Remembering Reeve: ABC's "20/20" Tribute

Barbara Walters will host a special edition of 20/20 dedicated to Christopher Reeve tonight on ABC. "A Tribute To Courage" will air before Monday Night Football on the East Coast and afterwards on the West Coast. Here's the press release.

Debate #'s: FNC 7.1, CNN 3.4, MSNBC 1.7 Mil

During the debate, FNC averaged 7,089,000 viewers, CNN delivered 3,376,000 and MSNBC had 1,709,000. (The two MSNBC's = one CNN and two CNN's = one FNC formula is back in effect.) For Fox, that's a 257% increase over the same debate in 2000. (It's a 85% increase for MSNBC and 26% boost for CNN.)

Once again, MSNBC's ratings improved after the debate: The network averaged 2,185,000 viewers between 10:37 and 11pm, a press release noted.

In primetime (8 to 11pm), FNC averaged 5,700,000 viewers, while CNN had 2,597,000 and MSNBC had 1,427,000.

> "During the 90-plus-minutes debate, NBC was the leading broadcast network choice with 12.3 million viewers, followed by ABC (10.3 million), CBS (8.1 million) and Fox (3.8 million)," TV Week reports.

> Update: 9pm: Quoting Variety: "From 11 pm to midnight, MSNBC narrowly beat CNN with its continuing debate coverage (1.6 vs. 1.5), although Fox News drew more viewers than the [competition] combined in the 11 pm hour (3.2 million)."

Who's More Fair: Broadcast Or Cable?

Here's an interesting study: Media Tenor and the Center for Media and Public Affairs say the cable networks have offered more "even-handed" post-debate comments than the broadcast networks, USA Today reports. "The Big Three networks have Kerry winning both debates, but the oft-maligned cable news networks have been more balanced," center chief Robert Lichter says. "And the stereotypes against cable news don't necessarily hold. In the debates, Fox has been 'fair and balanced' and CNN has not been 'liberal.'"

Brokaw Previews "Unsettling" Aspects Of Nov. 2

Tom Brokaw describes the lessons learned from the 2000 election and how they will be applied next month in a Newsweek editorial on newsstands today. Highlights:

> "We expect those lessons to serve us well during the long hours of Nov. 2 and, likely, into the early morning of Nov. 3."

> "What continues to worry the NBC News experts is the reliability of the raw vote count emerging from counties, especially in battleground states."

> "I am also unsettled by the voting difficulties that showed up with new machines and procedures in key states such as Florida in primary elections this year."

The Ticker: Soledad's Back Soon...Sites Blogs...

> Soledad O'Brien returns from maternity leave to anchor CNN's American Morning next week (from Chicago). She tells Lloyd Grove:" I loved being at home with my kids, but I also missed work. My executive producer told me to stop BlackBerrying him because I was driving him crazy."

> MSNBC's Kevin Sites in a must-read blog: "We are bound together in this bloody conflict where the body counts have to break double digits to really get our attention anymore." (Via LR)

> MSNBC on MSN posters analyze signs of an improving relationship between the TV network and MSNBC.com...

Debate: Are You Sick Of The Spinners Too?

CNBC's Gloria Borger believes the post-debate partisans in Spin Alley are "annoying:" "They do not add one thing," she said on Reliable Sources over the weekend. And critic Debra Saunders says she is sick of them: "I think what the public wants to know is, what did these people say that isn't quite accurate? And that's the sort of thing that the networks and all the news organizations should be telling people."

Debate: ASU Students Meet The Media

"Make sure you say "Hi, Mom" whenever you walk by a camera," Arizona State University's student newspaper says today, as the news media descend on Tempe. "Expect to see nearly 1,000 news media coming to campus in the next couple of days. They will steal our parking spots and get free T-shirts from ASU officials to help spread the message that this school really is the Harvard of the Southwest." They say CNN "began setting up lights and a large stage on Hayden Lawn over the weekend..."

A Cameo For Chris Matthews

Quoting Broadcasting & Cable: "MSNBC host Chris Matthews is one of many news cameos in the new Sundance Channel series Tanner on Tanner, a sequel to the political satire Tanner '88...In the third installment, which debuts Oct. 19, the Hardball host barges in on Jack Tanner as he interviews former presidential candidate Howard Dean." More...

CBS's Challenge: Can They Be Critical?

"It's a shame to see the network sinking still further into the muck of mediocrity," David Shaw writes in the LA Times today. He sums up the conundrum CBS faces: "CBS reporters and editors can't help being a bit gun-shy on any story that could be perceived as being critical of Bush — or any story that could be perceived as being favorable to Kerry, for that matter."

Christopher Reeve: News Breaks After Midnight

"Fox News broke into "At Large" with Geraldo to announce the death of Christopher Reeve at 1:24 am Eastern," a viewer writes in. "CNN and MSNBC were still showing canned stuff. Drudge, of course, had the story up by 12:30." CNN broke in with a report from CNN International. CNN.com woke me up with a news alert at 1:35am. "It took FNC about 9 minutes after they announced Christopher Reeve's death on the air to get the story on their website," an e-mailer says. "MSNBC was the first of the cable news sites to have the "Breaking News" banner."

Rukeyser's Illness Causes Show Cancellation

Louis Rukeyser's CNBC program will end in December due to his lengthy illness. "I am still recuperating from serious complications that have taken much longer than seemed reasonable over the past year -- and I can no longer predict when I will be ready to rejoin you here," he said on Friday. Marketwatch has details...