After Ratings Slide, Cooper and Gupta Return to Haiti

TVSpy

With Haiti dominating the network's news coverage, CNN rode to a second place finish in the January cable news ratings. Now it appears that the network is trying to recapture some of that January audience as it plans to send Anderson Cooper and Sanjay Gupta back to Port au Prince.

TVNewser is reporting that CNN reached the decision over the weekend and both Cooper and Gupta flew to the Dominican Republic on Sunday night. In the month of January, as Cooper anchored "AC360" from Haiti, CNN averaged 259,000 viewers in the primetime demo, besting MSNBC's 226,000.

Last week, though, as Cooper anchored from New York, CNN saw a significant drop in its primetime audience from January. The beginning of February marked only the fifth time in the channel's history that CNN ranked fifth in primetime. From 8-11pm EST, CNN was outmatched by FNC, MSNBC, HLN, and CNBC.

Local TV Visionary Frank Magid Dies

KCRG

Tonight when you tune in to the evening news, be sure to thank Frank Magid.

The original "news doctor" and founder of the Marion-based Frank N. Magid Associates died Friday morning. He was 78.

After earning undergraduate and graduate degrees at the University of Iowa, the Chicago native taught sociology at U of I and anthropology and statistics at Coe College before he founded his research and consultant firm in 1956.

"When I started there, he told me he hoped that his firm could see what everyone else saw but thought what no one else thought," said Joe George, of Cedar Rapids, a former vice-president of marketing at Magid's firm. More...

Big Storm Gets Big Coverage on Baltimore TV

The Baltimore Sun

It's a weekend of air mattresses, sleeping bags, couches, pets and even some kids in TV newsrooms as Baltimore's network owned and affiliate stations went to "all hands on deck" to try to cover one of the area's biggest storms in decades.

"Covering a storm like this is energizing and frustrating at the same time," Michelle Butt, news director at WBAL-TV, said in an email Saturday morning. "... The magnitude of the coverage keeps everyone 'up' -- multiple live shots and extended newscasts are no big deal for my folks. ... However, when you have a storm like this, it takes a toll on your equipment and your people. Things break, people get stuck out in worsening conditions and you worry for your staff's safety. After all, we're telling everyone to stay in, and I keep sending them out."

So far, the bad weather has been met with some very good work by Baltimore's TV news community. WBAL, WBFF, WJZ and WMAR were all offering extra hours of storm-related coverage by Friday. More...

A Victim of CBS Lay-Offs, Reporter Charts Next Move

Honolulu Star Bulletin

Teri Okita is not yet sure what she's going to do next.

The local girl and former KGMB-TV reporter/anchor, who did Hawaii proud reporting for CBS News from around the world, was among those felled by the job-cut ax that swept from "60 Minutes" through to her L.A.-based CBS Newspath offices last week.

The layoff estimate ranges from 150 to fewer than 100 based on industry reports, and was "the second round of layoffs in the last couple years, (though) this was more widespread," she told "TheBuzz."

Her contract was to end in April, and she had already talked with the network about leaving after her 10th anniversary, but "it came as a surprise that it happened now." More...

FCC Levies Fines on Four Stations

Broadcasting & Cable

The FCC fined four TV stations more than $32,000 for failing to keep the proper records.

Broadcasters have a number of public filing obligations, including on the amount of children's programming they air.

Nexstar's WQRF-TV Rockford, Ill., faces the biggest hit--$10,000--for failure to publicize the existence and location of its kids programming reports. Those are the ones that identify the educational/ informational programming. Broadcasters have to air three hours per week for all their add-supported channels, primary and multicast.

The FCC had issued a proposed fine in 2007, which was challenged by Nexstar because it was larger than other fines for similar violations. But the FCC countered that those were for omissions of shorter duration, while WQRF had failed to file the reports over the entire length of its license. More...

The Story Behind the Leno-Letterman Ad

The New York Times

Jay and Dave together? Could it be true?

It is, and there they were, Jay Leno and David Letterman sitting on a couch --with Oprah Winfrey between them--upstairs at the Ed Sullivan Theater, where Mr. Letterman tapes his show.

The spot was shot last Tuesday afternoon, under the strictest of secrecy which involved both Mr. Leno and Ms. Winfrey flying in surreptitiously to New York, and arriving incognito at the theater, while Mr. Letterman was in the midst of taping his show for that night. It also involved Jay wearing a disguise: hooded sweatshirt, glasses and faux mustache. If you happened to be on Broadway between 53rd and 54th street last Tuesday about 4:15, you might have seen a man fitting that description slip into the theater by a small entrance under the marquee. More...

ABC Affiliates Decry Migration of Sports to ESPN

Mediaweek

ABC's affiliates are not only in a battle with the network over retransmission fees, but they are also boiling mad that corporate sibling ESPN is being handed live sports events they were initially supposed to carry.

The most recent move came in January when ESPN announced it planned to take eight Nascar races this fall off ABC for the coming season to run on ESPN. Even before that, though, ABC coughed up the Rose Bowl beginning in 2011 and golf's British Open in 2010 to ESPN, which is majority-owned by Walt Disney, the full owner of ABC.

