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This image, created by journalist Gary He, pokes fun at CNN's misreporting of the Supreme Court's ruling on Obama's health care act. (Image courtesy of Gary He)

With media flub, Obama gets 'Dewey defeats Truman' moment with health care

By Linda Feldmann, Staff writer / 06.28.12

It’s an instant meme – the “Dewey defeats Truman” of 2012.

When CNN and Fox News initially misreported that the US Supreme Court had struck down the so-called individual mandate in President Obama’s Affordable Care Act – the central pillar of the law – a guy named Gary He went to work.

Mr. He, product director at Insider Images, per The New York Times, superimposed Mr. Obama’s face on the famous shot of President Truman holding up the Chicago Tribune from Nov. 3, 1948, and He posted the image on his Twitter feed. The Tribune had initially, and wrongly, reported that New York Gov. Thomas Dewey (R) had defeated Mr. Truman, based on a bad hunch by the paper’s political analyst.

The foul-up by CNN and Fox happened for a different reason. According to the Times, both news outlets had come to the point in Chief Justice John Roberts’s majority opinion declaring that the mandate was unconstitutional under the Commerce Clause, and then ran with it. In fact, the court had also ruled that the penalty for failing to buy insurance was a tax, and therefore the mandate survived.

Thus, Obama is the new Truman. And in the 2012 version, he is holding up a tablet showing the CNN home page declaring, “Mandate struck down.”

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In this April 2 file photo, then Republican presidential candidate former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum speaks in Shawano, Wis. The ex-presidential candidate told Jay Leno on 'The Tonight Show' Tuesday night, the endorsement for Romney was 'kind of buried,' as Leno put it, in the e-mail to supporters. (Jae C. Hong/AP)

Rick Santorum tells Jay Leno why Romney endorsement was 'buried' (+video)

By Linda Feldmann, Staff writer / 05.09.12

Rick Santorum had a reason for endorsing Mitt Romney late at night, in the 13th paragraph of an e-mail to supporters.

“We decided to put it out late at night so it would be sort of the first thing people would see in the morning,” the ex-presidential candidate told Jay Leno on “The Tonight Show” Tuesday night. The endorsement had gone out at 11 o'clock the night before.

Besides, Mr. Santorum joked, it wasn’t really all that late. “We have seven kids so we don’t sleep,” laughed the former Pennsylvania senator, wearing his trademark sweater vest. (He gave Mr. Leno one, too.)  

Why was the endorsement “kind of buried,” as Leno put it, in the e-mail to supporters? Because, in essence, the message was about him, not Mr. Romney.

“This was a letter to my supporters – who were for me – to say, ‘Well, here’s now why I think we should rally around Mitt Romney and support him,’ " Santorum said.

Leno reminded Santorum that he had once called Romney “the worst Republican” to take on President Obama. Santorum said he was referring specifically to “Obamacare,” the health-care reform based on Romney’s fix of the Massachusetts system when he was governor. Leno defended “Romneycare,” saying people in his native state seemed happy with it – and asked Santorum how he’d feel if all the states put in place similar reforms, given conservative support for states’ rights.

Santorum: “Can you imagine what ‘The Tonight Show’ would look like if the government ran ‘The Tonight Show’?”

Leno: “I see what it looks like with NBC running it!”

Leno also asked why Republicans, known for promoting strong defense and fiscal policy, now focus so much on cultural issues, which he called “diversions.”

“It’s the culture, it’s not the economy,” Santorum said. “The culture matters. Look at every great civilization. They don’t fail because a foreign power overtakes them. Oh, ultimately a foreign power destroys them, but they were all destroyed before the foreign power took them over. They were falling, they were failing as a culture.”

“The economy – yeah, it’s important,” he added. “But the culture is what holds people together.”

Perhaps this was a hint at Santorum’s next step? In his e-mail to supporters, he had promised a “big announcement” soon – one that will involve asking them “to once again join forces with me to keep up the fight, together.”

Santorum is best known as a culture warrior. The socially liberal Leno peppered him with questions about gay adoption and teen contraception. Santorum happily stood his ground. But he made clear he doesn’t think the government should ban all things he personally believes are wrong, such as contraception and smoking.

“So a gay couple smoking with a contraceptive would be the worst thing,” Leno quipped.

“Heaven forbid!” Santorum laughed.

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News Corp. chairman Rupert Murdoch appears at Lord Justice Brian Leveson's inquiry in London last week to answer questions under oath about how much he knew about phone hacking at the News of the World tabloid. (AP)

Rupert Murdoch deemed 'not fit' to lead media in Britain. What about US?

By Ron Scherer, Staff writer / 05.03.12

In order to run a television network, a company needs a license from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), since the airwaves are still considered a part of the public trust.

News Corporation, the owner of Fox Broadcasting, is now coming under the microscope over whether or not the FCC should look more closely at it in the wake of its phone-hacking scandal in Britain. This week, a British parliamentary committee, in a politically divided decision, said that News Corp. chairman Rupert Murdoch is “not a fit person to exercise the stewardship of a major international company.”

On May 1, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) asked FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski to immediately revoke the 27 Fox licenses on the grounds that broadcast laws can only be used by people of good “character” who will serve “the public interest” with “candor.” At the same time, a US senator has also written to the judge heading up a parallel judicial investigation in Britain to ask if there is any evidence any News Corp. units violated US laws.

However, communications law experts say it is highly unlikely the FCC will step in unless evidence surfaces that Mr. Murdoch’s communications empire was doing phone hacking in the US.

"Whatever happens in Britain, stays in Britain,” says Reed Hundt, former FCC chairman. “The implications of anything happening in the US to Fox and its TV licenses are between slim to none.”

Mr. Hundt, who was appointed to the FCC by President Clinton, says that all of News Corp.’s indiscretions took place in another country some time ago. “There is no evidence of ongoing activities,” he says.

Dallas communications lawyer Evan Fogelman says that the most that might happen is a “perfunctory” look at the News Corp activities, adding, “I would be surprised if there was a licensing issue in the US."

To generate FCC interest, he says would require some revelations that a US subsidiary of News Corp. was hacking into individuals’ private phones, as was done in Britain.

CREW says it's not impossible that phone hacking took place in the US. According to CREW’s letter to the FCC, there were news reports that News of the World – shuttered by Mr. Murdoch as the scandal broke – tried to hack into the voice mails of 9/11 victims.

In an interview, Melanie Sloan, executive director of CREW, says she understands the FBI is looking into the issue at the request of Rep. Peter King (R) of New York. “It’s not like it’s impossible,” she says, pointing out that News of the World employees hacked into the cellphone of murder victim 13-year-old Milly Dowler in Britain, as well as the phones of British soldiers in Afghanistan.

Ms. Sloan says the inquiry in Britain also found that News Corp. journalists had allegedly bribed police officers to get information. This could be a violation of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act which bars US companies from bribing foreign officials.

“They likely were violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act,” she alleges.

On Wednesday, Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D) of West Virginia sent a letter to Lord Justice Brian Leveson, who is leading the special judicial investigation into phone hacking and other alleged illegal activities by News Corp. in Britain, asking if there is any new information suggesting illegal conduct in the US. Senator Rockefeller is chairman of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, which has jurisdiction over communications issues in the US.

Responding to criticism that the watchdog group took on Fox because of its conservative politics, Sloan said: “Those are commentators on the air, and they have different standards,” says Sloan. “This has nothing to do with content, only the character of Rupert and James Murdoch.”

Jack Horner, a spokesman for News Corp., says the company has no comment.

Immediately after the release of the parliamentary committee report on Tuesday, News Corp. said it acknowledged “significant wrongdoing” at News of the World and apologized to people whose privacy had been invaded. The company has been making private financial settlements with some of the victims.

On Wednesday, the News Corp. Board of Directors announced its “full confidence” in Murdoch’s fitness and unanimously issued support for him.

According to a letter sent by Sloan, federal courts have upheld the FCC’s consideration of character in making license determination as reasonable and appropriate. “The FCC may consider an applicant’s past conduct, including non-broadcast conduct, as a guide to how the applicant is likely to operate a broadcast station in the future,” wrote Sloan. “In looking at misconduct, the FCC must consider whether misconduct is isolated or represents a pattern of misbehavior, as well as how recently it occurred.”

