Alan

CNN seems to look more like MSNBC, especially in total day ratings. Number of Thursday viewers:

Total day: FNC: 1,035,000 // CNN: 478,000 // MSNBC: 245,000

Primetime: FNC: 2,287,000 // CNN: 869,000 // MSNBC: 438,000

Aftter Hours performed relatively well in the 9pm MSNBC timeslot, earning a considerably higher rating than Deborah Norville usually does during the same hour. And O'Reilly is still on a roll:

Individual shows: FNC: O'Reilly, 2,721,000 viewers; H&C, 2,265,000; and Greta: 1,877,000 // CNN: Zahn, 526,000; King, 1,284,000; Brown, 797,000 // MSNBC: Countdown, 378,000; After Hours: 462,000; Scarborough: 474,000.

RNC: CNN's Heading Back To The Floor

CNN's anchors will cover the Republican convention from the floor of Madison Square Garden, David Bohrman said. CNN staffers had previously suggested to TVNewser that that platform used in Boston was unlikely to appear again in NYC, due to space constraints.) "We're committed to is giving viewers a feel of what it's like to actually be at the convention and what it's like to put on the show," Bohrman tells Broadcasting & Cable. And that includes airing a feed from the convention producers — but without the F-word this time...

Q&A With CNN's Christiane Amanpour:
Refugees, Challenges, & Storytelling In Sudan

Only on TVNewser: The situation in Sudan has been called the worst humanitarian crisis in the world today. But you wouldn't guess that by watching television news. The crisis on the African continent has largely been ignored by western media organizations.

CNN is an exception, thanks in part to Christiane Amanpour, the network's chief international correspondent. Amanpour traveled to the region in May, and arrived back in the area with a four-person crew yesterday. (She broadcast a live report from the country earlier today.)

This afternoon, Amanpour talked to TVNewser from Khartoum, Sudan:

How difficult has it been to get into Sudan? Are the challenges only for journalists, or for others too? Everyone has had difficulties getting into the region. Aid workers and journalists. It is very difficult to get visas, and once you do, the Sudanese government makes it difficult to get travel permits to get to Darfur. In the last month - after visits from U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell and U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan to Sudan - access has become a little easier, but the violence has continued in Darfur. Is aid getting to the refugees? Aid is increasingly getting to refugees. There are 1.2 million refugees that the U.N. knows about, but there are 600,000 that the U.N. does not know about in the wild (not in camps), and aid is not getting to them. The aid that is getting to the refugee camps is not sufficient. USAID has warned that 300,000 people could be dead in Darfur by the end of the year, and that's if aid gets to them rapidly. If it does not get to them quickly, USAID is warning that a million people could die in Darfur by the end of the year. Is it difficult to tell stories in the midst of a crisis like this one? Lack of access and violence always make it difficult. But that's our job, and we've been doing it many, many years and are used to telling stories during these crises. That's why we come here, because it is a crisis.

Amanpour will travel to the Darfur region in the coming days.

On Monday, Part 2: Amanpour says the lack of media attention to the crisis is "shameful..."

The Ticker: When Is A News Alert Appropriate?

> From an e-mailer: "ABC, MSNBC, and FNC have sent out breaking news e-mail alerts to notify subscribers of the death of funk rocker Rick James. God rest his soul, but this does not warrant a mass e-mailing...This is a sad reflection on the news business, at least in terms of how they apparently view what's important."

> An unemployed computer programmer on Staten Island sent 3,500 e-mails to MSNBC over the course of two months last year, including several that allegedly threatened Tom Brokaw. (Romenesko)

> RatherBiased. notes CBS's new diversity program, but says that "political diversity is in even shorter supply."

Unity 2004: Bush Addresses Journos At Conference

> President Bush spoke to the group today, and said he appreciated the chance to "establish a cordial and professional relationship with people who help spread the news." (Broadcasting & Cable notes that while Kerry was quizzed about media consolidation during his address yesterday, Bush didn't mention it today.)

