While CNN continues to post exceptional ratings covering the Japan earthquake as well as the revolutions in Egypt and Libya, MSNBC flounders in third place.

Of all the things to criticise about President Obama’s decision to get involved with the rebellion in Libya, you would think that the name of the mission, Operation Odyssey Dawn, would be pretty low on the list.

Alex Witt has a money problem.

With the UN finally voting for a no-fly zone over Libya, it looks like the U.S. is now committed to getting involved in the conflict going on over there.

On Thursday morning, NBC executives made the decision to evacuate virtually its entire news team from Japan. 

Yesterday, while talking to Good Morning America, potential presidential candidate Donald Trump waded into birther territory when he said this:

In an interview with Lawrence O’Donnell last night, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid touched on the subjects of nuclear power, the tea party and, in the part of the interview that will probably get people on the right fired up, social security, which Reid absolutely refused to touch at all.

Ka-ching!

Michele Bachmann is the media’s new Sarah Palin.

Has the influence of cable news peaked?

Lawrence O’Donnell gave Newt Gingrich‘s apology on Pat Robertson‘s Christian Broadcasting Network, where Newt revealed that he’d been driven to cheat on his cancer-ridden wife by his love of America, the “rewrite treatment.”

AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka appeared on the Rachel Maddow Show last night, and though you might think he would be down after what happened last night in Wisconsin, he actually sounded upbeat and ready to take on Republicans, who he accused of abandoning voters in favour of the super wealthy.

Late last night, the Republicans in the Wisconsin State Senate voted to strip away the collective bargaining for public union workers, bypassing the 14 Democrats that fled the state three weeks ago.

Kathy Griffin is set to play a character based on Sarah Palin on an upcoming episode of Glee.

Does anyone over at MSNBC check the facts on stories before they are allowed on-air?

Lawrence O’Donnell seems indifferent about his new career as a cable anchor.

Three times married Newt Gingrich might seem like an unlikely nominee for the Republican party, but just this week he was suspended from being a Fox News contributor until he figures out whether or not he is going to run.

Keith Olbermann’s sudden departure from MSNBC has created the biggest challenge of Rachel Maddow’s broadcasting career—becoming the face of a cable network at an uncomfortable crossroads.

Appearing on The Last Word With Lawrence O’Donnell last night, former Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm lashed out at Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker for what he has been trying to do to the public sector unions in his state, accusing him of “standing on the side of the billionaires.”

This one one of the stranger Rachel Maddow segments to air in a long time.

Yesterday, the Obama administration and the Department of Justice announced that it would no longer defend the defence of Marriage Act, which allows states to not recognise gay marriages from other states.

Wow.

Andrea Mitchell‘s interview with Donald Rumsfeld was blowing up on Twitter earlier — a first for Mitchell as far as I can recall.

At CPAC this year, Ann Coulter went on stage and said, “If we don’t run Chris Christie, Romney will be the nominee and we’ll lose.”

Joe Scarborough may be a morning talk show host now, but from 1995 to 2001 he was a Republican Representative from Florida, and a very conservative one at that. So when he comes out and takes aim at his former party, it really makes you wonder how far they have […]

Apparently Lawrence O’Donnell, who has been struggling in the ratings of late, wants in on some of the O’Reilly infighting action.

On Real Time last week, during his New Rules segment, Bill Maher made this joke:

In the newest GoDaddy.com commercial that aired during the Super Bowl, a voluptuous model with her face obscured is being announced as the new spokesperson for GoDaddy. After all the build up it turns out to be… Joan Rivers!

All Zach Wahls, 19, did was stand up and defend his family.

Glenn Beck’s ‘explanation‘ of the Egyptian crisis the other day has outraged certain quarters of the media.

Appearing on The Last Word With Lawrence O’Donnell, Perez Hilton gave his thoughts about Barbara Bush’s recent statement in favour of gay marriage, but first made some amends for what happened with Carrie Prejean at the Miss USA pageant in 2009.

CNN came out on top of MSNBC last night across the prime time board in the 25-54 demo.

Priorities people.

Social Network director Aaron Sorkin‘s planned HBO drama — set behind the scenes at a nightly cable news show — is becoming a reality, with the pilot to be filmed this year, Deadline reports.

This was all over Twitter last night.

I noted the other day that the weak link in MSNBC’s new prime time line-up is Ed Schultz at 10pm. 

MSNBC isn’t feeling Keith Olbermann‘s absence…yet.

Bill O’Reilly and Bernie Goldberg weighed in on the shakeup at MSNBC, and Keith Olbermann‘s sudden departure.

On the night of the Arizona shootings, Keith Olbermann had a special comment condemning all those, including himself, who had used overheated rhetoric and violent metaphors. He then apologized for his words and urged others to do the same.

Ted Williams, the pan-handler from the side of the I-71 in Columbus, Ohio with the golden voice, has been hired by MSNBC to do voiceovers for the network’s Lean Forward campaign.

Liberal or conservative, people are all the same, right?

2010 is the year that gave us Carl Paladino, Sharron Angle and Christine O’Donnell, and some of the most memorable political ads of all time.

On the Rachel Maddow show last night, guest host Bill Wolff had on Alaskan radio show host Shannyn Moore to talk about Joe Miller finally conceding the election for Alaska senator to Lisa Murkowski. And, as all discussions of Alaskan politics usually do, the subject of Sarah Palin came up.

The good news is that American companies are creating jobs. The bad news is the jobs are being created in Europe and Asia.

On the Rachel Maddow Show last night, columnist Melissa Harris-Perry discussed the possible implications of the recent comments from Mississippi governor, and likely presidential candidate, Haley Barbour, who praised the role of Citizens Councils in desegregating his hometown of Yazoo City, Mississippi and said of the civil rights struggle, “I […]

Michael Moore went on Rachel Maddow last night to explain (read: defend) his involvement with WikiLeaks.

 

 

 

If the number of MSNBC personalities at the “No Labels” launch yesterday is anything to go by MSNBC may have found its Tea Party.

On Friday, Independent Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders stood on the floor of the United States senate for over eight hours, railing against the new tax compromise. He really had something to say, and he said it.

 

In a poll of media buyers and planners taken by Media Life, 78% of respondents said that morning shows were still relevant.

[credit provider=”Wikimedia Commons” url=”http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Joe_congress.jpg”] Following up on its suspension of Keith Olbermann, Morning Joe host Joe Scarborough has been suspended by MSNBC for donating to political candidates, according to POLITICO.He only gave $500, and the suspension is for two days (basically as long as Olbermann’s).

Keith Olbermann made his triumphant return to MSNBC after his three day suspension — and he had some biting comments to make about it.

Keith Olbermann has finally emerged from the fallout shelter he has been hiding in since he was “suspended indefinitely without pay” last week.

MSNBC has put an end to its indefinite suspension of Keith Olbermann.

Rachel Maddow confirmed on her show last night that the reason Keith Olbermann was suspended was that he did not ask permission from management to make political donations:

There’s no question that the story of 33 Chilean miners trapped underground for more than two months has gripped the world. But some have also criticised the media circus surrounding the rescue of the miners over the past few days.

[credit provider=”AP”] CNN’s standard primetime lineup regularly struggles to attract anywhere near as many viewers as Fox News Channel and MSNBC, who have won the evening with their more fiery and opinionated news coverage.But as Tuesday night’s dramatic rescue of the Chilean miners who had been trapped underground for more […]

CNN’s new 8 p.m. show, “Parker Spitzer,” which premiered last night, already got beat up today with some pretty bad reviews. Now the Nielsen ratings have come in, via MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann, who also has a show at 8 p.m., and it ain’t pretty!

The media world is abuzz over Gabriel Sherman’s highly revelatory New York magazine piece about the cable news wars.As the blog Inside Cable News noted last night on Twitter: “@gabrielsherman turns in a tour de force on cable news with enough jaw dropping nuggets to pack five separate articles …  […]

Time Warner just fired Jonathan Klein, the president of CNN/US. He’ll be replaced by Ken Jautz, president of HLN. FTVLive.com broke the story.

Fox News Channel is widely seen  as the right-wing cable news counterpart to left-leaning MSNBC, as well as a competitor to CNN, whose hosts tend to steer clear of fiery political rhetoric altogether, albeit at the expense of the network’s ratings.

One of these things is not like the other: Dylan Ratigan, a self-proclaimed conservative among his lefty co-workers at MSNBC.

During the hostage situation at Discovery HQ today, TV news anchors really soft-pedaled their characterizations of James Lee, who was eventually shot and killed by police. Lee was clearly off his rocker, but they’d make soft statements like: “He apparently has a few concerns about Discovery’s programming.”

Here are the Nielsen ratings from Obama’s address Tuesday night about the end of combat operations in Iraq. No surprises:

Page Six reports today that MSNBC host Ed Schultz “had a meltdown in the network’s 30 Rock newsroom” on August 12, during which he yelled: “I’m going to torch this f$&cking place!” because he was mad his bosses pay more attention to Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow than they do […]

In a piece today exploring the murkiness of fair use doctrine on the Internet, Jeff Bercovici reveals that several cable news networks are not cool with the website Mediaite scraping their video content.

Curbed reports that MSNBC host Rachel Maddow and her partner, Susan Mikula, have purchased a West Village, Manhattan “apartment that could fit at least a few vans—two combined units at 130 Jane St.”

Last night, Fox Business Network’s Charlie Gasparino and MSNBC’s Dylan Ratigan were on “The O’Reilly Factor” and “The Colbert Report,” respectively, where each took the opportunity to sound off on the network they used to work for, CNBC.

[credit provider=”fancast.com”] Big changes at ABC.Martin Bashir, the co-anchor of “Nightline,” is leaving the network to join MSNBC, while ABC’s “Good Morning America Weekend” co-anchor Bill Weir, is taking over Bashir’s old spot, TVNewser’s Chris Ariens reports:

Conservative news pundit and former CNN/MSNBC anchor Tucker Carlson is going bananas this morning over his recent purchase of the domain name KeithOlbermann.com, a fact he is proudly displaying on The Daily Caller, the political news website of which he is editor-in-chief.

TVNewser’s Alex Weprin notes that the tan blonde in this picture is indeed “None other than MSNBC’s 9 p.m. host Rachel Maddow, who went to Castro Valley High School in Castro Valley, California, where this photo was taken.”

Mark Halperin, co-author of “Game Change,” the juicy and gossipy book about the 2008 campaigns, and an editor-at-large for Time, has been named senior political analyst at MSNBC, the network announced this morning.

The 8 p.m. cable news slot is starting to look a lot more interesting now that CNN has announced Eliot Spitzer will be replacing Campbell Brown, who back in May announced she would be leaving the network because “not enough people want to watch my program.”CNN president Jon Klein has  […]

Well that was fast!

In today’s New York Times, Brian Stelter profiles MSNBC’s Dylan Ratigan, whom he describes as “a financial news apostate who has transformed himself into an outspoken opponent of too-big-to-fail banks and the politicians whom he calls their servants … a man who, until recently, hosted a stock-picking show on CNBC, […]

Peter Kafka has a noteworthy tidbit about MSNBC’s upcoming free iPad app: it will feature only one of the network’s shows.

Here are the Nielsen numbers from President Obama’s Tuesday night address about the oil spill.

MSNBC’s longtime senior political analyst and frequent “Countdown With Keith Olbermann” guest Lawrence O’Donnell is getting his own weeknight show that will air in place of the usual Olbermann repeats at 10 p.m., the network announced today.

Last night was election night.

And, now, your host, Eliot Spitzer!

[credit provider=”www.bilerico.com”] Straight off the heels of her widely-watched hardball interview with Rand Paul last Wednesday, Rachel Maddow is shifting gears to some less controversial fare: “Geek Week.”It’s apparently an extension of her recurring “Moment of Geek” feature and it kicks off tonight with Energy Secretary Steven Chu. It continues […]

On MSNBC Wednesday night, Rachel Maddow interviewed Republican Kentucky Senate candidate Rand Paul, son of Ron Paul.

Yesterday, The Huffington Post ran a glowing item touting a “ratings rebound” for ratings-challenged CNN during last week’s news cycle—Oil spill, Times Square Bomber, Greece imploding, floods, etc.—stating that the network “scored major ratings victories over Fox News and MSNBC.”CNN posted and sustained surprisingly strong demo numbers across several timeslots […]

MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow has a new blog: The Maddow Blog, which she’s quietly been soft-launching for the past few months.But it’s not so quiet or soft anymore.

Donny Deutsch apparently has no hard feelings about being booted from his 3 p.m. MSNBC guest-hosting slot last week, following an unflattering segment that likened Keith Olbermann to “angry” anchors like Bill O’Reilly, Rush Limbaugh, and Glenn Beck.The AP’s David Bauder reports that the former CNBC anchor was back at […]

Keith Olbermann ripped New York Times media reporter Brian Stelter to shreds on Twitter for his item earlier today about Donny Deutsch getting booted from his guest-hosting duties.Here are the Tweets:

Reports are coming in that Donny Deutsch got booted from his guest-hosting slot on MSNBC because he was less than kind to Keith Olbermann.The former CNBC anchor was supposed to helm MSNBC’s 3 p.m. slot all this week with a show called “America the Angry.”

MSNBC president Phil Griffin is still very unhappy with host David Shuster. Last week, he suspended Shuster for testing his own TV show at rival network CNN.

With help from comedian and former Apple “PC-guy” John Hodgman, MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann joined Twitter last night.

From the Huffington Post >

MSNBC (GE) is officially punishing star anchor David Shuster for getting in bed with their competition.The New York Observer broke the news last Friday that the high-profile MSNBC anchor shot a CNN (TWX) pilot. Shuster was missing from MSNBC’s airwaves on Monday, and TVNewser’s Gail Shister reported that he might […]

Forget the brouhaha.Rachel Maddow is not running for the Massachusetts Senate seat against Scott Brown in 2012.

Last night, MSNBC’s Olympic Update show aired a live interview with a guy claiming to be Ryan Miller, the star U.S. Olympic hockey goalie. In a live interview, the caller recalled his 5-3 win against Canada last Sunday night, noting that “everything just clicks sometimes” so he could make 42 […]

Here’s another classic Dylan Ratigan tirade, this time directed squarely at President Obama. In it, he blasts him for perpetuating the “lie” that the banks have repaid the bailout, when in fact, says Ratigan, the bailout actually soared into the trillions, due to the Fed’s backstop.