25-54 demographic (Live +SD)

• Total day: FNC: 278 | MSNBC: 138 | CNN: 92 | HLN: 85

• Primetime: FNC: 340 | MSNBC: 245 | CNN: 110 | HLN: 92

	5p:	6p:	7p:	8p:	9p:	10p:	11p:	12a:
FNC	TheFive:	Baier:	Shep:	O’Reilly:	Hannity:	Greta:	O’Reilly:	Hannity:
	335	319	275	412	326	282	306	252
MSNBC	Matthews:	Sharpton:	Matthews:	EdShow:	Maddow:	Lockup:	Lockup:	Lockup:
	89	145	132	223	303	207	209	303
CNN	Blitzer:	KingUSA:	Burnett:	Cooper:	Morgan:	Cooper:	Burnett:	Morgan:
	88	60	73	72	126	133	92	89
HLN	Special:	Prime:	VelezMitchell:	Grace:	VelezMitchell:	Grace:	Showbiz:	VelezMitchell:
	11	30	86	91	92	95	65	52

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As we reported this morning, President Obama’s reelection campaign released a new ad that features clips from TV news programs. The clips are cut in a way to place the President and his accomplishments in a positive light, and likely opponent Mitt Romney in a negative one.

The trend isn’t new. Romney used TV news clips in the same way for an ad earlier this year.

CJR looks at the issue in-depth, and examines the conundrum facing television journalists and executives.

Networks are loathe to see their top journalists and news programming used this way, but have little recourse. When they protest, advertisers claim “fair use,” a tenet of US copyright law allowing limited use of copyrighted material without the owner’s permission. Television stations are especially leery of appearing to try to censor candidates by pulling their ads. (Networks and stations have somewhat better odds challenging the ads of super PACs and other outside groups, as CJR has previously noted.)

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• Mark Joyella, a CNN digital producer for “Erin Burnett OutFront,” is returning to local television. Beginning in June, he will be the weekend morning anchor for WFTV in Orlando, TVSpy reports.
• Fox Business Network’s Sandra Smith tells Alister & Paine how she keeps the audience interested. “Business anchors need to avoid jargon,” she said. “People don’t want to be talked down to.”
• Bobby Brown gave his first interview since Whitney Houston‘s death to NBC’s Matt Lauer. “‘I’m not the reason she’s gone,” Brown tells Lauer. The interview airs Wednesday and Thursday on “Today.”

While many Washington media types were winding down their WHCD party-hopping with Sunday brunches, a few of the party-goers hit the Sunday shows. Not long after MSNBC host and after-party bartender Rachel Maddow put away her cocktail shaker, she was mixing it up with GOP analyst and CNN contributor Alex Castellanos on “Meet the Press.” At issue: what women earn vs. what men earn.

“It’s weird that you’re interupting me and not letting me make my point, because we usually get along so well,” said Maddow, who at one point said Castellanos was being “condescending.”

Watch:

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If you didn’t get enough this weekend, here are a few more pictures from this weekend’s White House Correspondents’ Dinner festivities. Speaking of which, NBC’s Matt Lauer already has his date for next year: Diane Keaton (below), who was a guest of People magazine already has an invite for next year, from Lauer. “You’ll be my date for the White House Correspondents’ Dinner?” asked Lauer, “Of course I would. Yes!”

CNN's Brooke Baldwin and Dana Bash flank actress Diane Keaton at the CNN pre-Dinner Cocktail Party

CBS's Bob Schieffer with actress Claire Danes at the CBS/The Atlantic/National Journal pre-Dinner Cocktail Party (Photo: Liz Lynch)

More after the jump…

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Likely GOP Presidential candidate Mitt Romney has mostly avoided interviews with TV news outlets not named Fox News over the last six months or so. With the primary seemingly in the bag, he appears to be opening up a bit. Last week he spoke to ABC’s Diane Sawyer on “ABC World News,” and this week he is wading into the network morning show wars.

Rather than going to the number one or number two morning show, the Romneys are appearing on the program that is regarded as having the “hardest” news pedigree, even as it sits a distant third in the ratings.

Tomorrow morning “CBS This Morning” has the “exclusive,” according to the network, with Mitt and Ann Romney live and in-studio at 7:40 AM.

ABC News anchor and “The View” host Barbara Walters did not like her colleague Jimmy Kimmel‘s joke about her at the White House Correspondents Dinner.

“16 years ago there was no Facebook, there was no Google and a tweet was something Barbara Walters gave her dog,” Kimmel quipped at the dinner, with the camera panning to Walters, who was smiling, but not laughing.

Walters discussed the joke on “The View” this morning.

“If you look at me, I was laughing too. But I did not like Jimmy Kimmel — who was very funny — but I did not like what he said about me.”

“It was a well-crafted joke!,” co-host Whoopi Goldberg said, noting that when she is mocked on “Saturday Night Live,” she is portrayed by a man.

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With the Nielsen Fast National numbers for Friday just released, “Good Morning America” is in a position to win another week in the morning show ratings race. For the week of April 23, “GMA” has a +165,000 (preliminary) Total Viewer lead over the “Today” show. The win comes just as the May ratings period begins and as the regular anchor teams were in place, except for Friday, when Matt Lauer was off. But in an interesting twist, “Today” won the day Friday drawing +120,000 more viewers than “GMA” with Carl Quintanilla sitting in for Lauer.

When “GMA” beat “Today” the week of April 9, the first time in more than 16 years, Lauer was off all week.

In the A25-54 demo, “Today” is poised to continue its streak to 887 weeks at #1, although “GMA” continues to close the gap, with just 94,000 viewers (preliminary) separating the two shows. That’s the smallest gap since the week of Nov. 27, 1995.

On Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday of last week, “GMA” had significant leads on “Today” of 404,000, 288,000 and 283,000 viewers, respectively.

Final ratings will come Thursday.

One of the biggest draws in television news is disaster coverage. Whenever an awful event happens somewhere around the world, millions of people who may not otherwise watch TV news turn it on and check it out to get the latest information.

The problem of course is that disasters do not happen on a schedule, and when they do, it is not exactly programming that advertisers want to have their brands associated with.

Discovery Channel is trying to change that, by staging a disaster of its own.

Over the weekend the cable channel–along with Britain’s Channel 4 and Germany’s Pro Sieben–deliberately crashed a passenger jet in the Mexican desert (see photo above). The crash was for an upcoming episode of Discovery’s TV series “Curiosity,” an episode that will air later this year.

There were no fatalities or injuries, unless you count cameras and crash test dummies, both of which were loaded inside the Boeing 727. The pilot ejected from the 727 a few minutes before the crash, followed by an operator remotely controlling the jet from a chase plane.

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We can’t say we saw this coming. TV Guide‘s William Keck reports that the hit 1990′s comedy “Murphy Brown” may return from the grave. Specifically, creator Diane English says that The Eye may order a handful of “Murphy Brown” specials in advance of the upcoming election.

“I’d love to have the show back on during this election year,” Diane told me at the TV Land Awards, where the series received the Impact Award. “We’re having a little conversation with CBS about a few episodes, and I think it’s possible. Candice knows about it, and we’re going to talk to her more in July once she wraps her Broadway play ['The Best Man.']“

“Murphy Brown” followed the exploits of an investigative journalist of the same name, played by Candice Bergen, who worked for a fictional CBS News program called “FYI.” The series ran for a decade, from 1988-1998, and was one of the most popular sitcoms of the 1990′s