Planet in Peril

Planet in Peril is must see television this week, not just for the important subject matter, but also for the sheer beauty. The documentary, filmed in high definition, is extraordinary. Here are a few stills courtesy of CNN Worldwide – All Rights Reserved 2007©.

From Cambodia:
From Thailand:

From Africa:

From Madagascar:



From Alaska:



All Things CNN would like to send warm birthday greetings to Nancy Grace and Dr. Sanjay Gupta.

Iraq and the Embedded Journalists

In September, 2003, The University of Tennessee's Howard H. Baker, Jr. Center for Public Policy had a seminar called The War: Iraq and the Embedded Journalists. Below is a video clip from a presentation that Gary Tuchman gave at this seminar entitled A Journalist Prepares and Goes to War.

Tuchman discusses his experience reporting during the first days of the Iraq War from an army base in Kuwait City and being embedded with the air force on a base in Northern Kuwait.

David Rust, an embedded cameraman for CNN, also gave a presentation. You can view this at: http://digitalmedia.utk.edu:8080/ramgen/8453.rm. The presentation includes a look at the equipment that they used while embedded with the military.

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Mystery Journalist

This week's Mystery Journalist was
Wolf Blitzer.

Night of the Living Democrats

Sometime earlier today, CNN went green! No, I'm not referring to their carbon footprint. The CNN logo commonly seen at the bottom of the screen turned green, evidently as part of the Planet in Peril promotion.

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Did you know that CNN Headline News anchor Robin Meade is a former Miss Ohio? Below are excerpts from an article from a March 2007 issue of Atlanta Life Magazine about Robin Meade:

Robin’s Nest: At home with CNN’s Robin Meade

By Allison Weiss Entrekin

It’s that laugh.

It’s a passionate, heartfelt belly laugh. That incredibly genuine laugh goes perfectly with Robin Meade, 37, a drop-dead-gorgeous former Miss Ohio and one of television’s most popular morning news anchors.

Meade and her husband of 13 years, Tim, just moved into her Dunwoody home and several rooms still have unopened boxes. But as she walks from one place to another describing her plans for window treatments and furniture, you start to realize she actually enjoys being in transition. “I feel like this is a new phase for us,” Meade says of her move from their Brookhaven mansion to a smaller, ranch-style home outside the perimeter. “This house is going to be decidedly more casual, because I’m past the stage of being showy and having fancy things.”

“It’s so much fun,” Meade says of the job that has made her a household name. “Obviously, first and foremost, people tune into our show for information. But I feel like we have a little license to laugh out loud if we want to, without being frivolous or off-topic. It’s a nice liberty that I don’t think every news program has.”

Perhaps the one thing Meade doesn’t do is cook, and she admits as much when she walks through her kitchen and announces, “This is where the pizza is delivered!” With opposite schedules–she’s in bed by 6 p.m. and up at 2 a.m., while Tim doesn’t get home from work until 8 at night–it’s easy to understand why she hasn’t been motivated to learn. “We really don’t see each other until the weekends, so it would be silly for either of us to cook, because there’s no one to eat it,” she says.

Instead, Meade spends her afternoons walking her dog, Rocco (named by her viewers, who consider it an abbreviated version of Robin & Company), decorating and “trying to stay awake.” It’s an upside-down routine, but one Meade swears she doesn’t mind. “It was hard to get used to my schedule earlier in my career, but somehow along the way I’ve gotten used to it, and now I can’t imagine doing anything but morning news,” Meade says. “I don’t think my personality would work in any other time slot.”

To view the entire article visit: http://atlantalifemag.com/0703/robin.htm

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Mystery Journalist

Can you name this CNN journalist?

Let us know who you think it is and we'll reveal this journalist's identity in Sunday's post.

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Veronica De La Cruz, CNN's American Morning Internet reporter, mentioned during Thursday morning's program that CNN has partnered with JibJab to bring us a create your own political movie/ cartoon. I couldn't pass up the opportunity to have a little bit fun with some pictures of my favorite CNN anchors. Presenting....Night of the Living Democrats...

If prefer your nightmares to have Republicans in them, I've posted a version of Night of the Living Republicans over on All Things Anderson.

Want to create your own? Visit http://www.cnn.com/POLITICS/ and follow the link to JibJab.