The FCC has rarely acted to remove a company’s broadcast license. In the 1980s, the FCC began a long process to strip RKO of its broadcast licenses for lack of candor. In 1987, an administrative law judge ruled that RKO was unfit to hold its licenses because of a long history of deceptive practices. RKO eventually sold its broadcast unit.

“It’s rare for the FCC to act on these cases, but this seems to be the case they should act on,” says Sloan.

An FCC spokesman, Neil Derek Grace, said the agency would have no comment.

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President Obama talks with Jimmy Fallon during a commercial break as he participates in a taping of the Jimmy Fallon Show, Tuesday, April 24, 2012, at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, North Carolina. (Carolyn Kaster/aP)

Backlash begins after Obama slow jams the news (+video)

By Peter Grier, Staff writer / 04.26.12

President Obama got a lot of attention for slow jamming the news on “Late Night With Jimmy Fallon” Tuesday night. About 2 million people watched the show, during which Mr. Obama talked about the need to keep student-loan rates low over a beat laid down by house band The Roots.

That’s what slow jamming the news is: It’s kind of a combination of a Barry White song and a "PBS NewsHour" report. Mr. Fallon does this from time to time, though he’s never had the chance to do it with Obama, whom he referred to as “the Preezi of the United Steezi,” the Barack Ness Monster,” and “the POTUS with the mostest."

Well, not everyone enjoyed the bit. Two days on, the backlash is in full swing, with many Republicans grousing about the Fallon episode and complaining that Obama is just trying to distract Americans from his policy failures.

Rush Limbaugh, for one, said the whole thing wasn’t humorous.

Slow jamming the news “is supposed to be wildly funny if you have a low threshold for humor," Mr. Limbaugh said Wednesday on his show. "It’s also funny if you smoke certain controlled substances."

Conservative talk-show host Ann Coulter seconded Limbaugh during a Wednesday-night appearance on Sean Hannity’s Fox News show, saying Obama’s performance was “pretty pathetic” and an attempt to overshadow news coverage of scandals at the General Services Administration and the Secret Service.

“This whole week has been a government employee failure,” said Ms. Coulter.

Other right-leaning commentators noted that the subtext of Obama's appearance seemed to be an attempt to portray him as cool and hip, as opposed to Mitt Romney’s more stiff personality. The best way for the GOP to counteract this, they said, might be to embrace it and flip it around: Do you want a president who is hip or a president who is effective?

“The coolness issue is a trap for Obama, I’d suggest.... Not even actually cool people want a cool incompetent as president,” wrote conservative Jennifer Rubin on her Right Turn blog in The Washington Post.

The Republican National Committee, for its part, has already produced a two-minute Web ad titled “A Tale of Two Leaders.” It jumps from clips of presumptive nominee Mitt Romney making a speech to clips of Obama slow jamming, in an attempt to portray the former as more serious than the latter.

The ad ends by inviting viewers to tweet anti-Obama thoughts using the hashtag #NotFunny.

While Obama’s political opponents criticized the slow jam, so did one of Fallon’s ratings opponents. Funnyman Jon Stewart noted on "The Daily Show” that Obama at this point does not have to lower himself to connect with voters.

“Mr. President, you’re the president! You don’t have to do this [bleeped expletive] anymore. Although we’d love to have you back on the show,” said Mr. Stewart.

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President Obama laughs with Jimmy Fallon during a commercial break as he participates in a taping of the 'Late Night with Jimmy Fallon,' Tuesday, at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, North Carolina. (Carolyn Kaster/AP)

Obama on Jimmy Fallon show: How did it go? (+video)

By Peter Grier, Staff writer / 04.25.12

President Obama was on “Late Night with Jimmy Fallon” on Tuesday. OK, OK, technically it was Wednesday in Washington, as NBC broadcasts the show at 12:35 a.m. Eastern time. Anyway, the appearance seems to have worked up quite a bit of buzz among the blognoscenti and twitterati. How did things go?

We’d say the president’s political advisers think it went pretty well. Mr. Obama is making a big push this week to get Congress to act to prevent an automatic rise in student loan interest rates, and the Fallon show gave him a stage upon which to make that point with great emphasis. Let’s hope that for the sake of his blood pressure House Speaker John Boehner (R) was already asleep.

