Rather, who was a local reporter in Texas, jerry-rigged the graphic while covering Hurricane Carla near Galveston in 1961. He told us all about it when we interviewed him for the mediabistroTV series “My First Big Break.”

WATCH:

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The three business networks have turned their focus to severe weather coverage today as Hurricane Sandy forced the close of the stock markets. Bloomberg TV, Fox Business and CNBC have all set special coverage plans for today that focus on the economic impact of the storm, expected to make landfall later today.

Bloomberg TV will shift into special Hurricane Sandy coverage at 1pmET, which is when the storm’s intensity is supposed to increase on the East Coast. Stephanie Ruhle and Erik Schatzker anchor the 1pmET hour, Betty Liu anchors the 2pmET hour and Trish Regan and Adam Johnson anchor from 3-6pmET. Meteorologist Bonnie Schneider is handling weather forecasts.

Fox Business broadcast a special report in place of “Imus in the Morning” this morning, anchored by Dagen McDowell and Connell McShane. FBN’s Robert Gray is in Battery Park and Sandra Smith is at the CME throughout the day. Neil Cavuto will host primetime coverage of the storm tonight beginning at 7pmET.

CNBC will have regular programming until 7pmET. The network is replacing “The Kudlow Report” with a live two-hour special report anchored by Bill Griffeth and Michelle Caruso-Cabrera.

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“We’ll be using the extraordinary resources of the NBC News Group including our friends with NBC News and the Weather Channel to help with our coverage,” said a network statement.

O’Donnell quipped about his hurricane coverage on Twitter earlier:

I will be doing dramatic live weather updates for @alexwagner at 12 noon. Trouble is I can’t find even slightly inclement weather in midtown

— Lawrence O’Donnell (@Lawrence) October 29, 2012

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The list of correspondents in the field for CNN is after the jump.

Update: HLN is blowing up its primetime lineup to provide hurricane coverage. Those details are also after the jump.
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Tonight’s lineup:

“Fox Report” 7-9pm
“Hannity” 9pm
“On the Record” 10-midnight
“America’s News Headquarters special coverage of Monster Storm,” co-anchored by Gregg Jarrett and Heather Childers midnight to 4am
“Fox and Friends First” will begin again at 4am tomorrow
“Fox and Friends” 6-9am

After the jump, an update on where some of FNC’s correspondents are.

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Cable:

The Weather Channel not surprisingly, has a slew of coverage planned. “Wake Up With Al” will air this weekend starting at 5:30 AM, and 5 AM starting next week.

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“This is something that we have never really seen,” The Weather Channel’s Jim Cantore tells TVNewser. “We have never seen a tropical system this late in the season come up and take a left hook and morph into a Nor’easter/hurricane combination, which is what the models are suggesting.”

For TV news crews, planning is key, but when you don’t know where landfall will be, logistics become a problem.

“The challenge for us is to get there before the storm. Period,” Cantore says. “I expect a lot of deployment tomorrow from the Weather Channel teams.

Maybe a little fine-tuning on Sunday for us to get there beforehand, to have all of our ducks in a row, and to be ready for three days of non-stop coverage of this thing.”

Safety is paramount when covering a storm like Sandy. The hurricane has already killed 29 people across the Caribbean.

“You don’t take unnecessary risks,” NBC and Weather Channel anchor Al Roker tells us. “You don’t do anything that is going to put you or your crew in danger, and you take best practices. Nobody wants do die covering a hurricane. At least nobody I know.”

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Fox News, which has been dominant in the ratings during the RNC, was number one in total day and primetime, in both total viewers and the adults 25-54. While the bulk of FNC’s coverage was focused on the RNC, it had extensive reports on Hurricane Isaac, most notbaly from Shepard Smith, who was in New Orleans and Mississippi yesterday. During Smith’s hours at 3 and 7 PM–when his coverage was focused on Isaac and not the RNC–FNC handily topped every other network in total viewers, including Weather Channel.

The Weather Channel, which always sees strong ratings growth whenever there is severe weather events, placed number two in total viewers and the demo in total day, and was third in total viewers and second in the demo in primetime. Yesterday Weather was number two across the board, except fore the demo in total day, when it topped all of the cable news channels.

The numbers:

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Harris-Perry tweeted a picture of the house, which is almost completely destroyed save for the front facade. The house was originally devastated by Hurricane Katrina, and Harris-Perry and her husband were hoping to fix it up and make it livable again.