Planet in Peril ~ Promotion, Promotion, Promotion

With CNN’s documentary Planet in Peril less then a week away, the promotion has kicked into high gear this week. Anderson Cooper has been making the rounds on the talk shows this week. Anderson has been on The View, Late Night with Conan O’Brien and The Colbert Report. Next week Anderson will be on Regis and Kelly.

Along with the promotional tour, there have been screenings of Planet in Peril in New York, Los Angeles and Atlanta. Here are some pictures from the screenings.

In New York City (Images courtesy of Scott Wintrow of Getty Images)

Anderson Cooper and Dr. Sanjay Gupta

Anderson Cooper and Charles Gordin

Anderson Cooper and Jerry and Jessica Seinfeld

In Los Angeles - Grauman's Chinese Theatre (Images courtesy of WireImages)

Jeff Corwin, Anderson Cooper, Dr. Sanjay Gupta

Anderson Cooper, David Doss, Jeff Corwin

Lance Armstrong, Jeff Corwin, Matthew McConaughey, Dr. Sanjay Gupta

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CNN announced that CNN Student News will be providing educational resources for teachers and students in conjunction with CNN’s Planet in Peril…
CNN Student News, in conjunction with CNN’s groundbreaking documentary Planet in Peril, provides in-depth educational resources to help teachers and students examine the environmental issues confronting the world today.
CNN Student News produced four video reports with the student audience in mind to introduce each of the issues explored in Planet in Peril: climate change, deforestation, species loss and overpopulation. The videos can also be found on the CNN Student News Planet in Peril Educator Resource. Here, teachers and students can access additional free educational content, including learning activities, pre- and post-viewing discussion questions, an environmental quiz, footage from the documentary and the latest environmental headlines in the news.

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On October 25 during AC360, an expert panel will be taking questions about the documentary. You can send vmail questions to the panel.

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In conjunction with CNN’s Worldwide Investigation Planet in Peril, CNN will be airing a Keeping Them Honest special tomorrow night. “The Truth about Global Warming” will bring out the facts and the questions behind Al Gore’s global warming crusade. CNN’s Miles O’Brien is keeping them honest in a prime time special airing at 8 p.m. ET.

Planet in Peril will be airing October 23rd and 24th in North America and October 24th and 25th internationally.

Veronica De La Cruz and the Ratings Guru

Veronica De La Cruz, most recently a news anchor for CNN.com, has joined CNN’s flagship morning news program, American Morning, as an Internet correspondent, beginning Thursday, Oct. 18. Based in New York, De La Cruz will report on the hottest news from online sources and blogs and guide viewers through the most popular and essential stories from CNN.com and i-Reports, the network’s user-generated content initiative.

“Veronica has demonstrated an enviable ability to connect with audiences on television as well as on the Internet,” said Ed Litvak, executive producer of American Morning. “Her enthusiasm and connections to CNN’s online audience make her a welcome addition to American Morning.”

For CNN.com, De La Cruz anchored CNN.com Live, CNN Pipeline and “Now in the News,” a fast-paced hourly Web- and wireless-exclusive news update. In that time, she anchored live coverage of major breaking stories including the death of former President Ronald Reagan, the tsunami in Southeast Asia, the Hezbollah-Israeli conflict and Hurricane Katrina. She also provided briefings on CNN/U.S. and Headline News about the most popular stories on CNN.com and served as a substitute anchor for both networks.

De La Cruz joined CNN in 2003 after working as an anchor, reporter and producer at KYMA-TV in Yuma, Ariz. There, she anchored and produced a one-hour morning newscast as well as anchored a half-hour show at noon. She produced reports and did live shots for the evening newscasts. During her tenure at KYMA-TV, De La Cruz covered numerous stories on U.S.- Mexico border issues, the nation’s nursing shortage and the plight of the migrant farm worker. She also produced a series on the homeless, with whom she continues to do extensive volunteer work. She also serves as a spokeswoman for Lions Health First Foundation, which provides preventive health screenings for senior citizens and those from disadvantaged backgrounds.

Before KYMA-TV, De La Cruz worked as a music journalist for SonicNet/Digital Planet and Eruptor Entertainment’s “Living Giant.” She began her broadcasting career hosting “Direct Drive,” a show she created for the Digital Entertainment Network.

Before beginning her career in journalism, De La Cruz spent a decade of her life as a competitive figure skater. She is a member of the Asian American Journalists Association and mentors aspiring broadcast-journalists at the Associated Press Television-Radio Association’s Academy.



