So, in a nutshell, Ben Bernanke said some things and then the markets tumbled.

But in the run-up to the Fed chairman speaking at a press conference this afternoon, following the Fed policy committee’s two-day meeting, the cable business networks spent hours discussing what he might say and what it might mean. The award for the most bombastic conversation of the day  (and isn’t that what it’s about?) goes to CNBC’s Rick Santelli and the Wall Street Journal‘s chief economics correspondent Jon Hilsenrath. I’m starting to think Santelli doesn’t really cotton to the economics types.

Santelli said Hilsenrath, and other Fed reporters, ask softball questions at Bernanke’s rare press availabilities. Hilsenrath called out Santelli for being a doomsayer.

“Part of me holding people accountable is holding people like you accountable, Rick” said Hilsenrath. “Good. Ask me anything pal,” Santelli shot back.

Watch after the jump…

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Some changes are coming to CNBC’s business block starting next Monday.

CNBC’s 11am show “The Call” (formerly known as “Morning Call”) which has been anchored by Melissa Francis and Larry Kudlow will be replaced by an extra hour of “Squawk on the Street,” TVNewser has learned. The new hour will be anchored by Carl Quintanilla from the NYSE, accompanied by Simon Hobbs, Rick Santelli, Gary Kaminsky and others. Kaminsky, along with David Faber, had been been fronting the network’s NoonET half hour “Strategy Session” which has also been canceled.

“Fast Money Halftime Report”goes to an hour at NoonET and will continue to be anchored by Scott Wapner.

Kudlow continues to host is 7pmET show and Francis will now co-anchor “Power Lunch” with Tyler Mathisen and Sue Herrera at 1pmET. As we reported last week, Michelle Caruso-Cabrera is moving off “Power Lunch” and has been named CNBC’s International Correspondent.

Internal memo from SVP and EIC Nik Deogun, after the jump…

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Seeming to put politics aside for a few hours — not one but two GOP governors stopped in to the MSNBC After Party last night at the Italian Embassy in Washington DC: New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie — often the target of MSNBC’s opinionated hosts — and former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin (right, meeting NBC News correspondent Luke Russert for the first time). Palin, as we reported yesterday, was the guest of Fox News anchor Greta Van Susteren.

As MSNBC host/mixologist Rachel Maddow made a drink for “Glee’s” Jane Lynch, MSNBC boss Phil Griffin, worked the room. It’s his after party afterall. And not missing an opportunity to synergize, Cee lo Green, of NBC’s “The Voice” was the entertainment.

In addition to Van Susteren, we spotted Bret Baier from Fox News chatting with NBC’s Savannah Guthrie. NBC News president Steve Capus and “Today” show EP Jim Bell — who’d both just returned from London covering the Royal Wedding and sharing ratings info on his Blackberry. Looks like “Today” was #1 again on Royal Wedding day. (Final numbers later on TVNewser).

Eliot Spitzer in tow with CNN’s chief communicator Christa Robinson; Roland Martin, David Bohrman, and Sam Feist also of CNN and ABC’s Jim Sciutto.

We chatted up CNBC’s Rick Santelli, in from Chicago, Carl Quintanilla and Hampton Pearson. NBC’s Janet Shamlian, and Kelly O’Donnell and MSNBC’s Dylan Ratigan and Contessa Brewer, now almost four months along. Ed Schultz was proud to tell us he’s overtaken Anderson Cooper in the ratings at 10pm, in just his third month on the air. “Big news,” says big Ed.

Meanwhile, over at the Bloomberg/Vanity Fair party, tipsters tell us Jake Tapper, Dave Price, John Dickerson, Chris Isham, Gayle King, and Seth Meyers [who'd poked fun at the thought that the Bloomberg party was a hot ticket], were still in full party mode at 2:15am. “The patio is still packed,” we were emailed. “They started serving breakfast snacks.”

“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

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CNBC’s Rick Santelli has left his usual spot at the Chicago Merc and is instead at CNBC World Headquarters this election day. Santelli, whose Feb. 2009 on-air rant gave birth to the tea party movement, will take part in CNBC’s midterm coverage.

