The Daily Show Investigates Investigative Journalism

Former CNN'er Kaj Larsen guides John Oliver through the world of investigative journalism:

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John King & Jon Stewart, Night of Too Many Stars

CNN's John King made an appearance on Comedy Central's 'Night of Too Many Stars', which aired Sunday, October 21st. Enjoy!

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TDS, CNN & SCOTUS

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart takes cable news to task for the rush to be first with yesterday's SCOTUS decision. Here's Jon 'Keeping Them Honest':

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TDS & the Diamond Jubilee

You knew The Daily Show's would have something to say about CNN's 2 hour coverage of the Queen's Diamond Jubilee, and they did not disappoint. John Oliver summed it up with "They say the sun never sets on CNN's mighty news empire, remember this is the organization that owns the first Gulf War. And now look at what they've been reduced to, Piers Morgan and a cartoon butler spending two hours talking about barges. Look upon your works Ted Turner and despair."

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CNN's Peter Bergen on TDS

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TDS Asks 'What the Hell Happened to CNN?'

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The Virtual Convention

We're not sure if CNN will roll out Tom Foreman and the virtual convention for tonight's primary coverage but we did think it was worth a second look. Here's a snippet of last week's initial reveal of the virtual convention and The Daily Show's critique.

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CNN on Comedy Central

Jon Stewart shared his opinion of CNN's Whitney Houston coverage on his February 14th show.

Stephen Colbert guest on February 2nd was CNN's Christiane Amanpour.





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Last Night's Most Brilliant TDS

Moment of Zen





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Jon Stewart Hits CNN Hard

The Daily Show took another swipe at CNN and Piers Morgan this week. Take a look:

Also the American Journalism Review had some interesting theories about CNN's future. If you have the time you might enjoy the read. Here are a few paragraphs, you can read more by following the link.

Will that change? Not likely. Klein's replacement, Ken Jautz, is a former Associated Press reporter and CNN veteran, which might sound reassuring to in-house proponents of big-J journalism. But Jautz made his mark as an executive by transforming what used to be Headline News into the gossip channel HLN. And he told the AP after being named to the top job that "the traditional, straightforward, facts-only approach" probably won't work in prime time. "People are interested in something in addition to the facts: context, analysis or, yes, opinion."

CNN has come a long way in 30 years. Once derided as Chicken Noodle News, it came of age during the first Persian Gulf War and proved that Ted Turner wasn't completely nuts when he dreamed up the first all-news TV channel. When I worked there briefly in the early '90s, the mantra "the news is the star" didn't seem laughable in prime time. Sadly, it does now.

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Your Views on the News, October 23, 2010

Jon Stewart on Larry King Live this week was just too delicious not to clip and post. We know you have something to say that is equally as brilliant as Jon so here's the place and now is the time.

Stewart's take on Parker-Spitzer:

What did JS think of Piers Morgan replacing Larry:



Stewart's take on media in general and CNN in particular:



More talk about CNN and the firing of Rick Sanchez:



How Jon feels about pundits and Anderson Cooper:



If you would like to read the full transcript of the program here's the link.

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Fun Clip Thursday

Tonight I thought I would share some great moments from CNN this past week.

Last Friday was Kyra Phillips last day of filling in for Kiran Chetry while Kiran was out on maternity leave. With the rising cost of airline tickets and new luggage charges, master of the prop, Ali Velshi brought out one of Kyra's suitcases to get the point across.

Friday brought us the third installment of the Washington Trio's reports (Zain Verjee, Tom Foreman and Jamie McIntyre). At the end of the piece Zain Verjee joined John and Kyra. What happened next has to be one of the funniest intros I have ever seen. Also the best reaction award goes to John Roberts. This clip is so funny it was Jon Stewart's moment of zen Wednesday night.

John began and ended Friday's American Morning letting the viewers know it was Kyra's last day on American Morning. Only Kyra would add her own flare to the fist bump.

Monday morning was Kiran Chetry's first day back on the job after her two month maternity leave. The end of the show had some cute pictures of Kiran's two beautiful children. Phebe posted the first pics of baby Christopher and he has certainly grown since those pictures were taken

Thursday morning John Roberts learned how freeing not wearing pantyhose is to women. Seems that Kiran, Heidi Collins and Tony Harris have a good laugh.

You know we are living in a dot.com world when people are introduced as a web address. Ali Velshi and Poppy Harlow had a cute moment during Issue #1's Quick Vote segment.

I did check and as of this posting no one has bought that site domain name.

Every afternoon edition of CNN News Room ends with the closing bell on Wall St. Before the closing bell a piece aired on people who spend $15 on a single cup of coffee. Betty Nguyen, Don Lemon and Stephanie Elam discussed the idea out this "expense"

What would a week be hear at ATC with a Daily Show with Jon Stewart clip regarding something that aired on CNN. Jon was covering the coverage of the Midwest floods. Gary Tuchman, Don Lemon and Susan Roesgen all made appearances.

Hope you enjoy these light hearted moments from this past week in CNN. Until next week ~ Sapphire

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LKL, SIU and the Ratings.

Larry King's lost touch with the people? Say it isn't so! Tuesday night brought us another hilarious LKL guest appearance by Jon Stewart.

CNN: Special Investigations Unit–Broken Government Scorched Earth

Miles O'Brien latest edition to the SIU series premieres on Thursday, Feb. 21, at 11 p.m. It will re-air on Saturday, Feb. 23, and Sunday, Feb. 24, at 8 p.m., 11 p.m. and 2 a.m. (Eastern)

Criss-crossing the country, O’Brien reports on examples of frustrating environmental policy failures, and savvy citizens working to find solutions. In Texas, O’Brien finds a company that has so far been able to evade toxic waste compliance by filing for bankruptcy, despite reporting corporate profits. In Iowa, O’Brien reports that despite broad, bipartisan political support and federal subsidies, the promises that corn ethanol would be a renewable fuel that would lessen the nation’s reliance on petroleum imports are being called into question. In the Badlands of South Dakota, O’Brien reveals the irony of two competing, multi-million-dollar federal programs – while one agency works to restore the endangered black-footed ferret from the brink of extinction, a rival government agency has hatched a plan that could kill them off again. Back in Washington, D.C., O’Brien investigates charges by global-warming scientists that their federal bosses have interfered with or silenced their scientific findings that do not support Bush administration policies.
Finally, O’Brien reports on innovative citizens, corporations and state governments that are working to bypass gridlock to find solutions to these challenges.
For more information on these and other environmental and technology stories, CNN’s science and technology team has launched a new blog with commentary on a range of issues at http://www.cnn.com/TECH/.

That's it for me this week. Take a few minutes to check last week's ratings, always an interesting read. ~ Phebe

WELL SINCE ATA POSTED LAST WEEK’S POTOMAC PRIMARY NUMBERS – I HAVE A WEEK TO COVER WITH 4 DAYS OF REGULAR PROGRAMMING (sort of…)

Four days of straight regular programming. Now you may or may not like the outcome, but as I have always said, don’t shoot the messenger. We stick to the facts, but every once in a while throw in a snarky comment – humor me, numbers can make you go blind.

But there are times you may wonder why I don’t comment on certain channel statements or charts that are issued. As an example, there is a chart that is published weekly, listing the Top 50 cable channels. We don’t comment on those. Why? Well, my role is what happened during the week in cable news/information in primetime for the “big three” and that published ranking takes into consideration all cable channel formats. It is not really fair to compare disparate formats all lumped into one list for primetime, and also based on the widest possible demographic – Total Audience 2+. The whole purpose of cable programming was to target audiences – one can get mass audience (well most of the time…) on broadcast television. Cable allows for specialized viewing and that is a good thing – just not a way to measure the success of a channel. And further, advertisers look at Adults 18-49 or Adults 25-54 in a block of programming basis called “dayparts,” or on a program basis – not on Monday – Sunday 8PM-11PM or Monday – Sunday, 24 hours called “Total Day.” The advertising industry just does not value channels that way. That channel chart is very different than the weekly Top 20 Cable Programs. However, based on Total Audience 2+, the program list is normally dominated with kids/teen/wrestling programming unless the primary or debate audiences are extremely high.

And just another FYI. This is a site for information primarily about CNN. You may see statements about the channel’s successes that I don’t mention. They tend to be promotional announcements or press releases. If they are not sourced directly to specific Nielsen audience figures that we can verify, we don’t print it. Many channels want to highlight their achievements and we are all for that. But unless I have the facts to back up what I write, I don’t write it. It doesn’t mean it isn’t correct, but I don’t write about anything unless I know exactly where it is sourced in Nielsen and is it a fair valuation by the advertising industry.

I have said in the past, I would be very happy to have additional demographic information so that I could give you a better idea of exactly what kind of audiences watch a channel – but that information is not available to us on any kind of consistent basis. So, we work with what we have, and it is sourced.

Viewership is ‘way up not only on cable, but on the way back for broadcast now that the writer’s strike is over, AMERICAN IDOL (referred to as the “death star” by the other nets – well, because it is with 29 million viewers even with the start of the “Final 24”) is in full swing and we have the “February “Sweep;” although much regular programming will be back on the air by March/April so it won’t help this month.

8PM:^
Fox News: 496,000*
CNN: 297,000*
MSNBC: 390,000*

CNN’s ELECTION CENTRAL is actually up +7% over last week even though it is still coming in third in the time period. And CNN had an up tick the week before last. Now it may not be a trend, but it shows there is interest in the hour. FOX is down -10% from the week before, and COUNTDOWN is up slightly, so there is some fluctuation in the time period.

9PM:^
Fox News: 436,000*
CNN: 355,000*
MSNBC: 214,000*

With so much political coverage in the 9PM time period the week before, LKL did have some audience erosion, as did Fox News. Hannity and Colmes did code their Tuesday program as an H&C even though everyone else coded “Election Coverage.” It would have raised their five day average to 478,000 versus the 4 day I posted – so I’ll let you decide. LKL was NOT coded on Tuesday during election coverage, so there is no way I can average in CNN’s time period killer audience of 1 million viewers into the average. Even though MSNBC brings up the rear, it is up slightly in audience over last week – probably due to regular programming and not having such an emphasis on politics that Dan Abrams doesn’t cover consistently.

10PM:^
Fox News: 420,000
CNN: 459,000
MSNBC: 230,000*

This is a tough call. It was very clear that Primary Coverage was on all channels last Tuesday, but only MSNBC coded their coverage as “Special” rather than their normal investigation block. Fox News and CNN both coded their programs as regular programming – GRETA and AC360, but it was primary results coverage. Do I count that as part of the regular program average? According to Nielsen, I should. Is it fair? No, it is not regular programming. YIKES! This is going to happen continually. So their averages are in the above numbers. AC360 beat GRETA on the basis of the huge Tuesday primary performance. The program lost to GRETA on Thursday’s NIU shooting coverage/New Orleans and Friday’s taped 360. Monday they were basically tied and Wednesday 360 far outperformed GRETA.

Courtesy: Google Images

CNN is still tops in Primary coverage and it will be very interesting to see how the debate does on Thursday (Feb 21, 2008). It is the highest viewership night in Television and there appears to be great interest in the two democratic candidates, so next week should be interesting along with the results from the Tuesday primaries. Oh, BTW, “the phrase that shall not be named” used on CNN now has the internet moniker of “TBPTOT.”

