Carlos Watson has been named a dayside anchor at MSNBC. Watson will also regularly contribute to “Morning Joe.”

“Carlos has been a fresh and distinctive voice on the network and I’m thrilled to welcome him to MSNBC,” says MSNBC president Phil Griffin in the release.

Watson previously hosted CNBC’s “The Edge with Carlos Watson” and served as a political analyst at CNN and FNC. He has been an MSNBC contributor and fill-in anchor for a few months.

Click continued to see the release…

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A TVNewser reader asked us this morning, “Do you think this Santelli thing has legs?” “Yes” was our answer.

About a half hour after the White House press secretary said, “I feel assured that Mr. Santelli doesn’t know what he’s talking about,” the Chicago on-air editor for CNBC appeared on MSNBC.

Santelli’s response to the traction his outburst has gotten: “I think it’s terrific. It’s opened a national debate.”

About Gibbs’ invite, Santelli told anchors Contessa Brewer and Carlos Watson, “I think it’s wonderful he invited me to the White House. But I’m not big on decaf. I prefer tea.”

Santelli, Brewer and Watson then got into a debate about the debate. Which ended with Brewer having to tell viewers, “Rude? I wasn’t being rude.”

The clip after the jump…

> Update: TVNewser hears Santelli will make the Worst Persons list tonight on MSNBC’s Countdown with Keith Olbermann…

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We’ve written about the potential for a new 10pmET host on MSNBC a few times since MSNBC president Phil Griffin floated the idea last month.

The LA Times and Huffington Post have written about how progressive radio hosts Sam Seder and Cenk Uygur (of The Young Turks) created Facebook fan pages (here and here) with the hopes of getting them the gig, assuming there is really a gig to be had.

Their fans have inundated our inbox too.

So, it’s time for another vote.

We took the top 5 vote getters from last month’s poll, added new names: Willie Geist, Ted Koppel, Carlos Watson, Bill Maher (why?), Dan Rather (why?) and Uygur, and we leave the option open that no one gets the hour:

Who Should Be MSNBC’s 10pm Host?
( surveys)

The NYDaily News talks with Carlos Watson, who has been anchoring on MSNBC lately.

For the past few years, Watson has appeared as an analyst/pundit/host on Fox News, CNN and CNBC. And, at 39, TV is his third career. “I first spent time in politics, managing campaigns. Then, after a brief stint in grad school, I went into the business world. First, for a big company. Then I started my own company,” he tells the Daily News.

As for his anchor-prep, no source is off limits. “[F]or this new generation, I like to call it the Obama generation, I think that everything is fair game, from The New York Times to Perez Hilton. You can’t really serve the Obama generation if you’re Johnny One-Note, you’ve got to be able to flow from ‘The Real Housewives of Atlanta’ to ‘Countdown With Keith Olbermann’ to ‘Entourage.’”

Watson has been anchoring alongside Contessa Brewer during dayside hours. “There’s a whole wave of young anchors now,” Watson says. “A friend of mine joked, calling it the A.R.C. of anchors. There’s Anderson [Cooper], there’s Rachel [Maddow] and there’s Carlos. I don’t know if I’ve earned that yet, but I think it’s impressive what those two have accomplished.”