Calling him “the father of the tea party,” Joe Kernen welcomed Santelli to “Squawk Box” this morning. Speaking of the Tea Party movement, Santelli said “I don’t think it’s going to morph into a party, but I think it’s going to morph into a political force that will have input into the system.” Talking about the extremes in this election, specifically Christine O’Donnell, Santelli said: “You need the extremes to bring the discussion in. She’s not going to win this time, but she’s going to alter the discourse, that’s good. We need extreme people.”

One-time presidential candidate Howard Dean joined Santelli on set and when the conversation turned to Pres. Obama, Kernen held up today’s New York Post (left):” “This is Rupert Murdoch… if this is not a repudiation…” “That is propaganda,” said Dean, “I think it’s a repudiation of the promise of the notion that he was going to change the way business is done in Washington and that did not happen.”

Santelli, a self-described Independent, will be on CNBC all day contributing commentary as well as his commodities reporting. When asked this summer in a TVNewser interview whether he believed he was the father of the tea party, Santelli said, “If that’s what they put on my tombstone, they can bury me with a smile.”

For the business news channels, daytime is where the bread is buttered, but for the 2010 midterm elections, they are all planning special primetime programming.

As one would expect, all three channels are bringing out their big guns for the night, with CNBC’s coverage being led by Maria Bartiromo, FBN’s by Neil Cavuto and Bloomberg TV’s by Charlie Rose.

CNBC will have live coverage from 7 PM to midnight, programming which it is calling “Decision 2010: Your Money, Your Vote. Maria Bartiromo and Carl Quintanilla will anchor until 11 PM, with Tyler Mathisen and Amanda Drury taking over from there.

Guests will include business leaders and political insiders, including former GM vice chairman Bob Lutz, former Continental Airlines CEO Gordon Bethune, former Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez and former Labor Secretary Robert Reich.

And yes, Rick Santelli, who famously coined the phrase “tea party movement,” will be providing special commentary throughout the night.

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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.’

Former Republican House Majority Leader Dick Armey was on CNBC’s Squawk Box this morning talking about his new book Give us Liberty: A Tea Party Manifesto in which he writes about the movement and its roots — which was inspired by this rant from CNBC Chicago correspondent Rick Santelli.

For his part, Santelli missed Armey’s segment this morning as he was still on his way to work, telling Joe Kernen, “I was on the train, Joe, but the rant was a year and a half ago. The Tea Party movement is moving along. It’s pretty cool after a year and a half.”

> 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 markets are the world’s greatest Rubik’s cube,” says CNBC’s Rick Santelli. “And I love solving puzzles.”

In fact, as he provides live updates each weekday from the CME (Chicago Mercantile Exchange) group trading floor, Santelli feels his mission is to put the pieces together, helping viewers figure out where the markets — and the nation’s economy — are headed.

“These are important topics that are going to affect every man, woman, and child in the world,” Santelli tells TVNewser during an interview between live shots, “and I want to do my best job to portray it as I see it in an honest, objective fashion.”

A “Chicago guy that started out as a runner” in 1979 for Shearson, Santelli “worked my way through” as a trader and financial services executive before — by fluke — being asked to provide television commentary.

Santelli discovered he liked TV. He started making guest appearances on CNBC in 1994, joining the network full-time in 1999.

Regular viewers soon came to realize Santelli isn’t exactly shy about debating the news of the day. He’ll mix it up with fellow CNBCers Steve Liesman and Dennis Kneale, among others.

Santelli calls his most heated moments “passionate outbursts, but ‘rants’ is okay [too], I really don’t have a problem with it!”

His most famous rant — against the administration’s Homeowners Affordability and Stability Plan — came in February of last year. The Rant-Heard-’Round-the-World catapulted Santelli into the national consciousness, even drawing a rebuke from White House press secretary Robert Gibbs.

Nearly a year and a half later, The Rant remains both popular and misunderstood, Santelli says. He wants to set the record straight.

• Rick Santelli slide show, after the jump…

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