Compared to FNC and MSNBC, CNN is devoting much more of its primetime and overnight schedule to the tsunami disaster. Paula Zahn is MIA -- Anderson Cooper will host a two-hour special from 7 to 9pm. At 11pm, the domestic channel will simulcast live CNN International coverage -- except for the midnight and 3am hours, when Larry King Live will repeat ("Join Larry for amazing survival stories"). "Like I've said before, make this a permanant change to the overnight schedule and CNN will never be caught with it's pants down during the overnight hours," an e-mailer says. Other coverage notes:

> NBC has finally flown a correspondent into the region: Ned Colt reported via videophone from Sri Lanka on the Nightly News.

> Anderson Cooper interviewed Brad Olsen, a CNN cameraman based in Beijing who was vacationing with his family on an island near Phuket when the waves hit.

> On MSNBC, Bob Sullivan discussed "Tsunami Bloggers" in a late-afternoon segment. "Blogs are acting like news services," Glenn Reynolds observes on MSNBC.com.

> "The top story on Access Hollywood was the Sex And The City DVDs," an e-mailer says. "It's nice to see the entertainment media stay in touch with the real world."

"I'm sure that concerned families -- of people visiting the region or permanently based there -- are watching CNNI through your service and learning what they can about the disaster."

That's an excerpt from a message that Ed, a regular TVNewser tipster, wrote to Time Warner Cable this evening, "thanking them for continuing to carry CNNI. Let's hope the cablers learn from this and cable providers learn that there is a need and a want for such channels," he says...

# 12/27/2004 07:26:27 PM

Dr. Phil McGraw's appearance on Meet The Press with Tim Russert yesterday was not popular in the blogosphere. I tried to find a positive reaction, but I couldn't:

> Jeff Jarvis: "Who the hell is booking this show? Meet the Press has been the smartest show on TV. They can get anyone they want. They used to try a little harder to find someone smart. Now their guests are as random as an elevator ride."

> The Carpetbagger Report: "To be fair, I can appreciate the difficulties in getting A-list guests the day after Christmas. Fine. But if NBC is going to run the program, Meet the Press has to do better than a pop psychologist parroting bumper-sticker wisdom for the masses."

> James Wolcott: "I'm not sure what which was worse, Dr. Phil's thimble-deep patriarchal profundities or the sage nods with which they were received by Untiny Tim."

> Mid-Twenties Cynic: "Whoever had the idea for Dr. Phil to be a guest should take an unpaid leave of absence for a week and think about what he/she has done."

The hunt is on for dramatic tsunami video, the AP's David Bauder reports. "APTN is competing fiercely with another news agency, Reuters, to acquire video. APTN producers were sent to six airports in Europe and Asia on Monday to ask tourists if they had captured the scene on their home video cameras." "Obviously there weren't news crews staking out the beaches," says Chuck Lustig, ABC News director of foreign news...

Former Fox News producer and current WGHP-TV reporter Erik Liljegren is returning to FNC as a correspondent, Medialine posters say. Liljegren spent six years at FNC off-camera before taking an on-air position at FOX8 in High Point, NC.

FOX8 videographer Stewart Pittman praised Liljegren on his blog:
"Before we ever learned how to spell his name, this affable and erudite chap from New Jersey proved he didn't just fall off the hairspray truck," he writes. "...Now he's leaving us, taking his polished shtick and sculptured hair back to the Big Apple, where he'll return to his roots at Fox News Channel. This time however, he'll be in front of the camera, a gig he's had his eye on since the very first day he sauntered into Rupert Murdoch's kingdom."

> CNN is still using those gaudy, awful, huge tabs on their lower thirds. They've whipped up an "ONLY ON CNN" tab that looks "very tacky and sloppy," one viewer says.

> Many e-mailers are praising CNN's coverage of the disaster. "It seems as if CNN got their act together after a few slow hours just after the quake...CNN's coverage has been an A+!," one person said.

> "I wish we had access to CNNi," another person says. "I love CNN, but the US channel is always slow to react to international breaking news..."

> Is it true that one FNC segment today wondered whether or not the United States should be helping with the relief efforts, and how it could help the war on terror?

> ABC News Now "streamed a BBC News broadcast which had exclusive video, and an expert who better explained what a tsunami was in 5 minutes than anyone in the U.S. could, given an entire day," an e-mailer says. I enjoyed Miles O'Brien's chat with Orelon Sidney this afternoon though...

> http://cnn.com/quake/ features a wealth of information...

> Send your coverage notes via the tip box.

> NBC and MSNBC's coverage of the tsunami has been disappointing. At noon, MS showed a map of Colombo, Sri Lanka, giving me hope that they finally parachuted a correspondent into the region. But then they tossed to a package from Ned Colt in Hong Kong. Monday's 'Today' relied on an Australian TV reporter in Phuket...

> CNN's Satinder Bindra was on vacation in Colombo, Sri Lanka when the waves hit. On Monday his videophone reports from inside a shelter were top-notch.

