The “Today”show isn’t letting Katie Couric‘s return to morning TV go unchallenged. In the ultimate of TV teases, the network began running promos today about a secret guest who will appear Monday — “for one show only” — the same day Couric begins a week of fill-in co-hosting on cross-town and cross-country rival “Good Morning America.” And as teases go, the promo gave no hint about who it might be. Gene Shalit? Bryant Gumbel? Guess we’ll just have to wait and see.

On tonight’s “Nightly News” Lester Holt also promoted a Tuesday visit to “Today” by Sarah Palin.

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Among those that had an opinion, Fox News Channel’s Bill O’Reilly came out on top, garnering 7% of the vote, followed closely by ABC’s Diane Sawyer with 5%, with Anderson Cooper and Brian Williams each with 4%. O’Reilly led his show on Wednesday with the poll:

When asked what TV networks they trust most, Fox News came out on top, garnering 28& of the vote, followed by CNN and NBC News with 17% and 10% respectively. That is in line with PPP’s annual TV news trust poll, which found that FNC was both the most trusted and least trusted TV news outlet.

You ca check out all of the findings here (PDF).

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This change is part of the wider restructure which began over two years ago in order to enhance one of our core strengths of news gathering and reporting from the field. We recently started up our bureau in Chicago. We are soon to formally open our office in Los Angeles. And we are now fully operational from Miami. These bureaux add to our existing presence and strength in Washington DC, and New York, and our bureaux across Latin America.

TVNewser hears that around 75% of staffers in Washington will be let go as a result of the moves. Update: AJE says that only two dozen staffers will be affected, far fewer than 75%. Read Anstey’s full memo over at TPM.

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Spitzer opened the program by explaining the goal of the show, but did not mention the elephant in the room.

WATCH:

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Sharpton’s role as both cable news host and activist has been debated in media circles for weeks. But Sharpton’s continued call for action now has the local NAACP chapter distancing itself from Sharpton. “We hope that the citizens of Sanford will govern themselves accordingly,” Seminole County chapter president Turner Clayton tells the WKMG-TV. “We are not calling for any sanctions, against any business or anyone else. And, of course, what Rev. Sharpton does, that’s strictly the [National] Action Network,”

While CNN & HLN correspondent George Howell reports from Sanford this morning, and “Fox & Friends” has covered the lead up to the march, MSNBC has not reported on it much, except during Alex Witt‘s news hour at 7amET, with a report from NBC’s TheGrio.com.

On “The O’Reilly Factor” last night, Bill O’Reilly continued to tie Sharpton’s roles as activist and MSNBC host: “I have been doing this 37 years and I’ve never seen anything like this,” said O’Reilly during a discussion with Mike Huckabee. “Sharpton works for NBC, not MSNBC. He works for NBC News. He answers to NBC. To let this guy go crazy and what is going to happen is if it doesn’t come out the way that he wants it to? Sharpton will accuse racism and everything else and some people are going to do damage.”

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Nevins even met recently with cable-news bad boy Keith Olbermann for a meal. Although he’s tight-lipped about the details, he says, “It didn’t really go anywhere.” Asked whether he had envisioned a sports or politics show for the disgruntled Current TV host, Nevins suggests he “didn’t get that far.”

After he left MSNBC, there was speculation that Olbermann could be heading to pay cable. Maybe HBO would add a sister show to “Real Time,” or perhaps Showtime wanted its own take on politics. The news of the meeting is sure to reignite that rumor.

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In accepting the award, Elliott called the teenager, Jamey Rodemeyer, “a hero” and said he was honored to tell his story.

He also spoke of his late father, who came out when Elliott was a teenager and died two years later. “I took from him his love of storytelling. I took from him the importance of being an advocate for those who need it,” Elliott said. “And I took from him what it means to be a man.”

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or

The real Eliot Spitzer does not have a real Twitter account. A Current TV spokesperson tells TVNewser, “Our apologies that this was incorrect in the release.”

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Update: Current CEO Joel Hyatt and co-founder Al Gore released a statement about the move.

Current was also founded on the values of respect, openness, collegiality, and loyalty to our viewers. Unfortunately these values are no longer reflected in our relationship with Keith Olbermann and we have ended it.

The full letter is after the jump.

Update 2: Olbermann has released his own statement via Twitter, saying that he plans to file suit against the network.

I’d like to apologize to my viewers and my staff for the failure of Current TV. Editorially, Countdown had never been better. But for more than a year I have been imploring @AlGore and @JoelHyatt to resolve our issues internally,while I’ve been not publicizing my complaints, and keeping the show alive for the sake of its loyal viewers and even more loyal staff. Nevertheless, Mr. Gore and Mr. Hyatt, instead of abiding by their promises and obligations and investing in a quality news program, finally thought it was more economical to try to get out of my contract. It goes almost without saying that the claims against me in Current’s statement are untrue and will be proved so in the legal actions I will be filing against them presently.

Olbermann’s full statement is after the jump.

Olbermann famously announced that he would be leaving his MSNBC program on a Friday night last January. He inked a deal with Current soon thereafter.

