Last night MSNBC launched “All In” with Chris Hayes and CNN launched the week-long panel series “(Get To) The Point.” As usual, it is worth noting that the ratings for night one are probably not representative of where they will end up. There is plenty of time for “All In” to gain viewers or lose them, while “The Point” is still a test show, and may or may not last beyond this week.

“All In,” MSNBC’s new 8 PM show, debuted to a pretty strong 859,000 total viewers and 298,000 adults 25-54. That improved upon its “Hardball” lead-in by over 200,000 viewers. “All In” was also only 12,000 viewers behind the top-rated O’Reilly Factor” on Fox News in the demo, where former Senator Scott Brown was filling in for Bill O’Reilly.

Compared to “The Ed Show’”s Q1 average, “All In” was up +45% in the demo, and down -4% in total viewers.

Read more

• How did former Massachusetts Senator Scott Brown feel about filling in for Bill O’Reilly on Fox News last night?: “I’m not gonna lie, it was pretty cool.”

• CBS’s “60 Minutes” was the ninth most-watched show last week. The Easter Sunday edition drew 11.67 million viewers.

• Lesley Messer joins the ABC News Digital team as Entertainment Editor in New York. FishbowlNY has the details.

Six weeks after joining Fox News as a contributor, former Massachusetts senator Scott Brown gets his first shot at filling in as a host on the network’s biggest show:

Arriving in NYC for show prep for O’Reilly. He is on vacation and I am hosting tonight 8&11PM.

— Scott P. Brown (@ScottBrownMA) April 1, 2013

Former Obama adviser David Axelrod is joining NBC News and MSNBC as a senior political analyst, the network says. Axelrod will contribute on all NBC platforms, and appear on shows for both channels.

He joins former John McCain adviser Steve Schmidt, Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell and former RNC chairman Michael Steele as NBC News/MSNBC contributors. Last week NBC/MSNBC named another former Obama staffer–Robert Gibbs–as a contributor.

Viewers may also recall that Axelrod famously shaved his signature mustache on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” back in December.

It has been a busy few weeks for political insiders. In addition to Axelrod and Gibbs, Herman Cain and Scott Brown joined the political contributor ranks at Fox News.

More information below.
Read more

Fox News Channel has hired former Republican presidential candidate and Godfather’s Pizza CEO Herman Cain as a contributor. Cain will provide political and business analysis and commentary across FNC’s daytime and primetime programming, as well as on Fox Business Network.

“Cain’s impressive resume makes him a valuable addition to the FOX News and FOX Business lineup,” said EVP Bill Shine. “As a political expert with business savvy, he brings an important voice to the nation’s debates.”

FNC announced earlier this week that former Massachusetts Senator Scott Brown was joining on as a contributor. Last month, the network cut ties with onetime GOP VP nominee Sarah Palin.

Read more

Former Republican senator Scott Brown is joining Fox News as a contributor.

“Senator Brown’s dedication to out-of-the box thinking on key issues makes him an important voice in the country and we are looking forward to his contributions across all FOX News platforms,” executive vice president of programming Bill Shine said in a statement.

Brown represented Massachusetts in the U.S. Senate from 2010-12. He said he is “looking forward to commenting on the issues of the day and challenging our elected officials to put our country’s needs first instead of their own partisan interests.”

Brown will make his debut tonight on “Hannity.”

CBS News chief foreign correspondent Lara Logan returned to “60 Minutes” tonight, if only in the show’s open. Logan was released from a Washington hospital last Wednesday after it was revealed a day earlier that she’d been beaten and sexually assaulted in Cairo on the day Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak resigned.

It’s not uncommon for “60 Minutes” contributing correspondents to appear in the open, and not report for that night’s broadcast. Tonight Lesley Stahl profiled Sen. Scott Brown (R-MA), Scott Pelley reported on the real man behind “The King’s Speech” and Bob Simon reported the genesis of the current revolution spreading across the Muslim world.

CNN’s John King dons the apron for the “Men of Boston Cook for Women’s Health,” joining politicos like Massachusetts Senator Scott Brown and Governor Deval Patrick.

King moderated the Massachusetts gubernatorial debate on Tuesday, and has been shuttling between DC and New England, with Jessica Yellin filling in Tuesday and later today.

Next month King will travel to Florida, where he will moderate a debate between that state’s gubernatorial candidates.

“A generation ago, no matter how divided their politics, Americans got their news from the same source,” writes TV Guide‘s Ileane Rudolph, in a story titled ‘Is TV Starting a New Civil War?’. “The advent of politically partisan cable news networks changed the game.”

According to Rudolph, FNC’s Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity, and MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann and Ed Schultz “inflame their eager fans with colorful, merciless and sometimes misleading attacks on the opposition.”

MSNBC president Phil Griffin is interviewed. “Our viewers get their news from a lot of different places, then come to us because they connect with one of our hosts,” he says. “They trust their analysis…It gets a lot of attention, but the people who [complain] want the world to be like 1960, when we had three networks and you didn’t hear what people felt.”

Rudolph asks Griffin about Olbermann’s January comments about Massachusetts Sen. Scott Brown. “Mistakes are made and corrections are made…There might be provocative stuff out there, and that’s good, but it has to be based on the facts. When you hear [Beck say he believes] Obama’s a racist, I don’t think that’s doing anybody any good. But to blame cynicism against government on a couple of voices in cable news — that’s absurd.”

The daughter of Massachusetts Sen. Scott Brown has been named a special contributor to “The Early Show.”

Ayla Brown, who was a season five contestant on “American Idol,” filed her first report today on Jordan Romero‘s quest to summit Mt. Everest.

Brown, who preformed on the broadcast earlier this year, and just wrapped up her senior season on the Boston College basketball team, will report pieces occasionally for the CBS News morning show.