> "CNN is hands down the best place to see and hear coverage on the quake/tsunami," a viewer e-mails. "They have international correspondents in more places than Fox News has probably heard of."

> FNC's Jennifer Griffin arrived in Phuket, Thailand on Monday. She has been reporting live on-camera.

> 11:30am: Uh-oh: CNN/U.S. has plastered a huge, Fox-style "NEW DEVELOPMENT" tab above its graphics. It is three times as large as the typical tab. Jon, please don't kill the graphics. (At noon, the normal-sized tab was back.)

> From an e-mailer: "The 4-5am overnight NBC/CBS/ABC News is bad. They keep telling us about the latest sports and movie news. It's sad to see that. Only CNN international is reporting live..."

> Michele Catalano on Sunday: "I have to say I am really, really disappointed in the network coverage of this tragedy. 11,000 people dead in one day and they give the same, if not more, coverage to the Michael Jackson trial."

> Medialiners are arguing about what Sunday's "lead" story should have been in their local markets: A local NFL game or the earthquake...

> On Sunday, ABC News Now simulcasted BBC World coverage for several hours.

Immediately following the 10pm newscast, CNN/U.S. began simulcasting CNN International's live coverage of the Asia Tsunamis. The coverage extended into the midnight ET hour. Kudos to CNN for knowing what overnight viewers want: Live, up-to-the-minute coverage. "I wish CNN/US did this more often when there's news of interest," an e-mailer says.

> Sound familiar?: "Remember the music CNN-US used as a bumper during hurricane coverage this past summer? Well it seems the same bumper music is being used on CNN International as part of the tsunami disaster coverage," an e-mailer says. It's the same tune FNC used for its Laci Peterson coverage...

> Speaking of CNNI: Sunday's Wash Post Travel section includes an essay entitled "I'll Be CNN You...:" "As my wife and I have traveled throughout the world, we have found CNNI practically everywhere, and thus foreign travel has become like a series of family reunions."

NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams was the subject of C-SPAN's Q&A Sunday night. Here are the highlights from the transcript:

> Williams revealed the title of the book he is writing: "The Last Train Ride." It's about the death of President Garfield in the early 1880s in Washington, "which I have always found was a great fascinating untold story."

> "The newscast is still as relevant and as good and as detailed a recitation of events of the day as it always was. It hasn't gone anywhere. You, America, have gotten busy in the intervening years. This is our problem right now in getting some of that share of the audience back."

> A day in the life: Reading the NYT, WSJ and USAT; 9:30am editorial meeting, when "we lay out the day at Nightly News;" 2:30pm meeting, "where we lay out the front page That's where we make a template to say, well, this is what we're going to talk about and that way, we then can make changes. We've got the pieces we can move around." He writes "from the bottom," and finishes around 6:25pm: "It means your last writing will be your best writing."

> What happened to 'The News?:' "It became apparent to us all that when cable took a turn for the noisy, and we all know what we're talking about here, that I used to describe ourselves as the attractive daughter on "The Munsters." We just didn't fit on the schedule any more."

The Fox News Sunday panel offered their winners and losers of the year yesterday morning. Bill Kristol nominated "old media" as loser of the year.

"I do think this was a watershed year, the embarrassment of CBS with Dan Rather, the previous embarrassment of The New York Times over the last couple of years, the rise of the blogs...I think people will look back and say this was a watershed moment, when the whole kind of media we've been used to for 25, 50 years really began to change."

Chris Wallace noted that almost 100 days have passed since the Memogate panel was appointed to investigate: "It is worth noting that -- we talk about the Rather story; that was almost four months ago. We've had this independent investigation going on by Lou Bacardi, formerly of Associated Press, and former Attorney General Dick Thornburg. Still no report, four months later. It's quite remarkable, when you think about it."

"It's moving at the pace of old media," Kristol quipped...

Howard Kurtz and ABC's Jake Tapper discussed the election-year success of Fox News on Reliable Sources yesterday. "Are we now in a situation where people are gravitating toward the kind of news outlets they find themselves most ideologically compatible with?," Kurtz asked. "Yes," Tapper said, but:

TAPPER: Well, first of all, we shouldn't say that that's the reason for FOX -- FOX's success. FOX -- there's a number of reasons for FOX's success. One of them is that they actually have very good production and they take risks on stories. And they do some very edgy and interesting work. KURTZ: And they seem to be having fun. TAPPER: And they seem to be having fun. That said, I think it's dangerous when I hear from, you know, liberal friends of mine in Manhattan, who talk about that they've read these five Web sites, and how come we're not covering that. Same thing with conservative friends of mine in California, when they talk about why aren't we covering this? Because they only consume the media that they agree with. And I think that is problematic for us.

Here's the rest of the R.S. year in review...

A Current Affair is coming back. The show will be tested during a "limited rollout on some of the co-owned Fox stations" this spring, B&C reports. "Fox is still looking for a host," and "one obvious in-house choice" is Bill O'Reilly, who used to host Inside Edition. "One Fox insider says O'Reilly’s plate is likely too full to take on anything else," B&C says...