Just a little current information:

Courtesy: Google Images

Anderson Cooper was on Conan O’Brien Tuesday evening, February 19, 2008. Conan did take the time period against Kimmel, Ferguson and even Carson Daly’s late, late program (but not Letterman or Leno on at an earlier time period). But the numbers are so small at that hour for broadcast (big for cable), there isn’t much difference. It did a 1.7 Household Rating and a 6 Share – over 2 million viewers in broadcast terms.
RATINGS GURU

*4 day average; Potomac Primary aired Tuesday on all channels.
**3 day average; Potomac Primary aired Tuesday; Dan Abrams does not air Fridays.
^Courtesy Nielsen Media Research; Adults 25-54 and other audience where noted; Live + Same Day (LS), Fast Track Nationals.


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Dancing In The Streets

Attention Jon Stewart fans! Jon Stewart will be on Larry King Live Wednesday night at 9 PM ET.

Jon Stewart - counting down to hosting the Oscars, where anything can happen! Smart, engaging and always entertaining, hear what he has to say about, well, everything.

It has been an exciting weekend on the world stage. Kosovo announced its independence from Serbia this weekend. Politics aside, it's not every day that we witness the creation of a new nation. CNN's Alessio Vinci has been reporting from Pristina. Saturday, he reported on the political climate in Kosovo and the impact of an independent Kosovo.

On Sunday, there was dancing in the street in Pristina.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Mystery Journalist

This week's Mystery Journalist was CHAD MYERS.

For those of you in the US- have a Happy President's Day!

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Happy Valentine's Day

Before we get to the ratings I thought you might like to hear Jon Stewart's take on 'the best political team in television' and The Situation Room. Hilarious as always.

I hope everyone has a Happy Valentine's Day and that your personal cupid meets with a better outcome that this poor fellow. ~ Phebe

LAST WEEK WAS A MIXED BAG IN CABLE NEWS PROGRAMMING BUT CNN STILL RULES WITH PRIMARY COVERAGE

I could be polite, but I won’t when it comes to Bill O’Reilly stirring the pot and gathering high viewership on the back of Veterans issues (can you tell I’m from a family with a long and medaled military legacy..); Bill Maher lets loose with some pretty loud smack downs on LKL, AC360 continues to go after GRETA’s audience even though she was doing her best to wave the coverage of the young man suspected of involvement in the Natalie Holloway disappearance as well as Britney Spear’s latest woes. I guess we can either have a heavy dose of politics, and a little on celeb news or the other way around. You Decide…..

I already reported on Super Tuesday’s performance last week, well, because I was reporting on the week prior just as the overnight ratings came out along with the cable program rankings, so I thought I might as well give you the good news in the same week.

Courtesy: CNN; Super Tuesday

Just to re-iterate, CNN peaked at 11PM EST (!) with Total Audience 2+ tuning into Super Tuesday coverage with 4,021,000! Not much different from their 10PM average of 3,858,000 or their 9M average of 3,851,000. This audience delivery was far and away the strongest between them, Fox News and MSNBC for the night. Just so you know, yes, Adults 25-54 – the news key demographic also was taken by CNN with large margins.

The rest of the week:

8PM:
Fox News: 551,000*
CNN: 276,000*+
MSNBC: 382,000*

No surprises here with Billo taking the time period. CNN with its varied programming in the 8PM is a little tricky to program with FOX and MSNBC being stable with their programming.

9PM:
Fox News: 558,000*
CNN: 420,000*
MSNBC: 161,000**

LKL was up substantially this week over previous weeks (particularly with Monday’s Bill Maher appearance), but not enough to catch politics filled HANNITY & COLMES (I’m sorry, I can still picture the video on YouTube of Hannity being chased back to his hotel in NH by Ron Paul supporters – a little snarky humor here – by people who want to vote for Ron Paul, not actual “supporters” – if you know what I mean)…I know, I also digress to the WEST WING episode where Jimmy Smits playing Congressman Matt Santos has to autograph a “supporter” in Texas. It is a little weird how this series is almost mimicking this election cycle episode by episode. Is Aaron Sorkin on the campaign trail? We know Lawrence O’ Donnell is! Oh yeah, once again, Dan Abrams takes the “bronze.”

