Jeff Zucker
The bad news just keeps on coming for the openly left-wing liberal MSNBC channel, which is now in fourth place behind Fox News Channel, CNN and HLN after losing 12 percent of its viewers from a year ago. CNN, meanwhile, had another strong month.
Whether it's because of lineup adjustments made by CNN or because Obama-supporting Democrats are tuning out MSNBC, the fact remains that Cable News Network saw double-digit growth in both total day and prime-time ratings in July when compared to the same month in 2012.
The ratings from April through June brought good news for the dominant Fox News Channel, the resurgent Cable News Network and HLN -- which was previously known as the Headline Network -- but that period saw MSNBC deliver its worst quarterly prime-time showing among total viewers and adults from 25 to 54 years of age since 2007.
According to a report released by Nielsen Media Research, CNN reclaimed the runner-up slot from MSNBC for the first time since 2010. Also, the “Lean Forward” network fell 16 percent to third place in prime-time ratings and nine percent to come in fourth in its “total day” numbers.
After more than eight years since the cancellation of “Crossfire” in June of 2005, the once-popular debate program returned to the Cable News Network on Wednesday as a segment of that evening's “Piers Morgan Live” with a spirited debate about the U.S. Supreme Court decisions regarding California's Proposition 8 and the dismissal of part of the Defense of Marriage Act.
The first new debate between conservatives and liberals featured Republican Newt Gingrich stating that the eight million voters who approved the proposition “have a pretty good reason to feel a little more alienated from Washington than they were yesterday.”
He's been at CNN for 23 years, and one could make the case at times the face of the network.
Yet according to a report by the New York Daily News, Wolf Blitzer's air time is going to decline until he's finally replaced by a "younger, hipper host."
Five months into his tenure as president of the Cable News Network, Jeff Zucker gave a “progress report” on Wednesday by stating that rivals Fox News Channel and MSNBC “are covering politics” while CNN is reporting on “politics and much more.”
“News is how you define it,” Zucker said during a panel discussion in the “All Things Digital” conference in Ranchos Palos Verdes, Calif., and “we define it broadly as news and information. Our competition now is two political channels that have actually left most of the actual news coverage to the side.”
Just when you think you've heard it all, along comes Philip Kent -- chairman and chief executive officer of the Turner Broadcasting System, which owns the Cable News Network – who says that CNN “is a serious news network” that viewers would appreciate more if they would watch the channel “more critically.”
Kent made the laughable comments during an interview published in this week's edition of Broadcasting and Cable magazine, when he admitted that the “biggest misconception about CNN is that it's a liberal news network,” which “drives me crazy” because “it's not.”
Rather than being punished for her lewd behavior on their network, CNN executives are rumored to be considering giving vulgar comedienne Kathy Griffin a regular show with Anderson Cooper.
Deadline reported moments ago:
Is Joy Behar leaving Al Current Jazeera for CNN?
So claimed the New York Post's Page Six Saturday:
When Jeff Zucker became president of CNN earlier this month, some people in the mainstream media feared that this might be the end of “the last bastion of television journalism” since the former head of NBC Universal was expected to make many significant changes in the network personnel and schedule.
Those changes took off on Tuesday, when ABC's Chris Cuomo, who had served as the news anchor on “Good Morning America” from 2006 to 2009 and then moved on to the "20/20" prime-time program, was reported to “have a major role in a new CNN morning show and across the network, anchoring and reporting on major events.”
Broadcasting & Cable magazine's cover story this week was on Katie Couric and her new afternoon talk show (not arriving until next autumn). Her longtime NBC producer and friend Jeff Zucker, axed by NBC in the Comcast merger, is now helping her put the show together. But when asked if Couric was destined to be a failure in the evening news, where the gummy smiles and perky trills aren't in great demand, Zucker tried to say yes in the most diplomatic terms:
