President Obama is scheduled to comment on the disaster in Oklahoma at 10 AM and it is likely that all of the broadcast networks will break into regular programming to cover it.  ”CBS This Morning” went into the 9 AM hour to cover the fallout. We hear that “CTM” will stay live until 12 PM on the east coast covering the damage, and 10 AM pacific.

Update: “Our prayers are with the people of Oklahoma today,” Obama said. “Oklahoma needs to get everything that it needs right away.”

“If there is hope to hold onto, not just in Oklahoma but around the country, it is the knowledge that the good people there in Oklahoma are more prepared than most, and what they can be certain about is that Americans around the country will be right there with them,” he added.

Meanwhile, the news channels are sending their A-teams to Oklahoma to cover the fallout from the tornado.

As we noted yesterday, NBC has Brian Williams,  Lester Holt, Ann Curry, Harry Smith, Kate Snow, Anne Thompson and Dr. Nancy Snyderman in Oklahoma, as well as the Weather Channel team of Jim Cantore, Mike Bettes, and Mike Seidel.

ABC News has Sam Champion, Ginger Zee, David Muir and Alex Perez in Oklahoma. Byron Pitts, Mike Boettcher, and Cecilia Vega are also either in Moore or en route.

CBS has Norah O’Donnell anchoring from Moore, and Anna Werner on the ground, and Scott Pelley will anchor the “CBS Evening News” there this evening.
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New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

• Total day: FNC: 331 | MSNBC: 107 | CNN: 297 | HLN: 234

• Primetime: FNC: 419 | MSNBC: 169 | CNN: 438 | HLN: 255

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New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Fox News and CNN are planning live coverage of the hearings, with CNN bringing in Jake Tapper, Dana Bash, Wolf Blitzer and Arwa Damon to join the coverage. Fox News will have Bret Baier, Congressional correspondent Mike Emanuel, chief Washington correspondent James Rosen and Fox News contributor and Amb. John Bolton contributing.

Interestingly enough, it is quite likely that the Sunday public affairs shows will be part of the story. U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice appeared on the network Sunday shows and argued that the attack was spontaneous and not premeditated. That now appears not to be the case, and some State Department officials say they knew that all along.

Elsewhere, The Washington Post profiles CBS News correspondent Sharyl Atkisson as “a persistent voice of media skepticism on Benghazi.”
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His colleague Wolf Blitzer fell victim to the cruel prank last week.

Luckily for Cooper, the prank was called into a weekend home he owns in The Hamptons, and not his New York city apartment. The CNN anchor was not there when it happened, with four different police forces converging on the home.

The New York Post has more:

It was the first time the hoax — in which pranksters create false reports of violence to trigger SWAT-like responses at celebs’ homes — had been pulled off outside Los Angeles.

The Post was incorrect on that point, as Blitzer’s home was in Maryland, not in LA.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

• Total day: FNC: 223 | MSNBC: 121 | CNN: 140 | HLN: 242

• Primetime: FNC: 236 | MSNBC: 131 | CNN: 155 | HLN: 273

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A few astute viewers may have noticed that Wolf Blitzer has been filling in on “CNN Newsroom” for the last week or so at 1 PM, a few hours ahead of “The Situation Room” at 5 PM. Jake Tapper and Brooke Baldwin have also filled in on the early afternoon hours.

The move is not believed to be permanent, just an experiment tied to some major breaking news events, like the Bush Library dedication, president Obama’s news conference and developments in the bombing case. As with the “AC360″ format tweak though, if it works, it could very will stick around.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

The ratings for April 2013 (Nielsen Live + Same Day data):

• Primetime (Mon-Sun): 920,000 Total Viewers / 340,000 A25-54
• Total Day (Mon-Sun): 638,000 Total Viewers / 228,000 A25-54

The month of April was a busy one for all the cable news networks, with extended coverage of the Boston marathon bombing and subsequent manhunt as well as the fertilizer plant explosion in West, Texas. Every hour of CNN programming was up double or triple digits compared to April 2012, which was an especially slow month for the network. In Total Day, CNN was up +79% in Total Viewers and +109% in the A25-54 demographic. In primetime, the network was up +80% and +128%, respectively.

