Tonight at 10 PM, MSNBC will premiere the newest addition to its primetime lineup, “The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell.” Following “Countdown” at 8 PM and “The Rachel Maddow Show” at 9 PM, “The Last Word” completes MSNBC’s primetime in a sense, as the network finally puts a live, original show in the 10 PM hour, joining competitors CNN and Fox News.

Tonight’s premiere will feature an interview with Vice President Joe Biden, but it will also see O’Donnell getting advice on how to host a primetime show from MSNBC’s most prominent primetime talent: Keith Olbermann.

“I will be getting advice on hosting the show from Keith tonight, live,” O’Donnell tells TVNewser. “He is going to appear on my first show, as he should, because Keith created the ratings platform in primetime at MSNBC that has made the creation of the other two shows in primetime possible.”

Indeed, O’Donnell, hardly a TV novice, noted that at the end of the day, the driving factor in television is ratings.

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Whenever there is a political story that the cable news channels aren’t covering (or at least aren’t covering in full) there is a good chance C-SPAN will be there. Did CNN or Fox News cover the 2008 Libertarian Party convention? Nope. Did any of them air the entirety of Glenn Beck‘s rally in Washington? No. But C-SPAN carried both in full.

That is why C-SPAN’s massive video archive has become such a boon for news organizations. The archives, going back decades, contai a wealth of information about politicians and politics.

And as Republican U.S. Senate nominee Christine O’Donnell learned, it isn’t always positive. The C-SPAN archives turned into a research opportunity for political opponents and media organizations looking to dig up dirt on the candidate from Delaware.

As Howard Kurtz writes in the Washington Post:

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As we reported, Republican U.S. senate candidate Christine O’Donnell made her first national TV appearance last night since canceling on the Sunday shows last weekend. O’Donnell was a guest on Fox News Channel’s “Hannity,” where she told host Sean Hannity that the appearance would be her last for any national media outlet:

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After canceling two Sunday show appearances, Delaware Senate candidate Christine O’Donnell will go on Fox News’ “Hannity” tonight. From here:

Senate candidate Christine O’Donnell speaks out on the latest challenges facing her campaign and the truth behind the attacks on her image.

• Related: Bill O’Reilly Reminds Christine O’Donnell That He Has “Crazy Stuff” On Her, Too

The midterm elections were the top news story for the week of September 13-19, with Christine O’Donnell‘s surprise primary win in Delaware leading the way in terms of coverage, according to the Project for Excellence in Journalism.

The cable networks devoted 42% of the newshole to the midterms, with the broadcast news organizations spending 20% of their time covering the elections.

About half of the midterm coverage focused on the role of the tea party movement, with O’Donnell serving as the spark…

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In his column this morning, NY Times media columnist David Carr tackles the ever-diminishing line between the media and politics. With Glenn Beck‘s rally in Washington last month, and Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert‘s planned rally next month, TV personalities are beginning to inject themselves into the debate.

And as Carr writes, these personalities appear to be having a direct impact on the national discourse:

Consider that a popular political movement started on one cable network (Rick Santelli‘s tea party moment on CNBC) and enabled by another (Fox News all but handed out lanterns and pitchforks) produced a number of victorious primary candidates, including the improbable Christine O’Donnell in the Delaware Republican primary for United States Senate. A former aide to the candidate was quoted in Politico as saying that Ms. O’Donnell had hoped that her political endeavors would yield a television contract.

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With Tea Party candidates like Alaska’s Joe Miller and Delaware’s Christine O’Donnell in the spotlight, the Chicago Sun-Times interviews CNBC’s Rick Santelli, whom some consider the Father of the Tea Party.

Santelli discusses last year’s Rant-Heard-’Round-the-World, during which he criticized the Homeowners Affordability and Stability Plan, and suggested a Chicago tea party in response.

“The five-minute rant was the best five minutes of my life,” Santelli tells reporter Abdon Pallasch. “But beyond that, really four minutes in time, it’s the Tea Party. My wife pointed out to me, ‘You were there for the insemination, but you were not there to raise the child.’”

Pallasch writes that Santelli and his wife have attended local Tea Party rallies, donning “sunglasses and baseball caps…not talking to anyone, not claiming any credit, just admiring democracy at work.”

• Earlier on TVNewser: Is Rick Santelli the Father of the Tea Party? ‘If that’s what they put on my tombstone, they can bury me with a smile.’

The Sunday morning public affairs shows are a regular stop for politicians in the middle of campaigns. In the last set of primary elections, Delaware’s Christine O’Donnell was the surprise winner of the GOP nomination for U.S. Senate.

So it would make sense that she would make an appearance or two (or five, or seven) on the Sunday morning shows before the general election in November.

Indeed, O’Donnell was scheduled to be a guest on CBS’ “Face The Nation” and Fox’s “Fox News Sunday” tomorrow.

This morning, however, O’Donnell canceled both appearances, choosing instead to return to Delaware to campaign.

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By now, any avid TV news viewer should know the name Christine O’Donnell. The newly-minted Republican nominee for the U.S. Senate seat in Delaware has been all over the news networks, which have been covering her upset win over Mike Castle.

Today, Politico has a story comprised entirely of ex O’Donnell aides–mostly from her failed 2008 Senate bid–bashing their former boss.

One of those staffers was Alan Moore, who currently works for the conservative website Townhall.com (Update: Jonathan Garthwaite from Townhall.com says that Moore’s comments do not in any way reflect those of the site. His statemenmt is after the jump). Moore tells Politico that O’Donnell was more interested in a TV gig than actually holding office:

Moore, who first decided to volunteer for O’Donnell after hearing about her at a meeting of college Republicans, said that at one point, O’Donnell talked to him about winning a lucrative television contract with CNN or Fox News Channel.

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