THE ‘BOYS OF SUMMER’ INTO FALL
AND THE ‘BOYS OF FALL’ INTO WINTER…
BIG COMPETITION FOR THE CABLE NEWS CHANNELS

RATINGS WEEK OF OCT. 8-12, 2007:

Baseball Playoffs and ESPN’s Monday Night Football are both having major impact on news viewership for the week Oct. 8-12, 2007. “The Boys of Summer” – baseball - have given TBS on average a 3 million boost in viewership against its typical drama average in primetime – a big ouch for the cable news channels…And ESPN Football, well Oct 8, with “America’s Team” (hey, I didn’t name them that, stop with the tomatoes) the Dallas Cowboys vs. the Buffalo Bills posted the highest viewership to date for the Monday primetime football airing – around 13 million viewers – a big double ouch! All programs were also affected on Friday with the start of baseball on the broadcast network FOX with a big match-up of the Red Sox and Indians. All audience comparisons are based on the demographic of Adults 25-54, the key demo the industry considers the most sought after target audience.

8PM:
OUT IN THE OPEN was off in audience on Monday, as were most cable news/information programming due to the baseball/football impact. However, the 8PM block for CNN for the week is up 5% over last week’s performance. Any improvement in that very tough, competitive time period is something to say. Both Monday and Friday experienced very low audience, as did MSNBC without Keith Olbermann on the air on Monday; and Friday being Keith’s lowest performance. However, for the week, COUNTDOWN was up 12% over last week’s performance. BILL O’REILLY experienced the pain of Monday but came back Tuesday, Wednesday. O’REILLY does particularly poor on Fridays, losing 30% of his audience off of his weekly average for Adults 25-54 and -16% for his 2+ Audience.

Many of you might have noted with Billo’s appearance on Jay Leno that he touted his audience is over 4 million a night. Well, if one takes the audience delivery for 8PM, 11PM the overnight 4AM broadcasts, they do total around 4 million. Is it fair (after all, Fox News says they are ‘fair and balanced’)? Technically yes, but advertising would never value his audience that way, so for advertising purposes, it is a meaningless number. Ratings are established to sell advertising, not to be used as a PR ploy. And Mr. O’Reilly would never admit that only 23% of his audience is in the key advertising demographic of Adults 25-54 – now that is a triple ouch!

9PM:
LKL surprising does the best audience performance on Fridays, when most news and information cable programming loses substantial audience. He had a very rocky week experiencing the baseball and football effect with a poor performance on Monday. The interview program was also affected by Tuesday’s Republican debate on MSNBC because the debate increased audience the time period for MSNBC by 63% at 9PM. MSNBC's normal programming - Dan Abrams is just not competitive in the time period against LKL. Wednesday was particularly strong for HANNITY and COMBS on FOX News. Broadcast affected everyone on Thursday night as it is the strongest night for broadcast television with Grey’s Anatomy and CSI airing at 9PM doing what we call “tent-polling” the night – meaning the programs attract viewers in anticipation of 9PM and hold viewers at the end, going into the 10PM show.


10PM:
Does it hurt when an anchor isn’t on? Unless we can see the 15 minute breakouts of the program segments (and we don’t get those) it is impossible to tell. But Monday, Oct 8 was a low point for AC360 – up against baseball (bye-bye Yankees), football (close match for the Cowboys – a 1 point win) and a substitute anchor. To give you an example of the sports impact, AC360 bounced back the next night (Tuesday) with a gain of 89,000 viewers. Wednesday and Friday were its strongest nights, but the program was off an overall -7% from its last week’s performance for Adults 25-54. However, since MSNBC’s “doc block” can be a pesky problem for 360, this week AC and his crew gave them a real bruising on Friday – it was 360’s strongest night for the key demographic. Interestingly with baseball on Friday, AC360 had a good night for Adults 25-54, but not in 2+. Sports didn’t affect his core audience, but did appear to impact older and young viewers. Yes, baseball can skew to an older audience. GRETA, with the building up of the “Blonde Ambition” Rita Cosby tapes (and an extremely weak 360 on Monday) performed well against 360 this week. What was 360’s strongest night – Wednesday.