Station executives argued that losing live sports events will not only cost them significant ad revenue and take away a negotiating chip with media buyers, but will also hamper their ability to promote other programming to male audiences. The latter is particularly true among ABC's Southern affiliates, where Nascar viewing is passionate. More...

NBC Looking to Scrap Emmys Tape Delay

Broadcasting & Cable

In what would be a first for the Emmys telecast, NBC executives are seriously considering a plan to offer the 62nd Annual Primetime Emmy Awards live across the country when the network broadcasts the ceremony Aug. 29.

NBC just broke the same ground with the Golden Globes on Jan. 17, when it broadcast the 67th annual awards show live coast-to-coast for the first time. Previously, the Globes have aired live on stations in the Eastern Standard and Central time zones but have been telecast on a tape-delayed basis in the Western time zones representing some 22% of the country. In January, all NBC affiliates aired the Globes live, with stations in the Pacific time zone airing the kudofest live from 5-8. Eight Western affiliates also re-broadcast the Globes in primetime.

According to sources, NBC is in the process of discussing a similar live Emmys scenario with affiliates. More...

NBC Disappears Conan's 'Tonight Show' from the Web

All Things Digital

Remember the whole Conan O'Brien/ Jay Leno imbroglio from last month? Perhaps NBC wishes you didn't. The GE unit has removed every episode of the show's seven-month run from its NBC.com site, as well as Hulu, the site NBC owns with News Corp.'s Fox and Disney's ABC.

A little odd, given that a couple of days ago, the network was offering every single "Tonight Show" episode O'Brien had taped on NBC.com. But then again, everything about this story has been odd. NBC declined to comment.

NBC--at least, I'm assuming it's NBC--has also been aggressive about taking down Conan episodes from Google's YouTube.

Less surprising is news that O'Brien's image has been scrubbed, Soviet-style, from NBC's 30 Rock headquarters. More...

Out of Sex Rehab, Phillips Set for 'Today' Interview

Huffington Post

Former ESPN analyst Steve Phillips is out of sex rehab and going to tell his story on the "Today" show.

Phillips, who was dismissed from ESPN in October after a sex scandal involving production assistant Brooke Hundley, will sit down for an exclusive interview on "Today" on Monday.

Hundley, 22, was also dismissed from ESPN after delivering Phillips' wife a letter detailing their affair and his genitalia and then crashing her car into the house.

Phillips "is voluntarily admitting himself to an inpatient treatment facility to address his personal issues," his rep said at the time. More...

Former New York Anchor Released from Prison Early

Daily News

Former New York 1 political anchor Dominic Carter has been released from jail early--as a new report revealed he was first arrested for beating and choking his wife 13 years ago.

The TV newsman, who was tossed into the clink in Rockland County on Jan. 14, walked free Tuesday on good behavior. It was 11 days before the official end of his 30-day sentence in a domestic violence case.

Carter was convicted of attempting to assault his wife, Marilyn Carter, in October 2008 and is barred from seeing her for two years or until a psychiatrist can say interaction between the couple would be safe.

A judge also put the former newsman on probation for a year. More...

NBC's Amy Robach Ties the Knot

People

Former Melrose Place star Andrew Shue and Weekend Today anchor Amy Robach were married Saturday afternoon in New York City.

The couple, who met last April at a book party and got engaged in September, exchanged vows at The Lighthouse at Chelsea Piers, adjacent to the Hudson River. And it was an extra special occasion for Robach, who walked down the aisle on her 37th birthday. Shue's mother, Anne Harms, officiated the ceremony, and the two wrote their own vows.

Shue, 42, and Robach, 37, are recently divorced--and the wedding party consisted of Shue's three sons with ex-wife Jennifer Hageney and Robach's two daughters with her ex-husband, Tim McIntosh.

"The wedding was absolutely beautiful," a Today show rep, who attended the ceremony, tells People More...

Should TV Take Bite Out of Apple Playbook?

The Wall Street Journal

Is Apple's new e-book store a model for the television industry?

It is clear the existing TV arrangement, under which cable operators sell packages of channels on behalf of media companies, is fraying. Fights between the two sides over subscription fees are escalating--another such dust-up looms this year when Time Warner Cable's distribution agreement with Walt Disney's channels, including ABC and ESPN, comes up for renewal.

Time Warner Cable CEO Glenn Britt noted last month that consumers were dissatisfied with the structure of cable-TV packages. He suggested operators and TV networks need to "offer a variety of packages, some of which might be slightly smaller." But a better approach might be for cable operators to get out of the business of packaging channels and simply sell access to their pipes, letting network owners market their programming directly to consumers. More...

Shelly Palmer's MediaBytes

Video: Avatar Screener Hits Torrent Networks

Here's what they're talking about on the TVSpy Watercooler...

Frank Magid, RIP

Katie Couric

Joy Behar show

Portland, OR