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.

continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Although Scarborough tells TVNewser “we haven’t signed any deals yet,” he says, “If we’re going to get into radio, we want it to be by the beginning of the year.”

The New York Daily News’ David Hinckley writes, “Some reports on the New York Radio Message Board yesterday say WABC is eying Joe Scarborough.”

Scarborough says, “We’ve talked to Citadel [which owns WABC-AM], and several other networks.”

But Scarborough is clear — WABC, is where he wants to be. “If we had our druthers we’d sign with Citadel, only because they launched Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, all the most successful talk shows in the country,” he says. “As I explained to Mika, there are two types of radio shows, those that have clearance on WABC, and those that don’t have clearance on WABC. It is just a radio station like the New York Times is just a newspaper,” he says facetiously.

Scarborough says they’ll know “in the next couple weeks” whether a deal can be reached. The show would most likely air from 10am-Noon, before Limbaugh and after Don Imus, who, in a twist of media fate, Scarborough replaced on MSNBC-TV.

“We talk politics and news for three hours straight and do it with a light touch. Obviously there are people that think that will work on the radio too,” he says. “If we do a radio show, it’s going to be just like the TV show.”

WABC-AM is also home to three other hosts who’ve all had TV shows on MSNBC: Laura Ingraham, Monica Crowley and Curtis Sliwa.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.