See you next week and let me know if you have any questions.
RATINGS GURU

Adults 25-54 Audience Average, Week of Oct 8, 2007*^

8PM:

Fox News: 503,000
CNN: 197,000
MSNBC: 300,000

9PM:

Fox News: 344,000
CNN: 260,000
MSNBC: 136,000*

10PM:

Fox News: 350,000
CNN: 237,000
MSNBC: 149,000

*No Abrams Tuesday – GOP debate and does not air Friday; 3 day average applied to five days for a five day Abrams average.
^Source: Courtesy Nielsen Media Research; Adults 25-54 LIVE+Same Day (LS) Fast Track Nationals.

American Votes 2008

credit:Mark Von Holden/Wireimage

This morning was the CNN America Votes 2008 Breakfast in New York City. Below is a report from TVNewser on MediaBistro on the event:

...I've just returned from CNN's America Votes 2008 upfront held in midtown Manhattan. I'll have more later. Of note, Campbell Brown front and center on the first of two panels which featured CNN's anchors, correspondents and political analysts. Flanked by John Roberts on her right and Lou Dobbs on her left, Brown (due to deliver her first child on Christmas Day) has been working on political specials which will begin airing next month. Her primetime program is set to debut in February at 8pmET. CNN/US president Jon Klein tells me with the move of Lou Dobbs Tonight to 7pmET, "we are putting our news program between our two highest rated shows"

John Roberts, Campbell Brown, & Lou Dobbs credit:Chris Ariens/TVNewser

Jack Cafferty credit:Chris Ariens/TVNewser

One of the panel discussions got interesting when James Carville revealed his prediction on who would be the Democratic and Republican presidential nominees. Below is an excerpt from the CNN Political Ticker:

NEW YORK (CNN) — Democratic strategist and CNN analyst James Carville tossed out a provocative idea during a panel discussion on politics Tuesday.

At CNN's America Votes 2008 Breakfast, the chief architect of Bill Clinton's successful 1992 presidential run predicted that former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush will be the Republican nominee in 2008. Jeb is a younger brother of President Bush.

In addition to Carville and [J.C.] Watts, the panel included CNN analysts and contributors Paul Begala, Donna Brazile, Gloria Borger, Bill Bennett, and Amy Holmes.

Here are a few more pictures from the event...

Lou Dobbs & his wife, Debi Segura credit:Mark Von Holden/Wireimage

Suzanne Malveaux & Wolf Blitzer credit:Mark Von Holden/Wireimage

Larry King, Jon Klein, & Wolf Blitzer credit:Mark Von Holden/Wireimage

CNN's Emmy Award credit:Mark Von Holden/Wireimage

Thanks to Phebe for the tip & to Sheryn for the great pictures!

Rick Sanchez

I'm sure most of you have heard by now about CNN's big swap starting on November 5th. The Situation Room will become one continuous 3 hour block and Lou Dobbs will move to the 7PM (Eastern)time slot. It will be interesting to see what other shuffling takes place in the coming weeks and months and how it affects Out in the Open with Rick Sanchez. As they say "stay tuned".
The following is a partial reprint of an interview in The New York Observer. Thanks to Em for the find.