The 6pmET hour of “The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer” showed the most growth of any cable news program in April, up +124% in Total Viewers and +224% in A25-54 viewers. “OutFront with Erin Burnett” posted its best month since launching in 2011, growing +145% in Total Viewers and +221% in the demo year-over-year. Piers Morgan‘s 9pmET program was also up significantly, growing +71% and +119%, respectively.

Two newcomers for CNN — Jake Tapper and Anthony Bourdain — also boosted their respective timeslots. Tapper’s 4pmET program is up +54% in Total Viewers and +108% in the A25-54 demographic compared to the same month last year, when the hour was home to “The Situation Room.” Bourdain’s “Parts Unknown” boosted the Sunday 9pmET hour by +122% and +440%, respectively.

“Anderson Cooper 360″ averaged 1.16 million Total Viewers and 431,000 A25-54 viewers for the month, making it the top rated show on CNN in both ratings measurements.

CNN’s release is after the jump. continued…

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Luckily, the person targeting Blitzer did so on Saturday night, and the CNN anchor was not in his Maryland home. The Washington Post has the details:

In the case involving Blitzer, the person or people behind the fraud wrote some form of text message, Starks said. The message was set up to seem like it was from Blitzer himself, and it included his address. It appeared to have been sent through a mobile phone company’s “relay” system, which is part of an arrangement to pass on urgent messages to the police’s emergency communications center, Starks said. But exactly where the message originated remains unclear, he said.

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New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

• Total day: FNC: 291 | MSNBC: 130 | CNN: 200 | HLN: 176

• Primetime: FNC: 356 | MSNBC: 171 | CNN: 269 | HLN: 181

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New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

• Total day: FNC: 327 | MSNBC: 134 | CNN: 258 | HLN: 125

• Primetime: FNC: 436 | MSNBC: 257 | CNN: 295 | HLN: 135

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New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Shots were heard in the area by several correspondents, including CNN’s Drew Griffin and ABC’s Linsey Davis, around 7pmET. On CNN, Griffin recounted what he had heard for Wolf Blitzer.”I just heard what sounded like multiple assault rifle shots to me. Rapidly fired, and then all of a sudden it stopped,” Griffin said.

Shortly after Griffin’s report, the CNN video feed focused on a shot of the media stand-up locations in Watertown that showed NBC’s Lester Holt readying for a live shot (pictured right).

In addition to the coverage on the cable networks, which has continued throughout the day, all three broadcast networks are on the air with special reports that have extended through the evening newscasts.

Around 7:15pmET, NBC dipped into the feed from New England Cable News and a reporter could clearly be heard saying, “we don’t know shit.”

“Well that was a fortuitous time to dip into New England Cable News. We apologize for the language we inadvertently aired during what was a mix-up of communications on their part,” Brian Williams said immediately.

And it may be a long night: around 7:45pmET, Williams read an email from a law enforcement source on the air that said “Believe it’s him. Slow going here.”  Stay tuned.

More, 8:33 p.m.: On ABC News, Diane Sawyer talked to a resident of the neighborhood who is a friend of the man that tipped the FBI to the suspect’s location in the boat. “He looked up and noticed something was off about his boat, so he got his ladder, and he put his ladder up on the side of the boat and climbed up, and then he saw blood on it, and he thought he saw what was a body,” he said.

More, 8:42p.m.: NBC News is broadcasting WHDH’s special coverage. The NBC affiliate is reporting that the suspect has been taken into custody alive. NBC confirms; ABC News, CBS News follow minutes later.

On cable, Fox News and MSNBC reported the suspect’s arrest at 8:42 p.m., followed by CNN at 8:45 p.m.