> Lost Remote has a dispatch from the conference, discussing the "breakfast test," "a la carte diversity," and media ownership.

> I'll be attending the Unity conference on Saturday, so check back for updates over the weekend.

Time Warner Chairman Attacks Fox News

Time Warner chairman Dick Parsons says Fox News Channel viewers like to "come and sit down for an hour or two and listen to crazy people exchange views." He made the comments today at the Unity conference in Washington D.C., according to Broadcasting & Cable, which broke the news this afternoon. Parsons stressed that CNN "does not give a corporate slant to its journalism. We don't tell them how to report." More...

> Update: 4:43pm: Shep Smith joked about it with Janice Dean on Studio B today: (Thanks Mark!)

SHEP: Do you know who Dick Parsons is? DEAN: Refresh my memory. SHEP: He's the Chairman of Time Warner. It's a little cable operation. He said today that Fox News Channel viewers just like to sit around and watch crazy people exchange their views. [At this point Dean starts waving her hands around her head and making silly noises!] SHEP: That's good! We crazy! We crazy like a Fox! These people need to worry about their own channels, and get their own lives. You wonder why they have problems? Don't worry about us. We're doing fine. We're great over here. Crazy, but we're fine.

FNC "Attacked More Viciously Than Any Channel In The History Of American TV" --O'Reilly

TelevisionWeek's Alex Ben Block appeared on The O'Reilly Factor Thursday night to discuss his column about FNC's P.R. practices. Ben Block asserted that FNC's public relations department is "more demanding, much tougher" than most others. O'Reilly's response:

O'REILLY: "...has there ever been a network in the history of television attacked as viciously as this news channel?" BEN BLOCK: Well, you know, a lot of channels have been attacked in different ways over the years... O'REILLY: Mr. Block, you're dodging a very simple question. Has there ever... BEN BLOCK: In the political sense, Fox is an extraordinary -- it is a special case, no question.

O'Reilly also describes Robert Greenwald as a "smear merchant:"

Continue: O'Reilly And TVWeek's Alex Ben Block

WP's de Moraes Details McEnroe's Woes

In a Washingtonpost.com chat with Lisa de Moraes yesterday, a McEnroe viewer defended the show and wondered: "What is the problem? Is it the crappy lead-in...or that most people don't watch CNBC" once the markets close? Her response: "The problem is that you are the only person who thinks it's a good show. Though it debuted only a short while ago, it has already flat lined - zero ratings - on three nights. This may have something to do with the fact that he does not seem to be able to: conduct an interview, read a list of questions, throw to commercial break. The list goes on and on."

> Contest: When Will Mac Get The Sack?

The Ticker: Laurie Jennings Leaving?; "Vacation"

> Snip: "Insiders are telling FTVLive that MSNBC anchor Laurie Jennings is heading back to Miami to work at WPLG." Jennings anchored at Miami's WSVN before she moved up to Secaucus. Hmm. You don't think he pulled this "insider information" from TVSpy, do you?...

> An e-mailer writes in about Zahn and Norville: "Have you noticed that the two blondes in cable's primetime who can't hold their own with ratings, seem to continually go missing — or rather go on 'vacation.' What's that about?"

> From the mediabistro.com Letters to the Editor page: "If you're at home during the day, as I am, you see that Fox anchors and correspondents are just slightly tweaking the news that everyone else is reporting, not really filtering it through a right-wing lens."

> Vaughn Ververs: Media bias complaints could be justified: "Rather than some ideologically-driven agenda to put a Democrat in the White House, press bias appears rooted more in a sense of guilt."

> FNC's Steve Harrigan blogs about learning Arabic in London...

Should The Media Report The Swift Boat Allegation? "Should We Allow Anyone To Say Anything?"

