Fox News Channel’s Bill O’Reilly gives an enthusiastic two thumbs up for “Lincoln,” the new Steven Spielberg film which documents the final few months of the Civil War as Abraham Lincoln tries to get the 13th Amendment abolishing slavery through the House of Representatives.

TVNewser attended the screening and a Q&A with Spielberg, Daniel Day-Lewis, who plays Lincoln, and screenwriter Tony Kushner moderated by TIME’s Rick Stengel. Stengel called first on O’Reilly who asked Day-Lewis how long it took to prepare for the role. “It took a year,” Day-Lewis says. “It seemed preposterous at first … growing up in Southeast London” to play the 16th president of the United States.

O’Reilly then gave his seal of approval: “You know you’re going to win Best Picture.” Then, to Day-Lewis, “and you’re going to win Best Actor.” And to Spielberg: “And you’re going to win Best Director and [Tommy Lee] Jones is going to win Best Supporting Actor.” Jones plays “Radical Republican” Pennsylvania Congressman Thaddeus Stevens.

Before the screening we had a chance to talk with O’Reilly, author of “Killing Lincoln” on its 55th week on the New York Times Best-Sellers list, this week at No. 5. His “Killing Kennedy” is No. 1 on the list for the second straight week.

We asked the Fox News star if he was excited by the news that FNC chairman and CEO Roger Ailes had signed on for another four years. “Excited? We’d be shocked if he hadn’t,” said O’Reilly.

Other notable tvnewsers at the event, “60 Minutes” correspondent Lesley Stahl, who had a revealing feature on Spielberg last Sunday, “CBS This Morning’s” Gayle King, Charlie Rose, and EP Chris Licht. MSNBC’s Chris Jansing and Lawrence O’Donnell, who ducked out during the Q&A to make it back to 30 Rock for his 10pm show. CNN execs Mark Whitaker, Ken Jautz and Bart Feder and ABC’s “This Week” EP Sandy Cannold.

And, after an early morning co-hosting “GMA,” Oprah Winfrey also attended. She gave a bear hug to Kushner. Then, exiting the theater — appropriately at the Loews Lincoln Square on the Upper

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Politics and law were the hot topics at Time Warner Center last night as colleagues, friends and family came out to fete Jeffrey Toobin and his new book, “The Oath,” about the often confrontational relationship between the Obama White House and the Supreme Court.

The book party included a discussion with CNN’s Senior Political Analyst David Gergen. Among the attendees: Mediaite’s Dan Abrams and his father, attorney Floyd Abrams; CNN anchor Ashleigh Banfield, execs Ken Jautz and Mark Whitaker; News Corp’s Joel Klein, Bloomberg’s Norm Pearlstine, The New Yorker‘s David Reminck as well as Toobin’s mother, Marlene Sanders, a former CBS News correspondent and Toobin’s wife Amy McIntosh.

Victor Blackwell joins CNN as an Atlanta-based anchor and correspondent and will co-host CNN Newsroom Saturday mornings with Randi Kaye. Blackwell joins CNN from WPBF, the ABC affiliate in West Palm Beach. Blackwell has been the main co-anchor of WPBF’s newscasts since 2009. Before WPBF, Blackwell worked for WTLV/WJXX in Jacksonville, WPMT-TV in York, PA, and WHAG-TV in Hagerstown, MD.

“Victor is a passionate and committed journalist,” says CNN EVP Ken Jautz. “He will be a strong addition to our weekend morning team and in the field.”

Some changes announced at CNN and HLN this morning.

First, Kyra Phillips, who has been an anchor with CNN since 1999, is leaving the network and moving a few floors away at CNN Center, to HLN where she will anchor a new daytime program launching later this summer.

Also, Ashleigh Banfield is moving off “Early Start” and will anchor her own hour later in the morning in Phillips’ previous CNN timeslot of 11amET. John Berman, who left ABC News for CNN, will now co-anchor “Early Start” with Zoraida Sambolin as well as contribute to other CNN programs and to CNN.com.

All the changes take effect in a few weeks.

Recently, Phillips had been anchoring daytime hours on HLN and Banfield has been anchoring daytime hours on CNN, so the moves are not unexpected.

HLN executive Scot Safon says, Phillips’ program “will highlight her strengths as a journalist as well as her insights and observations on the news and the people at the center of the stories.”

Memos from Safon and CNN EVP Ken Jautz, after the jump…

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CNN is canceling its 6 PM program “John King USA,” and replacing it with an extra hour of “The Situation Room.” John King will become CNN’s lead national campaign correspondent for the remainder of the election cycle, though that is clearly not as plum a gig as having an hour-long nightly program.

In a memo to CNN staff obtained by TVNewser, CNN/U.S. chief Ken Jautz explained the move:

“John will be providing reports for SitRoom, AC360 and other programs and CNN platforms. This is John’s seventh presidential campaign, fourth with CNN, and making him available across our programming lineup allows us to better tap his skills and experience, especially on the ground reporting in major battleground states and among critical voting blocs.”

Joe Johns and Suzanne Kelly

CNN also made some other changes in its Washington bureau, naming Joe Johns crime and justice correspondent, and Suzanne Kelly intelligence correspondent.

The New York Times‘ Brian Stelter first reported the King news.

