“We’ve had a lot of good guests” in the years since MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” debuted in 2007, says EP Chris Licht.  “But this is one of the highlights of the show.”

“This” refers to Oprah Winfrey‘s live appearance Friday, when Joe Scarborough, Mika Brzezinski, Willie Geist, and the gang descended on the Windy City for a live broadcast.  Booking the Queen of all media was two years in the making, dating back to Licht approaching her at a New York gala.

“And I literally went up to her,” he told TVNewser in Chicago, “and I knew she watched the show, and I said, ‘You’ve got to do the show.’  And she said, ‘I promise you, I will do the show.’”

Oprah was true to her word.  And she was joined on the program by a veritable Windy City who’s who at the RL Restaurant, including David Axelrod, Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin, former Playboy chairman and CEO Christie Hefner, Rev. Jesse Jackson, CNBC’s Rick Santelli. Crammed into the main dining room was a makeshift ’set’, plus tables and chairs where VIP guests watched the show.

We chatted with Joe and Mika after the show. Our video includes a special cameo from NBC News president Steve Capus on the subject of the recent Comcast takeover of NBC.

Breakfast was served for attendees, some of whom arrived so early they were also in the house for “Way Too Early”, which Willie Geist anchored live from RL starting at 4:30amCT.  For Geist, the Chicago trip was a homecoming: he was born in suburban Evanston, and lived

Read more

MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” will originate from Chicago this Friday as Joe Scarborough, Mika Brzezinski interview Chicago’s most famous resident (for now): Oprah Winfrey. Joe, Mika and Willie Geist will host the show from RL (as in Ralph Lauren) Restaurant along Chicago’s Magnificent Mile.

Other guests include Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL), former White House adviser and now returning Chicago resident, David Axelrod, the Rev. Jesse Jackson, Vanity Fair special correspondent Maureen Orth, and her son, NBC News correspondent Luke Russert.

More in the press release after the jump…

Read more

Today at 5 PM, MSNBC will run a special edition of “Hardball” with Chris Matthews in honor of Martin Luther King Day. The special, “Obama’s America,” will examine the state of race relations in America. Guests include White House advisor David Axelrod and outgoing RNC chair Michael Steele.

Yesterday, we reported that the CBS Sunday public affairs show Face the Nation topped its competition in total viewers last week. TVNewser spoke to the program’s moderator, Bob Schieffer, about the win, the upcoming elections, and the role the Sunday shows play in this multi-platform world.

TVNewser: Bob, congratulations on Sunday, why do you think that the show resonated with viewers?

Bob Schieffer: We just try to stick right to the news, we are in the middle of a very important midterm election and we try to make every broadcast for the last month or so about that, we had quite a good panel [Sunday] we had Liz Cheney, and she really squared off against Howard Dean.

It was jut the kind of discussion we really like to have, it was kind of fun, but still it was very civil. It was interesting, every single person that was on the broadcast said to me, ‘thank you, I really enjoyed doing that.’ When you do that you feel like you have advanced the story a little bit.

TVNewser: “Meet the Press” and “This Week” both played host to U.S. Senate debates, with MTP hosting the candidates from Colorado and “This Week” the candidates from Delaware. The Delaware race has drawn some national attention, but do you think that most people outside of those states are really interested in watching those debates?

Read more

NBC’s “Meet the Press” was the most-watched Sunday show this week, drawing the programs largest audience since last March (last May in the demo). David Axelrod and Rep. John Boehner were guests.

ABC’s “This Week,” which was anchored by Barbara Walters and featured an interview with Senator-elect Scott Brown and a roundtable with Roger Ailes, was up enough week-to-week to overtake CBS’ “Face the Nation” and finish second. It was ABC’s largest audience of the season.

“Fox News Sunday” drew an additional 2.50M total viewers (674,000 demo) via cable replays. Rebroadcasts of “MTP” drew an additional 1,014,000 total viewers.

Diane Sawyer didn’t take a week off between anchor stints on “Good Morning America” and “World News,” which now bears her name.

Last week she traveled to Copenhagen and interviewed Pres. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad after he attended the UN conference on climate change. Sawyer missed Charlie Gibson‘s farewell party Thursday night due to the assignment.