Feeling sad. #Isaac took the home @jameshperry and I just bought.All safe. House was vacant except for my dreams. twitter.com/MHarrisPerry/s…

— Melissa Harris-Perry (@MHarrisPerry) August 29, 2012

Harris-Perry is a professor at Tulane University in New Orleans during the week, commuting to New York on the weekend for her MSNBC program. Her efforts to restore the home were featured on MSNBC just three days earlier.

WATCH:

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Weather will have live coverage throughout the night, with Reynolds Wolf and Jim Cantore in New Orleans, Mike Seidel in Alabama and Paul Goodloe and Eric Fisher in Mississippi. Locations are subject to change, if Isaac’s path changes.

Fox News will be live from 1-4 AM, with Gregg Jarrett and Jamie Colby anchoring. The network is sending “Fox & Friends First” anchor Anna Kooiman to Baton Rouge, joining Elizabeth Prann, Jonathan Serrie and Casey Stegall in New Orleans. Steve Harrigan is in Biloxi, MS, Rick Leventhal is in Dauphin Island, AL, and Phil Keating is in Mobile, AL.

CNN will have a live edition of “Piers Morgan Tonight at midnight (it was already planned for the RNC), and will add live coverage from 1-4 AM. “Early Start,” which normally begins at 5 AM, will start even earlier at 4 AM tomorrow.

Update: MSNBC will be live til 1 AM with live coverage of the RNC and Isaac. An overnight decision will be made soon.

Update AM: MSNBC ended up replaying its primetime programming through 3 AM, and rerunning the RNC speeches beginning at 3. It broke into programming twice an hour with Hurricane Isaac updates.

We’ll update with more information as we get it.

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On the first official day of the Republican National Convention, the broadcast and cable networks kicked things off with an address from President Obama.

The broadcasters aired special reports around 10:08 AM ET to present President Obama’s statements on the impending landfall of Tropical Storm (and likely soon to be Hurricane) Isaac.

NBC News had Matt Lauer and David Gregory anchoring in Tampa, while ABC had Robin Roberts and Josh Elliott behind the desk. CBS News coverage was led by Jim Axelrod.

The cable networks broke in at 10:09, as the President began his remarks, warning residents in Isaac’s path to listen to local officials, and evacuate if necessary.

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Anderson Cooper reports for CNN about the lessons New Orleans learned from Katrina:

Chris Matthews, who got into a shouting match with Reince Priebus earlier in the day, gets into it with Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich on “Hardball”

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As the NY Times notes:

“Right now we’re caught between a rock and a hard place,” said David Verdi, an NBC News vice president, with “two major stories simultaneously.”

Networks are busy figuring out who goes where, but it looks like all of the major TV news outlets will have at least a few A-listers in NOLA.

Politico notes that coverage of the RNC may look very different than next week’s DNC coverage (unless there is another natural disaster)

“We’re watching closely and will stay flexible about moving other people,” the spox continued. “But expect to see a lot of split screens.”

Update: NBC and CNN tell Politico they won’t literally have split screens.

Of course, as Joe Flint notes in the LA Times, a hurricane might be just what the broadcast networks need:

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Two TV news correspondents who made their marks covering Hurricane Katrina seven years ago are returning to New Orleans as another hurricane approaches.

Fox News Channel’s Shepard Smith and CNN’s Anderson Cooper will be covering Hurricane Isaac as it hits in or near New Orleans later this week, skipping Tampa and the Republican National Convention. CNN is also sending Soledad O’Brien to New Orleans.

While both Smith and Cooper were known commodities prior to Katrina, the Hurricane coverage propelled the to household name status.

At a Turner Broadcasting dinner held in New Orleans’ French Quarter during the 2008 NCTA trade show, Cooper told the assembled guests (including me) about how important Katrina was to him.

“We try to come every couple of months, just to keep the story alive,” Cooper told us at the time. “For all of us who covered it, the images are still very fresh in our minds.”

In 2010, Smith told the AP’s David Bauder about the experience: ”The emotions, the activism that sort of sprung was natural and for the time, reflectively, I think it was probably right,” he said.

O’Brien also established herself in the aftermath of Katrina, including a now-infamous interview in which FEMA director Michael Brown appeared to not have as much information about the situation as O’Brien did.

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