First off, there was the slow jam of the news. If you haven’t heard about this, it’s a recurring Fallon bit in which he and a guest talk/croon about a serious topic over a beat laid down by house band The Roots. 

A Fallon slow jam resembles a mashup of a Barry White song and a Brian Williams special report. The Obama version was hilarious and partisan at the same time, allowing the president to poke at congressional Republicans for refusing to tax billionaires to help pay for cheaper student loans.

“Their position is that students just have to make this rate increase work. Frankly, I’m not buying it,” said Obama over the beat.

Then Fallon responded with “Ummm, umm, umm, the Barack Ness Monster ain’t buyin’ it.”

Just watch it – it’s funnier than it seems in print. Our favorite line was, “If Congress don’t act, it’s the students who pay, the right and left should join on this like Kim and Kanye.”

During their sit-down interview, Fallon also gave Obama plenty of time to go on about the importance of education to the young, and how the US needs to support it, and so on. Obama mentioned to the crowd the hashtag they could use in tweets if they supported him on the issue – #don’tdoublemyrates.

Fallon insisted that on his show they’re not political or partisan, but he did not challenge Obama on the student loan thing. Yes, it was a college crowd. But he could have asked whether kids at Ivy League schools should get cheap student loans – that would have gone down well with the University of North Carolina state school audience.

As to other stuff, Obama said people send him Web links to dancing bears and cute cats. It’s good to know that even presidents have friends eager to waste their time. Also, one of his favorite movies is “Groundhog Day,” which, Obama acknowledged, came out before many students in the crowd were born.

Also, Obama said he and Mitt Romney are not friends, but he did not appear to mean that in a bad way. He said because Romney had been a governor, their paths hadn’t crossed much in the course of political business, whereas he’d gotten to know last opponent John McCain in the Senate.

Also, Obama said Romney’s “wife is lovely,” though that reference almost got swallowed up in crowd noise.

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Republican presidential candidates verbally gang-tackle President Obama during a presidential debate in Mesa, Ariz., earlier this year. (Jae C. Hong/AP/File)

Media report card: why Mitt Romney got more positive coverage than Obama

By Gloria Goodale, Staff writer / 04.23.12

A media report card from the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism released Monday included a few surprises, as well as a message about the pervasiveness of the media and their power in shaping the public’s perception of the political process.

The Project analyzed the tone and volume of candidate coverage from Jan. 2 through April 15 focusing on 52 key news outlets, but also using computers to track coverage in more than 11,000 news outlets. The team also looked at campaign stories from November through April 15.

That window, however, turned out to be too short. “One of the most remarkable and perhaps depressing things about modern political coverage is how early it starts,” says PEJ Director Tom Rosenstiel. As early as August 2011, “We were seeing almost weekly polling.”

On one hand, that shows a media industry engaged in the political process. But the sheer volume and constancy of the reporting is turning politics into a form of white noise for many Americans, says Charles Dunn, a political scientist at Regent University in Virginia Beach, Va. 

“People are exhausted and overwhelmed by the amount of information,” especially at such early stages of the game, he says. By the time the actual election rolls around in November, many average Americans just want it to be over, he says, “and this does not bode well for the body politic where we need more not less engagement by the voters.”

On the upside, the type of media campaign coverage saw a positive change from 2008 to 2012. In 2008, some 80 percent of the media coverage was devoted to the primary horse races, but that number shrank to some 64 percent in this cycle, says Mr. Rosenstiel.

"There was a perception back in 2008 that there was not that much difference between the Democratic candidates," he says. In this race, there was much more media effort devoted to defining the various candidates based on their stands on certain issues. For Republican front-runner Mitt Romney, for example, the media examined his health-care position, as well as “whether or not he is a true conservative,” Rosenstiel says.

The report also charted the character of coverage of the candidates. Coverage of President Obama was far more negative than the coverage of Mr. Romney, for whom the tone was more mixed, says Rosenstiel.

"There is a certain logic to the math in this,” he says, noting that all the Republican candidates focused much of their fire on Mr. Obama. “If you have some seven different individuals all getting coverage from the media, all framing their arguments negatively against the president," that will inevitably create an imbalance.

"President Obama only has a single voice to counter that flood of critiques," he adds.

