• Roger Ailes, celebrating his 73rd birthday today, is one of four recipients of the 2013 Bradley Prize. Ailes is being honored for his “innovative business-building strategies” which have “revolutionized the uncovering and delivery of news in America,” said the head of the Milwaukee-based Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation.

• Ailes creation “The Five” is on a hot streak this week. The opinion show set around a table with 5 Fox Newsers has been the #1 show among total viewers at 5pm for seven straight days, outpacing Nickelodeon, TNT and USA.

• TVSpy reports NBC and CBS this Fall will debut half-hour primetime shows with TV news reporters as primary characters. On NBC Michael J. Fox plays a reporter who makes a TV news comeback while battling Parkinson’s. On CBS Will Arnett plays a “roving news reporter” looking forward to living the single life when his parents’ marital problems derail his plans.

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“Who would have thunk it? I should have lasted probably three shows before they fired me,” Hannity joked, adding that he credits Fox News chairman and CEO Roger Ailes with helping him become a cable news star. “I gotta give credit where credit is due and that is with Roger, seeing me personally through the early transition days from radio to TV. In this environment, I don’t think you can make the transition without scrutiny from day one.”

Hannity did face some scrutiny when he first started, including a scathing review from Newsday TV critic Verne Gay. Still, it pales in comparison to what newcomers to the scene face now.

“Ratings wasn’t the end-all at the beginning, it was putting on good programming.” Hannity says. “Now if you are on two days, people are saying, ‘well the show’s a hit,’ or ‘the show’s a failure.’ You really need time to build an audience, to bond with an audience. You have to understand the news cycle aspect to ratings, and a lot of people don’t seem to understand that.”

Time has been on Hannity’s side. “Hannity” consistently wins its timeslot. (Though MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow gave it a run in the demo earlier this year). And as the ratings for Fox News have grown, its impact on society has too. But Hannity downplays his influence on the national conversation.

“I don’t really think of the impact I have on things,” Hannity says. “I take my job seriously, but I really don’t take myself seriously, and everyone that knows me really well knows that.

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Kelly had met with executives at CNN and ABC News before deciding to stay at FNC.

Update: A Fox News spokeswoman tells TVNewser “We will neither confirm nor deny any contract discussions with Megyn Kelly.”

Last November, TVNewser sat down with Fox News CEO Roger Ailes, where he talked about keeping her in the family:

We’d love her to stay here and be even a bigger star. So I’m not going to go past that. I’d be stunned if she wanted to go any other cable channel. That’s a real dive off a high cliff. If somebody wanted her to host the “Today” show or something, she’d have to look at that I suppose. Nobody’s ever left here and made it and a lot of people who left other places have done really well here.

It is widely believed inside FNC that Kelly is being groomed for a larger role at the channel, either later in the afternoon or in primetime. With Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity signing new deals in the last year, the next primetime contract to expire is that of 10 PM anchor Greta Van Susteren, whose last deal was inked in 2010, though it isn’t clear exactly when it ends.

Shepard Smith‘s contract also expires at the end of the year. Both Smith and Van Susteren have been rock-solid ratings leaders in their respective timeslots over the last few years, so any change would be a big one.

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Original: An excerpt in the New York Times from a new book by Jonathan Alter on the 2012 Presidential election features quite the tale about Fox News, and CEO Roger Ailes.

The Center Holds: Obama and His Enemies, recalls one day last November when Geraldo Rivera was on “Fox & Friends” to talk about Benghazi. While the three hosts were very critical of the administration, Rivera defended it.

“After the argument continued for several minutes, Ailes called the control room and told the producers to cut Rivera’s mic,” Mr. Alter writes.

It is a bold statement, although Alter does not explain the source of the story. A video of the segment (h/t Johnny $) has been on the Fox News site since it happened, and does not appear to show a mic getting cut.

All in all, it was a seven minute segment, which in the world of cable news is an eternity. It is possible that a call was made, although it certainly did not appear to manifest itself onscreen. Update: the full video has a moment that sounds like Rivera’s mic may have been cut, though he insists that it was not. Judge for yourself.

Mediaite’s Andrew Kirell has more details on the incident, which seem to be more plausible than the one out forth by the book.

WATCH:
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The move comes just a day after Kurtz wrote an embarrassing story based on the idea that NBA player Jason Collins never mentioned that he was previously engaged to a women in his Sports Illustrated article. He did mention it. The corrected article didn’t make much sense without that hook, and was subsequently retracted by The Daily Beast.

A source at CNN tells TVNewser that Kurtz’s current deal with the cable channel will likely be his last. New CNN president Jeff Zucker has made no secret of his desire to rid the channel of long-time contributors that are more closely tied to the channel’s past than its future. It is not clear exactly when his current deal with CNN expires.

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The surprise solution was Fox News. Although on the surface an entertainment series might seem out of place on a news and talk channel, there was a school of thought that “The Bible” could play well there. Fox News has an older and more conservative audience that was seen as a good fit for “The Bible.” Fox News Chairman Roger Ailes caught Murdoch’s enthusiasm and a plan was hatched to run it there on Sundays

Fox News — or any cable channel — would have loved to have 11 million viewers for 5 successive Sunday nights. If only…

(h/t J$P)

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The list includes (in alphabetical order) Roger Ailes, Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough, Anderson Cooper, Bob Costas, Katie Couric, Jeff Fager, Pat Fili-Krushel, James Goldston, Phil Griffin, Sean Hannity, Megyn Kelly, the “60 Minutes” team, the “Today” team, Rachel Maddow, Piers Morgan, Bill O’Reilly, Scott Pelley, David Rhodes, The “Good Morning America” team, the “CBS This Morning” team, Diane Sawyer, Ben Sherwood, Barbara Walters, Brian Williams and Jeff Zucker.

