After just five months on the air, Star Jones‘ self-titled program is going off the air. TVNewser has obtained an internal memo announcing the cancelation of the daytime show which airs at 3pmET on truTV. “Due to the rebranding and programming refocus of the network,” writes EVP & GM Marc Juris, “truTV and Star Jones Reynolds have mutually agreed to cease production of the Star Jones show.”

The show premiered August 20, 2007. The final program airs tomorrow. It will be replaced by Arrest & Trial. Jones will stay on as a contributing legal expert on the weekday In Session trial coverage.

Click continued to read the email from Juris…

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25-54 demographic: (L +SD)

Total day: FNC: 266 | CNN: 352 | MSNBC: 125 | HLN: 111

Prime: FNC: 407 | CNN: 1204 | MSNBC: 226 | HLN: 208

	5p:	6p:	7p:	8p:	9p:	10p:	11p:
FNC	BigStory:	Hume:	Shep:	O’Reilly:	H&C:	Greta:	O’Reilly:
	325	405	345	500	392	328	357
CNN	Blitzer:	Blitzer:	Dobbs:	Debate:	9:35-Cooper:	Cooper:	King:
	290	316	354	1445	1286	788	350
MSNBC	Hardball:	Tucker:	Hardball:	Countdo.:	Abrams:	Hardball:	Hardball:
	137	100	173	289	160	230	164
HLN	Prime:	Prime:	Beck:	Grace:	Beck:	Grace:	Showbiz:
	73	82	102	237	137	257	203

Data by Nielsen Media Research. Live and same day (DVR) data.

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In a battle between Sen. Barack Obama and Sen. John McCain (on Sunday morning television), there appears to be a split decision. Obama appeared on ABC’s This Week, while McCain was a guest on NBC’s Meet the Press.

This Week with George Stephanopoulos won the A25-54 demo; the first time that’s happened since November 4. The ABC show finished with 1,420,000 vs. MTP’s 1,390,000.

In total viewers, Meet the Press with Tim Russert was victorious. MTP finished with 4,115,000 vs. 3,312,000 for This Week.

This Week had the most total viewers and demo viewers since March 2003.

FishbowlDC scoops that Washington Post reporter Dana Priest has left her contributing role on NBC News and is now a contributor for CBS News. Priest is expected to appear on the Evening News (as she did last night) as well as contribute stories to 60 Minutes.

As Wolf Blitzer prepares for tonight’s Democratic debate at the Kodak Theatre in Los Angeles, CNN will be presented with a petition from the League of Conservation Voters. At 5:30pmET, Laurie David, producer of “An Inconvenient Truth” will join protesters from the LCV, MoveOn.org and other organizations to deliver the petition outside the theater.

With almost a quarter of a million signatures, Blitzer along with This Week moderator George Stephanopoulos, are being targeted for avoiding the Global Warming issue on their Sunday shows.

The LCV started their campaign with a press release on December 19. Their web site includes a chart showing the number of Global Warming questions asked during 2007. Blitzer asked two, Stephanopoulos, zero.

LCV spokesperson Jay Natoli tells TVNewser the campaign has already had success. Last week’s MSNBC debate as well as last night’s CNN debate (left) included questions related to the topic. He says the Sunday morning shows have already asked double the questions about the topic in 2008 as they did in all of ’07.

Today at 3pmET, the ABC News bureau in Washington, DC got a copy of the petition. Natoli tells us he and other members of the group asked for Stephanopoulos at the front desk. They were told he was not there, but that the petition would be given to him.

Rafer Weigel is joining Morning Express with Robin Meade as a sports anchor. His first day with the Headline News show will be Super Bowl Monday.

Weigel comes to HLN from KOVR-TV in Sacramento, where he served as a general assignment reporter. He also worked as a sports reporter for the LA Times and Chicago Sun-Times. Weigel has an extensive IMDB bio from his days in TV and movies (he’s the one from “Free Enterprise” who isn’t William Shatner or the guy from “Will and Grace”).

EVP of CNN Worldwide Ken Jautz announced the move this morning. “The addition of Rafer to our Morning Express team gives our audience yet another reason to tune in every morning for all the news they need to kick off the day,” said Jautz in a press release. “Rafer’s breadth of experience and enthusiasm for the arena of sports news make him an ideal fit for the high-energy morning lineup.”

From today’s mediabistro.com Morning Newsfeed: Silicon Alley Insider’s Michael Learmonth reports about the possibility that FBN might have found a loophole that will allow their new colleagues from The Wall Street Journal to appear on the network.

CNBC’s deal with The Journal is supposed to give the NBCU network exclusive rights to WSJ talent through 2012. But at the Always On Conference in New York Tuesday, FBN EVP Kevin Magee said, “There are some restrictions. We can’t just go ahead and use anything. I believe the restrictions involve regularly-scheduled, branded segments. There is a carve-out for non-business news and there is a carve-out for breaking news.”

A CNBC spokesperson tells TVNewser, “CNBC has a 15-year agreement with Dow Jones to provide news content. It expires in 2012. We expect the relationship and quality of the relationship to continue through 2012.”

• If you don’t already subscribe to the mediabistro.com Daily Newsfeed, and want to: Click Here.

TVGuide gives “Cheers” to MSNBC’s Morning Joe (who apparently likes his Starbucks Skinny Cinnamon Dolce Latte served Venti). They say the show is a “must-have fix for political junkies.”

“Joe Scarborough seemed like a poor man’s Bill O’Reilly on his old prime-time MSNBC show, Scarborough Country. When the cable net moved him to the morning shift, it seemed like a desperate stopgap in the wake of Don Imus‘ sudden ouster. Then a funny thing happened: Scarborough lightened up. He traded his suits and ties for fleece pullovers and surrounded himself with appealing sidekicks like Mika Brzezinski and Willie Geist.”

And speaking of O’Reilly, he made a mention of MSNBC’s morning show last night on The Factor. In his Pinheads and Patriots segment, O’Reilly referenced this Media Matters story titled “Fox News is in for a very rough 2008.”

O’Reilly said, “Media Matters is run by liars and defamers, they are far worse than pinheads.” He went on to talk about MSNBC’s ratings: “Its morning program down by 30% while ‘Fox & Friends’ continues to soar.” And while that’s true (Morning Joe is down 33% in the A25-54 demo and 25% in Total Viewers), it comes as a year-to-year comparison. And in January 2007, Don Imus was drawing some of his highest numbers ever on MSNBC.

Another strong week for all three morning shows. Now in the third week of its new national format, CBS’ The Early Show jumped 30% year-over-year in the A25-54 demo. The Today show, which still leads the pack, had its best showing in Total Viewers since the week of Feb. 12, 2007.

For the week of Jan. 21:

Total viewers: NBC: 6,050,000 / ABC: 4,792,000 / CBS: 3,163,000

Households: NBC: 4.6/16 / ABC: 3.7/13 / CBS: 2.4/8

25-54 demo: NBC: 2.4/16 / ABC: 1.7/11 / CBS: 1.3/8

A TVNewser tipster sent us this memo from ABC News magazine head honcho David Sloan:

I’m happy to announce P/T’s return to the air on Feb 26th. We’ll begin with John Quinones‘s popular collection of ethical dilemmas that we call “What Would You Do.” Not only has this series been very successful for us in the past, but now we can also say that it’s critically acclaimed. The latest issue of the Columbia Journalism Review call the series “The journalism that tweaks reality, then reports what happens…”

Sloan’s memo goes on the report the series will begin a 5-week run Tuesdays at 10pmET beginning Feb. 26, with a 2-hour version airing the Friday before (Feb. 22) on 20/20.