Other key observations include:

• Romney’s personal life and public record were vetted more than any candidate – constituting some 12 percent of his coverage, with Newt Gingrich nearly tied. The focus on Romney’s life centered on his personal wealth and his career at the private equity investment firm Bain Capital, while Mr. Gingrich gathered much attention for his marital history and financial dealings.
• Rick Santorum, who emerged as Romney’s chief rival, never received sustained positive press. He had three brief periods in which his coverage was more positive than negative – following his strong showing in Iowa; his victories in Missouri, Colorado and Minnesota; and the week of his win in Louisiana.
• Gingrich had only one week during the primary season in which he enjoyed significantly more positive press coverage than negative. That was the week of his victory in South Carolina on Jan. 21.
• In 11 of 15 weeks studied, Rep. Ron Paul (R) of Texas received more positive coverage than negative – but he received less coverage than other candidates. Congressman Paul received about one-eighth as much coverage as Romney and about one-quarter as much as Mr. Santorum and Gingrich.

What this report spotlights is the punch of the permanent news cycle, says Villanova University political scientist Matt Kerbel. "This becomes important because the way the press frames the ongoing story has very much to do with what people think the election is about."

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The Fox Mole posted video outtakes, never before aired, of Fox News Channel's Sean Hannity (shown here in a file photo). (Douglas C. Pizac/AP/File)

'Fox Mole' ousted: Whistle-blowing hero or disloyal self-promoter?

By Mark Trumbull, Staff writer / 04.12.12

As of Tuesday Joe Muto was newly enshrined as the "Fox Mole," an employee inside the right-leaning news network who was tattling in public about the alleged failings of his employer. 

 The next day he had lost his job while winning some fame, being threatened with a lawsuit by Fox, and dangling the prospect that he has "much, much more" to say.

 Mr. Muto, who until Wednesday was an associate producer at Fox News, adopted the "Fox Mole" persona on the news website Gawker. In blog posts that sometimes included video footage of anchors like Sean Hannity and Bill O'Reilly, he echoed views that have long been voiced by critics from the outside: That it is biased against President Obama (and Democrats) and that its coverage is anything but "fair and balanced."

Is he a whistleblowing hero, a disloyal self-promoter, or something in between? 

 The answer may be in the eye of the beholder, but he's certainly a cautionary tale of the 21st century workplace, where digital technology intersects with a tweet-your-life culture of public expression. Corporations, for their part, want to guard their reputations and their secrets as much as ever, even as they often embrace the idea of workers who also blog on the side.

 Muto joins other US workers who have made high-profile job exits that included public complaints. In March, a senior executive at Goldman Sachs, Greg Smith, announced his own sudden departure in a New York Times column arguing that the investment bank has lost its moral compass. In 2010, JetBlue flight attendant Steven Slater made headlines when he voiced frustrations with his job over the public-address system before exiting down the airplane's emergency chute. (That came after passengers preparing to walk off a flight had an altercation about an overhead bin.)

 The gesture by Mr. Smith of Goldman Sachs prompted some workplace experts to warn American workers: You may not want to do that yourself, even in an era when people are used to posting their blunt reviews of restaurants and books online.

 “For most workers, it is best to exit quietly and not burn any bridges," outplacement expert John Challenger said in a statement in March. "New employers may need to contact your former boss for references, and loose talk may be the difference between a new job and continued unemployment. Even a rant about a former employer on Facebook can become an obstacle to new employment.”

 Muto, in his first article as the Fox Mole, said he had never intended his job at Fox to be a long one. 

 "The plan was simple: get hired, keep my head down and my views to myself, work for a few months, build my résumé, then eventually hop to a new job that didn't make me cringe every morning when I looked in the mirror," he wrote.

He joined Fox in 2004. He said he settled into life at Fox after numerous efforts to find other jobs failed.

In his first blog as Fox Mole, Muto labeled his employer's website as the "seedy underbelly of the Fox News online empire." He singled out one post on the site, illustrated with pictures of black celebrities who visited with the president on his 50th birthday last August, under the headline "Obama's Hip Hop BBQ Didn't Create Jobs."