One Thursday in July, CNN’s Rick Sanchez received an e-mail from network president Jonathan Klein.
“I need a hard-throwing righty out of the bullpen,” to fill in for Paula Zahn as anchor for a week in the crucial 8 p.m. weekday time slot, Mr. Klein wrote, according to Mr. Sanchez. “Can you be in New York by Monday?”
It's less than a thousand miles from Atlanta to New York, but the distance between his gig as a weekend daytime anchor for CNN, and the new show must have felt much greater. This was the big leagues: If only for a week, the energetic, 49-year-old Cuban immigrant would go head-to-head against Fox’s fed-up conservative, Bill O’Reilly, and MSNBC’s liberal sophisticate, Keith Olbermann.
He threw a few suits in a bag, jumped on a plane and covered for Ms. Zahn for a week. Things went well. So well, in fact, that the following week, after CNN announced Ms. Zahn was leaving the network, Mr. Klein asked: “Can you do another week?”
That week, too, went well.
“So then he says, ‘Can you do a month?’” Mr. Sanchez remembered, in an interview at his new office in the Time Warner Center. Next, he remembered, it was, “Can you go through Labor Day?” Then: “Can you go through November?” And now, said Mr. Sanchez, “We’re going through February,” when the network’s new star hire, Campbell Brown, will step into the slot.
And so, in the strangely ad hoc way that most things in this business seem to happen, he’s getting the biggest audition of his career.
Mr. Sanchez’s six month tryout pins the young buck with a straight-shooting style and a reputation for daredevil reporting up against the O’Reilly’s and Olbermann’s of the world. And it’s an opportunity to test out a new voice for the network that just might have something going for it.
Mr. Sanchez’s parents fled Cuba for South Florida when he was 2, and it was in Miami that he got his start, hosting a Spanish-language radio show while making his name as an English-language anchor for the city’s Fox affiliate, WSVN.
Lately he’s been aggressive about staking out his territory with the other guys. Out in the Open has developed its own cause—the struggles of Hispanic immigrants—that fits well with his own story, and pushes a political hot button.
“We really want to fight for the little guy,” Mr. Sanchez said, an uncharacteristically somber look flashing, for the moment, over his boyish, unlined face. “And, in this case, I think, the littlest of guys in this country right now is the Mexican immigrant.”
Of course, the direction makes strategic sense for CNN, especially as it continues to figure out how to counter conservative icon Mr. O’Reilly. As Mr. Sanchez himself puts it: “For a long time, cable news has said either, ‘We’ll just stay right here in the middle and not say a whole lot,’ or, ‘we’ll go way over to the right and say a lot.’ But there’s a whole other audience out there … America really is a melting pot.”
“I know it sounds a little hackneyed,” he said, “but defending the little guy is hard these days, and it’s not something that anybody wants to do, and I do it because—not just because I’m a minority—but because I frankly feel what it’s like to be these people who are really downtrodden right now, you know, to be a Mexican immigrant. Because I know what it’s like to be poor.”
And Mr. Sanchez has no fear of confronting his rivals directly.
On his Sept. 19 show, Mr. O’Reilly told viewers: “I couldn’t get over the fact that there was no difference between Sylvia’s restaurant and any other restaurant in New York City. I mean, it was exactly the same, even though it’s run by blacks.” Later, during a discussion with a correspondent, he added, “There wasn’t one person in Sylvia’s who was screaming, ‘M-F’er, I want more iced tea.”
Mr. Sanchez saw his opportunity. He called Mr. O’Reilly and asked for an explanation, then dedicated a segment of his show to a debate over the Fox News–man’s words. Mr. O’Reilly fired back, and the blogs buzzed the next day with talk of the skirmish.
CNN has found that the sweet-faced Mr. Sanchez does well in a controversy, and despite Mr. Klein’s much noted 2005 decision to cancel Crossfire, after Jon Stewart famously accused the long-running political shoutfest of “hurting America,” studio debates on race and homosexuality have become a key part of the programming for Out in the Open.
That Mr. Sanchez will do a lot to get a big story was well-known already. At various times in his career at CNN, he has submerged himself in a car that was sinking underwater to show viewers how best to escape; been intentionally left at the top of a snow-covered mountain to convey the difficulties of surviving the elements; and been tasered at a Florida police academy.
The move towards more attitude—from an ideological perspective or not—makes a certain sense. As Ms. Zahn found out, no one wants straight news in that time slot any more.
“By 8 p.m., everyone kind of knows what’s going on,” Mr. Sanchez told The Observer. It must be a sign of something that Mr. Sanchez’s tormentors are significantly higher on the media totem pole than the ones who tormented him back in Miami.
In the 1990’s, he won the title of “Least Credible News Personality” from Miami New Times, the city’s alternative weekly, so many times in succession that the paper named the award after him.
Somehow, Mr. Sanchez weathered all of that long enough to attract the attention of cable-news upstart MSNBC. In 2001, the network pulled Mr. Sanchez out of Miami and gave him his own daytime news and talk show. But the critical reception was underwhelming—an industry newsletter called him “a tabloid-bred brickhead,”—and the ratings were abysmal.
By 2003, Mr. Sanchez was back in Miami hosting another daytime show for NBC affiliate WTVJ. Had he scotched his big break? No, in fact, for the following year, CNN came calling, recruiting him to fill a daytime host slot alongside Daryn Kagan.
And there, he has flourished enough to get roasted in the greatest roasting pit of American media. On the Daily Show earlier this year, Mr. Stewart seemed to take special pleasure in mocking his taser segment.
“Jon Stewart can make all the fun he wants of me, but that was an important story,” Mr. Sanchez said earnestly.
You’re almost there, Rick!
“We feel the buzz, we hear the buzz, we’re getting the e-mail,” he said, getting himself excited. “We’re laughing all the time when we get together in editorial meetings. It’s really a great feeling—and it would be wonderful if somehow we could make it last.”