By 10:05 President Obama appeared in the briefing room grieving those lost and thanking the people of Boston and first responders. Also, a message for the media — both social and traditional: “In this age of instant reporting, tweets, and blogs, there’s a temptation to latch on to any bit of information, sometimes to jump to conclusions. But when a tragedy like this happens with public safety at risk and the stakes so high, it’s important that we do this right. That’s why we have investigations. That’s why we relentlessly gather the facts.”

All the broadcast networks are in continuing coverage. “20/20″ on ABC, “Rock Center” on NBC and a special report on CBS. At 10:48pm, CBS News airs the first picture of the suspect, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev on the ground, getting medical care. “The police commissioner believes that he was shot in the firefight last night and had apparently been bleeding for 20 hours before he was found in the boat,” said Scott Pelley.

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That didn’t slow the reporting on CNN and Fox News. By 1:50pm, Wolf Blitzer, along with King, was reporting an arrest had been made. Fox News, too, reported an arrest. NBC News went so far as to produce a network special report, anchored by Brian Williams — which aired on MSNBC — with Pete Williams again reporting, “No arrest has been made.”

• FishbowlNY: PBS’s Gwen Ifill Takes Offense to CNN Identifying Boston Bombing Suspect as “Dark-Skinned Male”

Williams added, “It’s rather confusing at this point. Partly because of the nomenclature here. One person’s item of interest is another person’s suspect. I would take a step back and say whatever is going on, it is a promising development.”

Stay tuned.

> Update: At 2:21 on Fox News, Megyn Kelly reported: “This is the situation we find ourselves in, folks. We got different law enforcement officers telling us different things. Two said to (Foxnews.com) that an arrest has been made. And now two are telling us no arrest has been made.”

> Update: At 2:28 on CNN, former FBI assistant director Tom Fuentes contradicted CNN’s reporting: “I have actually three separate sources, but two that are very highly placed and close to the investigation that have just told me that there has been no arrest, and, in fact, a suspect has not been identified by name yet, that they have — they’re looking for someone, but don’t have anybody in custody yet and don’t have an identification.”

> Update: John King on CNN at 2:46: “Part of this reflects on us, part of it also reflects on people you talk to, reliable sources, and Fran Townsend is one of our finest people, Boston law enforcement source saying we got it. When you have people who have been reliable sources if they’re ahead of themselves, we need to circle with them. We need to figure this out ourselves.”

> More: A CNN spokesperson tells HuffPost’s Michael Calderone: “CNN had three credible sources on both local and federal levels. Based on this information we reported our findings. As soon as our sources came to us with new information we adjusted our reporting.”

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Brian Williams will anchor “NBC Nightly News” from Boston tonight.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

The cable news networks pivoted to breaking news in Massachusetts shortly after 3pmET Monday afternoon as two explosions went off at the finish line of the Boston Marathon.

Fox News was the first cable news network to report the news at 3:06:18 p.m., followed just seconds later by CNN at 3:06:53 p.m. MSNBC reported the news at 3:08:45 p.m. All three cable news networks were several minutes minutes behind the first reports of the explosions on Twitter.

Fox News and CNN are relying on live pictures from Boston local stations. MSNBC has video from New England Cable News, which is owned and operated by NBC Universal.

> More: The broadcast networks also broke in with news of the explosions. CBS News was first at 3:10pmET, followed by ABC News and NBC News at 3:13 p.m. Scott Pelley is anchoring on CBS, Brian Williams on NBC and Diane Sawyer and George Stephanopoulos on ABC.

> More: Matt Frucci, the incoming executive producer of CNN’s new morning show, is doing eyewitness reports from the scene for the network. Wolf Blitzer is anchoring. And on Fox News, Shepard Smith is talking with WGBH’s Emily Rooney, former network executive and daughter of Andy Rooney.

> More: Anderson Cooper is on his way to Boston and will anchor at 8pmET and 10pmET.

> More: Here’s affiliate video of one of the explosions, as seen on CNN:

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New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

• Total day: FNC: 248 | MSNBC: 132 | CNN: 118 | HLN: 189

• Primetime: FNC: 285 | MSNBC: 228 | CNN: 160 | HLN: 250

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New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.