"The post neatly summed up everything that had been troubling me about my employer: Non sequitur, ad hominem attacks on the president; gleeful race baiting; a willful disregard for facts; and so on," Muto wrote. The partygoers also included many Washington politicians and White House staffers, he said.

Muto's posts included a two-minute video of Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney's off-air banter in an interview with Mr. Hannity.

"I think Mitt loses points with the GOP base for his correct pronunciation of dressage," Muto posted.

On Wednesday afternoon, Fox and Muto engaged in an unusual game of cat and mouse. A representative told website Mediaite.com that the TV network had identified the person and was exploring its legal options, but Muto taunted Fox with another post saying, "I Am the Fox Mole, And I'm Still Here."

That changed late on Wednesday, Muto wrote, when he was ushered into a Fox attorney's office and "suspended indefinitely ... with pay, oddly enough." That posting was made before Fox confirmed that Muto would be fired.

• Reuters wire material was used in this report.

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In this photo, Keith Olbermann poses at the Ronald Reagan Library in Simi Valley, Calif. (Mark J. Terrill/AP/File)

Keith Olbermann: the cautionary tale of why he was fired, again

By Gloria Goodale, Staff writer / 04.04.12

This just in from the “cautionary tales from the media” department – lessons from the now former Current TV talk show host, Keith Olbermann’s appearance Tuesday night on "The Late Show with David Letterman." The salient narrative emerged when the also former MSNBC talk show host went – how shall we say? – architectural. He was explaining to the late-night host what went wrong with his less-than-a-year stint at Al Gore’s television network.

“Just walking around with a $10 million chandelier isn't going to do anybody a lot of good, and it's not going to do any good to the chandelier," he explained, adding, “And then it turned out we didn't have a lot to put the house on, to put the chandelier in, or a building permit, and I should have known that."

"You're the chandelier?" Mr. Letterman said.

Now, there is a certain order to the way things play out when media marriages go bad. But if even Letterman – who is usually a pretty quick study – has to clarify what the heck a guest is talking about, then Mr. Olbermann needs some pointers on which playbook he is actually in, say some observers of this latest public divorce.

“I  wouldn’t compare him to a $10 million chandelier,” says Jason Maloni, senior vice president at Levick Strategic Communications in Washington.The better comparison would be former NFL player Terrell Owens, he adds. “Charlie Sheen comes to mind as well.” All these figures have plenty of talent, he says, but like Mr. Owens, “ultimately, the head coaches just decide they are not worth the trouble of their huge demands and egos.”

To be fair, Olbermann did acknowledge that a high self-assessment may have figured in his departure. "You're always telling me how big my head is," Olbermann told Letterman.

This is not the first time a high-profile media figure has stepped down to a much, em, smaller house. Think Conan O’Brien heading off to the Turner Broadcasting System's cable channel after losing the tussle for "The Tonight Show" job on NBC. Dan Rather exited CBS Evening News, and has landed on HDNet, a venue that defies most efforts to locate it on a TV system. And there are plenty of others from former NBC Nightly News anchor Tom Brokaw to Ted Koppel of "Nightline."

But none of these figures have turned into serial outlet hoppers. Olbermann, on the other hand, is developing quite a track record of rancorous departures. 

“His problems are self-made,” says Mr. Maloni, adding, “he needs to start accepting some responsibility for these troubles and show some humility.”

Some supporters suggest there is more to the bumpy trajectory of this host’s career. “Olbermann is obviously a difficult employee,” says Jeff Cohen, associate professor of journalism at Ithaca College in New York, via e-mail. “But he’s also a special talent – smart and funny – who offers riveting TV. That’s why, after public blowups at numerous TV channels, he has kept being rehired,” he says.

Mr. Cohen worked at MSNBC just before Olbermann was re-hired in 2003. Some of his early problems with management at MSNBC, he says, “were political; the suits didn’t want him criticizing President Bush or offering his progressive views. But Olbermann persevered, and ultimately proved that there was a sizable community out there who wanted a channel offering counterprogramming to Fox News. Olbermann is gone from MSNBC, but he sure left his mark on that channel – and he’s the individual most responsible for MSNBC surpassing CNN in viewership.”

But his ratings slide at Current seems to show he has turned off some former supporters with his attitudes. He debuted with 354,000 viewers on average, on Current TV. By the first quarter 2012 according to AdWeek, the show was "one of the least watched channels on TV," with 58,000 viewers in prime time.