10PM:
Fox News: 440,000*
CNN: 368,000*
MSNBC: 183,000*

In all time periods, just about every host or anchor bailed on Thursday or Friday night. They all knew most of them would be working on Saturday (us too!), but GRETA hung in there for the week. Again, she had a fair amount of sensational stories on Monday and Wednesday, having a boosting affect for her in the time period. The Super Tuesday primary was not coded an AC360, so we can’t count it in the four day average. MSNBC’s “docbloc” really lagged with the interest in celeb news on Fox and politics on CNN.

Courtesy: CNN

SATURDAY PRIMARY COVERAGE 8PM-12MD
Fox News: 299,000
CNN: 566,000
MSNBC: 241,000

No denying the above statement. Even the Total Audience 2+ went in CNN’s favor. With Missouri, Washington State and other states up for grabs, over a half million viewers on a Saturday night is nothing to sneeze at! But I’m not going to say “the phrase that shall not be named” or call viewers/voters “Peeps.” Yikes…

Yes, we know Maine was active on Sunday, but there was nothing really substantial to report because the news was over so quickly in the early evening, CNN led all channels, but the audience for them was under 350,000 and well under that for the others.

We also had great Cable Program Rankings again this week. Unbelievable as it may seem, yes, Wrestling on USA Network took the top two slots, but CNN with its Super Tuesday primary coverage took the #4, #6 and #7 rankings out of the Top 20 programs. Fox News had one program in the Top 10 and MSNBC had none.

More primaries and more debates, so stay tuned. See you next week!
RATING GURU

*4 day average; primary coverage on Tuesday.
**Dan Abrams – 3 night average only; did not air Tuesday or Friday.
+ Mixed programs of storm special/Lou Dobbs/Election Central but no primary coverage used.







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Lend Me Your Ear for God, Sex, & Greed

Next week is scheduled to be a week of prime time specials on CNN. The week starts off Monday night at 8pm with Martin Roland.

God, Sex & Greed with Roland Martin

Has our society become corrupted and spiritually bankrupt society? Fundamentalist Christians, Muslims, and Jews have in common an abhorrence of modern Western life, which they say is dominated by the pursuit of pleasure. CNN contributor Roland Martin will examine that premise – to what degree our society is corrupted by materialism, greed, and lust, at the expense of our spirituality and what steps short of terrorism more moderate critics are taking to change it. There will be lots of lively talk segments with outspoken guests.

/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/

Did you notice that we were Wolf-less this week? I was starting to think they had installed a revolving door onto the Situation Room since there were so many different anchors sitting in for Wolf Blitzer. Here's the week in review:

We started off on Sunday (remember, Blitzer works 6 days a week most of the time) with Joe Johns hosting Late Edition.

Next, on Monday, we got to see John King/

Tuesday, Suzanne Malveaux hosted TSR.

Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday brought up Miles O'Brien.

Now, of course, I have my favorite substitute anchor. (you couldn't possibly guess who that would be, could you?) But have you ever wondered what it would be like to have Jack Cafferty hosting The Situation Room for three hours?

I imagine that it would be an interesting program.

Every now and then during TSR they turn the cameras around and you get a glimpse of the studio. They did this on Wednesday's broadcast right before James Carville came on.

It certainly is a studio with a view!

/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/

I'm on a roll tonight with The Situation Room, so I'm taking tonight's Casual Friday video from there as well. Have you ever heard a CNN anchor talking about turds? Watch...

You have to appreciate an anchor that can laugh at herself.

/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/

Mystery Journalist

Can you name this CNN journalist?

Let me know who you think this journalist is in the comments. The identity of the Mystery Journalist will be revealed in Sunday night's post.