First on TVNewser: Fusion, the upcoming cable news channel from ABC News and Univision, is adding HuffPost Live host Alicia Menendez to its lineup, TVNewser has learned.

Menendez is joining Fusion as an anchor based in Miami, and will host her own show on the channel when it launches later this year.

Menendez, the daughter of U.S. Senator Bob Menendez (D-N.J.), has long been a regular commentator on cable news, and is the former co-host of “Power Play” on SiriusXM’s Cristina Radio, which targets “Modern Latina” listeners. She is also a former contributor to NBCLatino.com.

She joined HuffPost Live before it launched in the Summer of 2012, and has become one of the faces of the burgeoning video channel, which recently secured a TV foothold on Mark Cuban’s AXS TV. She drew particular acclaim for her live coverage of the Boston bombings last month.

Update: internal memo from Fusion’s Beau Ferrari, after the jump.

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MSNBC.com is staffing up ahead of a major relaunch later this year. The relaunched site will focus on the world of politics and the personalities that populate MSNBC’s programming. There will also, however, be plenty of political news and information.

To that end, the channel is adding a number of reporters, including Talking Points Memo’s Benjy Sarlin, who joins as a political reporter in Washington, The Washington Post‘s Suzy Khimm, who joins as a reporter at “All In,” and Rothenberg Political Reports’ Jessica Taylor, who joins the team of “The Daily Rundown” and NBC Politics. Other additions include Adam Serwer as a national reporter focusing on civil rights issues, Amy Pereira as director of photography, Jason Fields as director of design, Emma Margolin, Evan Puschak and Michele Richinick.

MSNBC.com executive editor Richard Wolffe‘s memo to staff is below.
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TheBlaze, the TV channel founded by former HLN and Fox News host Glenn Beck, has signed up its second major pay-TV provider. Cablevision, which has over three million subscribers in the New York/New Jersey/Connecticut tri-state area will be adding the channel to its lineup in late May. It will be available on the preferred, silver and gold packages.

While TheBlaze has TV carriage agreements with some 11 other pay-TV operators, the Cablevision deal is the second big deal for the growing company, which began a major push to secure TV distribution earlier this year. DISH Network was the first major MSO to carry the channel last year.

The other 10 operators are smaller, independent cable companies, spread throughout the country. While TheBlaze seeks TV deals, it remains available to subscribers directly over the internet for a monthly fee.

More information below.
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Last night Yahoo! held its “NewFront” event at the Best Buy Theater in Times Square, and the digital media company announced expanded content deals with its two big TV news partners, ABC News and CNBC.

ABC, of course, has a major deal with the company, particularly with “Good Morning America,” which has a digital presence powered by Yahoo!

“One of the big secrets to the success of Good Morning America is goodmorningamerica.com, powered by Yahoo!” said ABC News president Ben Sherwood on stage at the event.

Now, ABC is bringing what Sherwood called the “secret sauce” from its Yahoo! agreement to “ABC World News” and “Nightline.”

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The Weather Channel is launching a week of tornado-related programming, and is betting on a clever viral campaign to help drive tune-in. Lost Remote has more on the campaign.

The short version: as people Tweet using the #TornadoWeek hashtag, a large fan in Weather’s Atlanta headquarters will spin faster, creating heavier and heavier winds for the poor interns manning the computers, topping out at the equivalent of an F-5 tornado. The channel is live-streaming it on YouTube.

WATCH:

HuffPost Live–The Huffington Post’s web-TV outfit–is coming to cable TV.

AXS TV, the cable channel owned by Mark Cuban, AEG, CAA and Ryan Seacrest, will now simulcast HuffPost Live programming from 10 AM-4 PM. HuffPost Live has been seeking cable distribution for months (as we have noted), though the deal with AXS will not result in lucrative carriage fees that makes cable such an appealing place for programmers, according to the NY Times‘ Brian Stelter.

In an interview, Roy Sekoff, the president and co-creator of HuffPost Live, did not rule out full-blown cable distribution in the future. He said AXS provided “a way to get on now,” emphasizing “now.”

The telecast will start on May 13. It will be shown weekdays from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Eastern time (the first half of HuffPost Live’s daily output), replacing the random assortment of repeats that AXS currently schedules during the day. Mr. Sekoff said The Huffington Post was not paying for the distribution, and AXS is not paying for the programming; the arrangement is mutually beneficial, he suggested, something that Mr. Cuban affirmed in a separate interview.

The deal also unites The Huffington Post with Dan Rather, the former “CBS Evening News” anchor who now hosts “Dan Rather Reports” on the channel.

“The Onion” is trying to make a TV comeback… sort of. The faux-news experts have a new pilot for Amazon’s Prime video service, and Amazon is letting viewers decide which pilots should be ordered to series (Watch the pilot here).

The pilot, called “Onion News Empire,” is a takeoff on HBO’s “The Newsroom” as well as the world of cable news, and stars Jeffrey Tambor as a pompous anchor at the Onion News Network and Christopher Masterson as the grizzled news boss.

“Are you upset we are showing unattractive people? I’m sorry, I know the policy,” Masterson’s charcater says to the channel’s CEO.

“No, I’m upset because the ratings report came in this morning, even CNN is gaining on us,” she replies, noting the declines in the “lesbian barista” and “lonesome cowboy” demos.

This morning ABC News launched a new social TV app it calls the “Social Soundtracker” at a press conference in New York. The app ties into ABC News programming, and may expand to other programs down the line. Lost Remote has more on the service.

Separately, we also heard that Fusion, the new cable news channel launching from ABC and Univision, is now likely to launch in December, rather than the September date that was floated a few months back. We saw ABC News president Ben Sherwood, who said that the channel is still on track to launch this year, though it will likely be after the Summer ends. Officially, ABC and Univision have only said that the channel was expected to launch “in the second half” of 2013.

The aftermath of the bombing at the Boston Marathon not only delivered droves of viewers to TV, it also delivered record numbers for the websites of TV news outlets.

Both CNN Digital and FoxNews.com had their biggest weeks ever in terms of traffic, topping even the Presidential elections in 2008 and 2012. CNN Digital had over 808,000,000 pageviews last week, with Fox News Digital drawing over 495,000,000

Video views, which have steadily been on the rise for years across all sites, also set records. Foxnews.com had 7.86 million video views on Friday, April 19. CNN Digital had 21 million video views on April 19, with 2.3 million people watching  live streams on their computers, and an additional 1.4 million views on mobile devices.

Bloomberg.com saw over 1 million views on Monday the 15th, when the bombs exploded, and also saw over 350,000 livestreams that day. Unlike other cable news channels, Bloomberg TV is streamed online for free to everyone.

We will update with more digital numbers, as we get them.

The Twitter account of CBS’ “60 Minutes” as well as those of other CBS sites were hacked over the weekend. TheVerge first reported the hack. AllThingsD later reported the culprit:

The Syrian Electronic Army…. a band of digital activists and hackers who support the beleaguered government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. The group, which claimed credit for the attacks via a statement on its website, has a history of attacking the websites and social media accounts of various western media organizations.

CBS removed several of the unauthorized tweets, and relayed this to followers Saturday: “PLEASE NOTE: Our Twitter account was compromised earlier today. We are working with Twitter to resolve.”

Currently — two days after the hack — the site renders as “Account Suspended.”