“I really liked him when he went after elected officials who I didn't like, until he went after officials who I like,” says Mary Ellen Bachunis, a political science professor at La Salle University in Philadelphia, via e-mail. She adds: "I thought he was brutal, and my eyes were opened.” 

She says this is not the political discourse she wants to encourage. "I don't want us to denigrate our opponents. This isn't Nixon's 'enemy list.' I want civil political discourse.”

When Letterman asked Olbermann what he intended to do now, he said simply, “I’m going to go home.” The moral of this story then might be that after trashing all your former homes, you need to ensure you have the money to build your own – something Olbermann will certainly have if he prevails in his  reported $40 million lawsuit against Current.

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Chef Emeril Lagasse (r.) judges the creations of co-hosts George Stephanopoulos (l.) and Katie Couric for the Breakfast Sandwich Smackdown Champion on the ABC's 'Good Morning America' in New York's Times Square Tuesday. (Ida Mae Astute/ABC/AP)

Katie Couric vs. Sarah Palin: why battle for morning show supremacy is so hot

By Gloria Goodale, Staff writer / 04.03.12

If you thought morning news shows were just about weather and cooking, think again. As Katie Couric’s high-profile stint on "Good Morning America" this week – and her faceoff with Sarah Palin on NBC Tuesday – shows, that a.m. TV real estate has become broadcasting’s high-stakes battleground.

Those morning shows, which many people experience only as background noise to their morning rush, fill many important roles for the networks as they face declining viewership amid increased competition from other news sources.

They help drive brand loyalty, provide a rich landscape for advertising and cross-brand promotion, and above all else, produce a steady cash flow. According to The Hollywood Reporter, the “Today" show brough in more than $500 million in ad revenue in 2010. 

“Morning shows are like the Rock of Gibraltar,” says Paul Levinson, author of “New New Media.” “When you get up in the morning and are getting ready to leave, you don’t have time to go online or listen too closely, so they have adapted to that role of being background noise with just enough information to keep   people listening.” 

People’s eyes and ears are fresh and ready to take in information, he says, but in a passive mode. “This is why morning television has been so impervious to competition from the web,” he adds.

“The biggest mistake morning TV could make is simply to put the wrong person in that host seat,” he adds.

Finding that person is a kind of network art that has proved maddeningly elusive, says Brian Balthazar, editor of popgoestheweek.com and a former “Today" show supervising producer. 

“Ever since Katie Couric took the nation by storm [in 1991], other networks have been trying to capture the same kind of magic with varying degrees of success,” he says. But as the sparks between NBC and ABC this week show, they will continue to try.

NBC has ruled the morning ratings war for some 16 years. ABC had hoped to break that reign this week, but the early ratings show that on Monday at least,  NBC still held the lead. 

“The morning shows have become an integral part of a network’s look, feel, and brand,” says Mr. Balthazar.

Pointing to the four hours that make up NBC’s “Today" show morning block, he says, “That’s a huge amount of programming and it really influences the way people perceive and identify the network."

But this week’s hosting battle is a bad sign, says Mark Tatge, a journalism professor at DePauw University in Indiana. “This represents a sharp turn in a shrill direction,” he says. “It is a sad commentary that this is produced by the network’s news division.”

While he acknowledges that the format has demonstrated a unique staying power during the past 60 years of broadcast TV, he says “all of television is in a major transition,” with everything moving online. The broadcast model of local affiliates as it has existed for decades “is falling apart.”

Whether the morning shows will continue to exist in the forms as we know them today, he adds, “is a real question with the breakup of the network model.”

But there has been much hand-wringing over the future of broadcast television for many years, says Robert Thompson, founder of the Bleier Center of Television and Popular Culture at Syracuse University in New York.

“When people talk about the end of broadcast television, I hope they are not talking about the morning programs,” he says.  

They are cheap to produce, relative to scripted shows, and have adapted to what people want in those early hours of the day. “These shows are all about programming that needs to be watched live,” he says, much like the Super Bowl, whose ratings continue to climb.

“Nobody replays the weather over the weekend,“ he says. “Regular television is still the best way to see most live programming.” 

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