Olbermann was given an equity stake in Current as part of his deal. It is not yet clear whether he will retain that stake, or whether Current will buy him out.

In an interview with mediabistro.com earlier this month, Hyatt hinted that the network would be adding more former public officials to Current’s lineup, such as Spitzer:

We’re going to look for practitioners of public policy, like Jennifer Granholm. We’ll soon be naming others in that category, people who have actually done the hard work of public service and who are very committed to it, who understand it from the inside. They know spin when they hear it; they know BS when they hear it; they can stand up to it because they’ve been there and done that.

The announcement of Spitzer’s new show is also after the jump.

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• Total day: FNC: 341 | MSNBC: 143 | CNN: 133 | HLN: 118

• Primetime: FNC: 491 | MSNBC: 235 | CNN: 216 | HLN: 182

	5p:	6p:	7p:	8p:	9p:	10p:	11p:	12a:
FNC	TheFive:	Baier:	Shep:	O’Reilly:	Hannity:	Greta:	O’Reilly:	Hannity:
	447	406	450	544	507	420	446	311
MSNBC	Matthews:	Sharpton:	Matthews:	EdShow:	Maddow:	O’Donnell:	EdShow:	Maddow:
	148	198	194	210	252	243	165	118
CNN	Blitzer:	KingUSA:	Burnett:	Cooper:	Morgan:	Cooper:	Burnett:	Morgan:
	103	119	104	173	257	217	144	218
HLN	Special:	Prime:	VelezMitchell:	Grace:	DrDrew:	Grace:	Showbiz:	DrDrew:
	109	82	114	237	174	143	148	179

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• Related: Behind the Scenes at CNN’s Trayvon Martin Town Hall

Don Lemon jetted up from Atlanta to co-host with Velez-Mitchell, who mixed and mingled before making a beeline for Time Warner Center herself to participate in the town hall.

Velez-Mitchell made the biggest splash of the night when, during her welcome remarks to the crowd, she pulled her girlfriend on stage and planted a big kiss on her. “I won’t be doing that!” Lemon joked. “Ben doesn’t like that kind of thing,” he said glancing over to his partner, Ben Tinker, who is a producer in CNN’s medical unit.

CNN managing editor Mark Whitaker talked about his network’s commitment to diversity in the ranks and on the air. CNN was the lead sponsor for the event which was held at the Mitchell Gold + Bob Williams showroom in SoHo.

Also spotted in the crowd: NBC News VP Alex Wallace, former “Today” show co-anchor Meredith Vieira, “CBS This Morning” co-host Erica Hill, MSNBC’s Willie Geist, former MSNBC anchor Contessa Brewer and Fox News meteorologist Rick Reichmuth.

We chatted with FBN’s Gerri Willis who told us she has a new appreciation for the work of the Supreme Court after anchoring her show from Washington during oral arguments on the health care law. We also caught up with Fox News’s Alisyn Camerota and new Fox News political analyst Sally Kohn, who is settling in to her role as progressive pundit both on air and online, which

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A Bloomberg spokesperson confirmed the departures, saying they are not related to a round of layoffs Bloomberg announced last week.

Kanofsky’s departure comes just eight months after he joined the network as senior executive producer. Catherwood, the host of “The Last Word” on Bloomberg Europe, joined the network from ITV News in 2009.

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TVNewser attended the taping in front of a live studio audience at Time Warner Center. The more than two-and-a-half hour town hall will be condensed into a one hour program airing tonight. Among the panelists were Martin family lawyer Benjamin Crump, New York streetfighter Curtis Sliwa, former NAACP president C.L. Bryant and HLN host Jane Velez-Mitchell.

While many of the panelists seemed to take the side of Trayvon Martin, it was left to O’Brien to challenge her guests about George Zimmerman‘s side of things. Zimmerman, the armed neighborhood watchman, has not gone public with his story, leaving that to his lawyer, friends and family members.

One of the night’s most vocal audience reactions came during a discussion of the media’s role in the case, when Geraldo Rivera‘s hoodie comments were played for the crowd. Although O’Brien noted Rivera has since apologized, the panel — including Roland Martin, no stranger to controversy himself — took the Fox News anchor to task for his remarks.

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Co-host Al Roker usually hosts the show from New York, with his colleague Stephanie Abrams joining him via video from Atlanta. For the next few months however Abrams will be joining Roker in New York. A Weather Channel tipster tells us that the move is a “tryout,” designed to see how the chemistry looks when Roker and Abrams are in the same room rather than in different states. If the results are positive, the show may originate from New York permanently.

To go along with her temporary move, Abrams will also be hosting “Your Weather Today” from New York.

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If I were [News Corp. chairman Rupert] Murdoch, I would strongly consider putting Ailes in charge of the new network. (As it stands, Fox Sports chairman David Hill is reported to be leading the effort.) Maybe he wouldn’t want the job. Maybe he’d have trouble working up the necessary spittle for something that’s not his primary passion, politics. (The last network he launched, Fox Business, frequently feels more like a political channel than a business channel.) Maybe, at 72, he’s not inclined to undertake a new multi-year campaign. That would be a shame. If there’s one person in the television business who could take on the Worldwide Leader and win, it’s Ailes.

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