Some of the recipients gave interviews, others did not. You can see the full list here.

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We won’t get into details. You can read the op-ed yourself. In short, Caddell doesn’t think much of Sherman and he sure wasn’t happey Sherman reached out to him in the first place.

Frankly, Mr. Sherman, you are an embarrassment to the journalistic trade, and if your book is in the same vein, it will be an embarrassment to your publisher and a disservice to the reading public.

Please take my advice: Grow up, get a life, and most of all, leave me alone. Got that?

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And there’s this, about the time 10 years ago when Griffin went across the street for a job interview with Fox News CEO Roger Ailes:

In 2003, when MSNBC was on deathwatch, Griffin found himself in Ailes’s office, on a job interview. As Griffin remembers it, the Fox News chief asked him where he went to college, and when Griffin told him Vassar, Ailes replied, “Liberal.”

“Why do you say that?” Griffin asked.

“Only liberals go there,” Ailes said.

Griffin walked out without a job offer, and that has pretty much been the extent of their interpersonal dealings over the years, though Ailes doesn’t think ill of him. “I’m fond of Phil Griffin,” Ailes told me. “He’s like the guy next door who wants to borrow your lawnmower. And he does a pretty good job of managing that mean-spirited circus over there. But let’s be honest, he built his whole career out of being in Jeff Zucker’s wedding party.”

(Photo: Spencer Heyfron for New Republic)

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In a statement to Equality Matters, which is run by Media Matters Action Network, GLAAD’s vice president of communications Rich Ferraro used Colby and Guilfoyle’s attendance to condemn Fox News:

If Kimberly and Jamie expect to attend future GLAAD events, they will first need to sit down with us to discuss Fox News’ embarrassing, biased and misinformed coverage of LGBT issues. The invitation is open. Fox News’s track record on LGBT issues is abysmal, and it makes no sense to me why any LGBT people or allies would want to be a part of that.

TVNewser has obtained an email from GLAAD director of creative development Marc Honaker urging a current FNC staffer to “ask [Roger] Ailes or Suzanne [Scott] to buy a table for FNC.”

Honaker, who once worked for Bill O’Reilly‘s show, said in the email that Colby and Guilfoyle had an expressed an interest in attending, writing, “We’d love to have lots of FNCers!”

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“I like Sarah Palin,” Ailes says. “I think she got pounded harder by the media. The only people who got it worse were Richard Nixon and George W. Bush, and that was over a longer period of time. Sarah would say she probably was responsible for some of the bad press she got and made some mistakes along the way.”

So why did he cut her loose?

“Nothing’s forever. We purposely took a general cooling-off after the election. Everyone was exhausted from it.”

As for Morris:
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Yesterday Chafets appeared on ABC’s “Good Morning America,” CNN’s “The Situation Room” and Fox News Channel’s “Hannity.” Today he will be a guest on “On the Record with Greta Van Susteren,” while tomorrow he appears on “Fox & Friends.” Yes, three FNC appearances in three days, attracting three very different audiences. CNN and “GMA” also present a different crowd. CNN painted Ailes as a “GOP Kingmaker,” While Hannity’s segment was more personal.

Speaking of different audiences: the book was also reviewed by the New York Times‘ Michiko Kakutani, and not positively:
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One of the recurring themes in the biography is the friendships Ailes has formed with both his colleagues and competitors.

Two in particular stood out: his longtime friendship with ABC’s Barbara Walters, and his more recent friendship between FNC’s cable news competitor Rachel Maddow.

With regard to Walters:

“Roger is a huge name and everybody knows who he is, but he doesn’t strive for fame,” [Walters] said. “He lives a quiet life. I was very happy when he finally married…”

“I dated Barbara a couple of times, or took her out as an escort, but we never had an affair,” Ailes told me. “We probably could have at some point, but we were always married or between marriages or talking about marrying someone. We never got beyond that point, but we trusted one another, and we still do.

MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow first met Ailes at a White House Christmas party in 2009 (pictured above):
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GINGRICH: Roger is a big boy. He’s said lots of things about lots of people in his career. I’ve been around a long time. I’ve had lots of different people say things about me.

BLITZER: You haven’t spoken to him… since those quotes came out?

GINGRICH: No, I talked to him a couple of weeks ago. We’re — we’re fine. It’s not — we don’t have any personality fight.

BLITZER: That’s that. You’re a big boy. He’s a big boy. And we move on.

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The basis for the segments was the excerpt from the upcoming biography about the Fox News CEO , written with his cooperation. Among other things, Ailes commented about President Obama, Newt Gingrich and other prominent figures. On CNN, no fewer than five different shows had segments on Ailes, including “CNN Newsroom,” “The Situation Room,” “Erin Burnett Outfront,” “Piers Morgan Tonight” and “Starting Point.” On MSNBC his comments were mentioned on “First look.”

It is an insidery topic, to be sure, which made all the coverage seem somewhat out of place. Piers Morgan asked boxing promoter Don King what Ailes’ legacy was:

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