The interview, which received White House reaction this morning from Obama adviser David Axelrod on ABC’s “This Week,” airs tomorrow night on the debut of “World News with Diane Sawyer.”

After last week’s “truce,” the latest discussion in the White House vs. Fox News saga has centered on Fox News Channel’s guests, the most high-profile over the weekend being radio commentator Rush Limbaugh who appeared in a lengthy interview on “FOX News Sunday” with Chris Wallace.

On CBS’ “Face the Nation,” Bob Schieffer asked White House Senior Adviser David Axelrod used a clip of the Limbaugh interview and asked, “Last week your man Robert Gibbs met with the folks at Fox News, declared a truce in this war you’ve been having with them. Was the truce broken this morning?” [Clip after the jump]

The Huffington Posts’ Sam Stein described the Limbaugh interview as “an exercise in turning the White House into a punching bag” and wrote:

Hard-hitting interview it surely wasn’t. Host Chris Wallace let Limbaugh tee off on all facets of the Obama agenda, domestic and foreign. The radio talk show accused the president of not caring about success in Afghanistan. “I know this is going to sound controversial but I don’t think he cares,” he said, before accusing Obama of “dithering” on whether or not to send more troops to the theater. Wallace let him go on, relatively uninterrupted.

On the flip-side of that conversation, Daniel Libit explores the plight of democratic strategists who appear regularly on Fox News. Former Bill Clinton White House counsel Lanny Davis told Libit:

“Is there a difference between Fox and MSNBC?” he asked. “You count the number of guests on Rachel [Maddow] and Keith [Olbermann] who are conservative Republicans. If you get to double digits, I’ll buy you dinner for each one.”

And Democratic pollster Doug Schoen describes his experience very positively:

“They are the most professional network of any I have dealt with,” he said. “If you are a Democrat who wants to deliver mindless talking points on Fox, it’s probably best to go to MSBNC and hope you get a chance to recite them. I think Fox encourages critical views of all sides, asks different kinds of questions and wants to have diversity of view.”

According to Libit however, some experiences have not been completely positive. Democratic direct-mail consultant Liz Chadderdon received death threats after comments she made on “The O’Reilly Factor” and now “has adopted a personal policy of not going on Hannity’s show after he was condescending to her on the air last summer.”

Read more

Politico reports White House senior adviser David Axelrod met with Fox News founder and chairman Roger Ailes when Pres. Obama was in New York during the UN General Assembly two weeks ago.

The two discussed news coverage and the relationship between the organizations. An FNC spokesperson tells POLITICO that Ailes and Axelrod had a “cordial conversation” over coffee…

During the month of September, Fox News passed on carrying certain speeches from the president.

Interestingly, on the Saturday following the Axelrod-Ailes Manhattan chat, Fox News carried Pres. Obama’s entire speech at a Congressional Black Caucus event, while MSNBC and CNN did not.

The Hill reports on next weekend’s White House Correspondents Association Dinner – the party of the year where the media elite, politicos and Hollywood stars come together.

But, The Hill reports, “news outlets are grumbling” about ABC’s guest list. “Several people pointed to ABC anchor George Stephanopoulos‘s close friendship with [Obama Chief of Staff Rahm] Emanuel, and questioned how the network got so many big names.” Those names include Emanuel, adviser Valerie Jarrett, CIA Director Leon Panetta and U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice.

Rice was an easy get. Her husband is the Executive Producer of Stephanopoulos’ Sunday show.

But ABC says its other stars including Terry Moran and Jake Tapper booked many of the Obama staffers while Stephanopoulos was only involved in securing one guest…

Read more

As part of a TIME photo essay — “Obama’s First 100 Days: Behind-the-Scenes Photos” — Time.com features a pic of the seating chart used for February’s White House press luncheon.

The guest list included ABC’s Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopoulos, CBS’ Katie Couric and Bob Schieffer, NBC’s Brian Williams and David Gregory, CNN’s Wolf Blitzer and John King, FNC’s Bret Baier and Chris Wallace, and PBS’s Jim Lehrer.

The chart shows that Gibson was seated next to the President on his left, with Williams to his right, and Stephanopoulos directly across from him. It also shows the seating locations of press secretary Robert Gibbs and senior adviser David Axelrod.

(Photo: Callie Shell/Aurora for TIME)