“JK USA” launched in March 2010, leading up to the midterm elections. Originally at 7 PM, it moved to 6 PM when Erin Burnett joined the network. The program–which focused heavily on politics–failed to catch on with viewers, although it saw a slight uptick during the heat of the current Presidential campaign.

Jautz’s full memo to staff is below.

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Marketwatch.com’s Jon Friedman had lunch recently with CNN/U.S. EVP Ken Jautz, now 18 months into his tenure at the top of the cable news network. “He has one of the most delicate balancing acts in all of the media,” Friedman writes, “by serving his corporate bosses while leading his thousands of CNN network and online troops.” The takeaway on some of CNN’s biggest names:

• Anderson Cooper, CNN’s biggest star, has made progress in establishing himself as a global presence on news stories and is unruffled by media naysayers who wonder why he doesn’t get higher ratings, considering how high profile he is. Jautz said he is “pleased” with Cooper’s growth.

• Piers Morgan, who succeeded Larry King, is developing a “water-cooler” appeal.

• Erin Burnett, who left CNBC last year to take over a CNN news show at 7 p.m., is gaining traction as a tough interviewer. “She’s doing great,” he said.

(h/t ICN)

Gupta, Couric, Gupta's father Subhash

Just how well-liked is CNN correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta? So much so that his book release party, held at The Setai Hotel last night, had more boldface names in attendance than many TV premieres. Gupta’s first novel, Monday Mornings, was released this week.

Former President Bill Clinton, former CBS News anchor Katie Couric, daytime talk-show host Dr. Oz, “The Daily Show” correspondent Aasif Mandvi, Fox News Channel’s Bill Hemmer and former CNN anchor Kiran Chetry were all there. And that is before you get into the CNN contingent, which included Soledad O’Brien, Don Lemon, Ivan Watson, Jeffrey Toobin, Ashleigh Banfield and Christine Romans, among others.

Nearly every top CNN executive was there, including CNN Worldwide chief Jim Walton, CNN U.S. chief Ken Jautz, CNN managing editor Mark Whitaker, CNN International chief Tony Maddox and HLN chief Scot Safon. We also spotted CBS News president David Rhodes mingling with the crowd.

Clinton held court close to the entrance to the bar, with guests approaching him to chat throughout the night. Gupta worked through the crowd, saying hello to everyone, posing for photos and signing copied of his book. “Enjoy your stay in Chelsea General!” he wrote in one, referring to the fictional hospital in the book.

Gupta also said that the television adaptation of his novel for TNT continues to progress, and production started this month.

“Clearly Sanjay is a man of many many talents, he is possibly the busiest human being I have ever met,” said Walton during the reception, before quipping “Here is his book by the way.”

Many more pictures below.

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Janelle Rodriguez has been promoted to vice president of programming for CNN, EVP Ken Jautz announced today.

Rodriguez has been CNN’s director of programming, overseeing the network’s Atlanta-based programs, since 2010. Prior to that, she served as a New York-based executive producer for the network.

“Her drive and passion for the news are  hallmarks of the best of CNN,” Jautz wrote in a memo to staffers announcing the promotion.

Read the full announcement after the jump.

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Sitting at a long table at the Landmarc restaurant in New York’s Time Warner Center, CNN host Piers Morgan looks quite relaxed. He says he feels it, too, having survived one year of his 9 PM program, a year that included earthquakes, tsunamis and revolutions.

Having to toggle between covering breaking news on CNN and judging dancing Christmas trees on “America’s Got Talent” began to take its toll however, and late last year Morgan was released from his NBC obligations, and focused his attention on his CNN program.

That program, “Piers Morgan Tonight,” will be undergoing a transformation this year.

“I think we will be evolving the show into a more structured format, bringing more of my personality into it,” Morgan said over a lunch with a small group of media reporters. “If you ask me what my favorite shows are on cable, it would be Bill O’Reilly and Jon Stewart, on network it would be [David] Letterman. The shows where they have a basic structure you get familiar with, stuff to look forward to.”

The goal is to make the program “a bit more mischievous, certainly more humor, more opinionated,” Morgan says.

“PMT” will be adding signature segments, and injecting more of Morgan’s personality into it.

“We will still have long-format interviews where appropriate, but less,” he says. “It will have a much newsier, and I hope humorous tone to it as well.”

While Morgan admires talent like Stewart and O’Reilly, he also says he has no intention of copying them. He wants to put his own stamp on it.

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TVWeek’s NewsPro magazine has announced its “10 Most Powerful in Television News,” and the 2011 list features executives from all the broadcast and cable networks.

Fox News CEO Roger Ailes is recognized as being the force behind “one realm of News Corp.’s journalism empire that has stayed above the fray” of the News of the World hacking scandal. CNN president Jim Walton and EVP Ken Jautz are both on the list, as is MSNBC president Phil Griffin.

For the broadcast networks, ABC News president Ben Sherwood was named, as well as his NBC News counterpart Steve Capus. CBS News is represented by both chairman Jeff Fager and president David Rhodes, and the pair are cautiously applauded for charting a new, and unconventional, course for the network:

CBS News, with journalists now in charge, is the most intriguing. Its move to hard news, particularly in the morning hours, is admirable, but there will be lots of “told you so’s” if it doesn’t work.

See the full list here.