Aaron Brown's NewsNight essay is worth quoting at length today:

"Here's a question to start the night. If someone makes an allegation in a political campaign, a serious allegation, should we report it simply because it's made? Is the allegation itself news? Let's say, for example, that someone alleges that a candidate had a drug problem at some point in his life. Should that allegation be reported if we don't know the truth of it or can't confirm any of it just because someone makes the charge? We actually dealt with this four years ago with one of the candidates for president and we didn't report it because, though we tried to find the evidence, we could not. Was that the right call? Were we taking sides by not reporting the allegation? Should we just allow anyone to say anything, let the other side deny it and go home, call it a night? This is the political season and some pretty nasty things are being said and will be said. Do you think we should report them all, throw in the denials and say we've done our job? That's a question for you to consider tonight."

Related: One local TV-newser relates the serious conversations being held in newsrooms about being "fair" and reporting on the ad...

"Outfoxed:" Arrives In Theaters; New Reviews

As Outfoxed premieres in theaters in NYC, DC, LA and SF, several new film reviews are out:

> New York Daily News reviews 'Outfoxed:' "Other than getting this out of his system, you have to wonder what Greenwald expects to accomplish. Without a nanosecond devoted to the network's defense, it's hard to imagine one-in-a-hundred Fox devotees watching it."

> Washington Post: " Often, Greenwald's argument is convincing, especially when he's talking to former Fox News workers...But Greenwald undermines his own mission when he mixes apples and oranges, the very sin he accuses Fox of committing."

> FilmJerk: "Despite its shortcomings, [Outfoxed] is required viewing not only for media watchdogs and future journalists, but those who are concerned with how news is disseminated."

Maybe Wolf Blitzer Knows Something We Don't

Are there 240 countries in the world? In an interview with the Boston Phoenix, Wolf Blitzer says the "future" for cable news is "great," noting that "CNN's got a big world out there: We've got 240 countries that get CNN, CNN International." "That's pretty fantastic considering there are only 193 countries in the whole world," an e-mailer points out. "You'd hope a news anchor wouldn't be so far off the mark." Indeed, About.com says there are 193 countries in the world. CNN's promotional text says that their "networks and services are available to more than 1 billion people in more than 212 countries and territories."

O'Reilly & Krugman "Debate" On CNBC Saturday

Viewers are buzzing about this weekend's showdown between Bill O'Reilly and Paul Krugman. The "conversation" will air on Tim Russert's CNBC show, Saturday at 7 and 10pm. Some of the highlights, courtesy of the Post: "O'Reilly called Krugman a 'quasi-socialist,' Krugman called that 'slander' and said if he is a quasi-socialist then O'Reilly is a 'quasi-murderer;' O'Reilly pronounced Michael Moore's 'Fahrenheit 9/11' a bit of 'Nazi propaganda' that reinforced all of Krugman's 'paranoid delusions,' Krugman insisted Moore's flick was 'flawed' but was made by 'a guy who really does love this country,' Russert hardly got a word in edgewise; and a good time was had by all."

Let's Turn Newsmagazines Into Infomercials!

The WP's Lisa de Moraes notes that ABC News and CBS News will "devote portions of their Friday newsmagazines to infomercials for products in which the networks have a financial interest." ABC's 20/20 will interview Victoria Gotti about her "hot new television show" on A&E — while ABC is one of the owners of A&E. And CBS's "48 Hours" will talk to one of UPN's "Next Top Model" contestants — while CBS and UPN are both owned by Viacom...

Kerry Commends Journalists For "Persistent Vigilance," References "Outfoxed" In Unity Speech

Quoting John Kerry’s speech to the Unity 2004 conference Thursday morning:

"As president, I will expand opportunities for people of color in the media, by appointing FCC commissioners committed to enforcing equal employment and insuring that small and minority-owned broadcasters are not consolidated into extinction." "...No one in public life doesn’t have some complaint, at some time, about the 'fourth estate.' But your persistent vigilance makes us all better — and it makes you watchmen on the walls of liberty..." "Your questioning, your demands for honest answers, your reporting on our progress, and your holding us accountable for our promises, are an indispensable force in moving America forward."

During the Q&A period, Kerry referred to the film 'Outfoxed' and said "you can make your own judgments about it." He also criticized the networks for not covering more of his convention last week. (Newsday)