Collected and Edited by Rick Kaempfer
Highlights and links to the big stories in the news this week about the media. This column appears twice a week at MEDIA NOTEBOOK
NBC Reprimands Employee Who Used Osama Picture In Place of Obama(Associated Press) NBC News said Tuesday it has reprimanded the employee responsible for mistakenly flashing a picture of Osama bin Laden on MSNBC as Chris Matthews talked about Barack Obama. 'This mistake was inexcusable,' MSNBC spokesman Jeremy Gaines said. It happened during the opening of "Hardball" Monday evening. Matthews was previewing a story on the controversy over Obama's use of another politician's words, and a picture of bin Laden briefly flashed on the screen beside him with the headline "Words About Words." The Obama campaign immediately called NBC to complain, and Matthews apologized on the air a few minutes later.
Huffington Post enters top tier
(NY Observer) John Koblin writes: "In the spring of 2005, when asked about Arianna Huffington’s plan to launch a news-aggregating blog to compete with the Drudge Report, Matthew Drudge did not seem too impressed. 'I don’t think that need is there,' he told The Observer. 'I think I fill that need.' And while he allowed that Ms. Huffington had 'tons of charm and humor,' he questioned whether she and her coterie of boldface names had the stamina to compete. 'This isn’t a dinner party, darling,' he said. 'This is the beast! This is the Internet beast, which is all-consuming, as anyone knows who works in this business.' It took a while, and surely the brighter prospects on the left side of the aisle have changed things since Mr. Drudge was acting as the steam vent for a country fed up with the Clinton White House. But, nearly three years into its existence, Huffingtonpost.com is getting there, with unique visitors logging on at three times the rate they did just six months ago."
CLICK HEREHigh Court Ponders Review of FCC Profanity Decision
(Radio Online) The FCC will learn on Friday, February 29 whether or not the U.S. Supreme Court will review a lower court's decision that the Commission failed to justify its indecency regulations. A ruling by the Second Circuit Court of Appeals said the agency's profanity findings against Fox and others were "arbitrary and capricious." A vote of at least four justices is required to ensure the high court's review.
FCC sets comments date for Localism rulemaking(Radio Ink) The FCC's Report on Broadcast Localism and notice of proposed rulemaking on rules changes to enhance broadcast localism and diversity appeared in the Federal Register on February 13, opening a 30-day window for public comments. Comments are due at the FCC on March 14, and reply comments are due April 14. The FCC adopted the report and NPRM at its open meeting on December 18 and released the full report and notice on January 24. The commission is looking for comment on whether it should return to its pre-1987 requirement that a station's main studio be within its community of license, and, on the programming side, on whether the FCC should take steps to address voicetracking, including possibly limiting voicetracking or requiring that it be disclosed. It's also asking for input on whether stations should be required to provide information on how much local music they play and how they compile their playlists.
Today is deadline for paying FCC fine for NYPD Blue episode
(Broadcasting & Cable) The Federal Communications Commission gave about 40 ABC affiliates until today to pay their fine -- $27,500 apiece -- for airing a bare behind in an episode of NYPD Blue, but it canceled the fines for about one-dozen stations initially cited. In the process, the FCC reaffirmed its commitment to indecency regulation, saying that the "broadcast media continue to have a uniquely pervasive presence” in American life and remain "uniquely accessible to children." The FCC late Tuesday issued its forfeiture order, rejecting an appeal from the majority of affiliates but canceling the fines for Northeast Kansas Broadcast Service's KTKA-TV; KFBB for KFBB-TV; Louisiana Television Broadcasting for WBRZ-TV; WXOW-WQOW Television for WXOW-TV; KMBC Hearst-Argyle Television for KMBC-TV; KHBS Hearst-Argyle Television for KHOG-TV; and Forum Communications for WDAY-TV.
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Will Oscar Show Grab Big Ratings?
(Variety) Rick Kissell writes: "Over the years, the Academy Awards telecast has proved to be a durable ratings performer -- second only to the Super Bowl among annual events. Last year's kudocast, in which Martin Scorsese's The Departed was crowned best pic, averaged 40.17 million viewers, up from the previous year (38.94 million), in which Crash was the big winner. The 2007 Oscarcast was the 2006-07 TV season's most-watched entertainment telecast, outdrawing even the highest-rated episodes of American Idol. But a ceremony whose top nominees will be No Country for Old Men and There Will Be Blood is a far cry from the 1998 Oscarcast, when the Titanic phenomenon reeled in more than 55 million TV viewers."
The Clinton's Beef with the Media(Washington Post) Eugene Robinson writes: "Are the news media being beastly to Hillary Clinton? Are political reporters and commentators -- as Bill Clinton suggested but didn't quite come out and say in a radio interview Tuesday -- basically in the tank for Barack Obama? 'The political press has avowedly played a role in this election. I've never seen this before,' the former president said. 'They've been active participants in this election. . . . But I don't want to talk about the press. I want to talk about the people. That's what's wrong with this election, people trying to take this election away from the people.' Somewhere in there, if I'm not mistaken, he acknowledged that journalists are people, too, so I guess I should be thankful for that. And I should note that throughout the interview with Washington's WMAL, Bill Clinton was back in loose-cannon mode."
Mad Money, Bad Blood
(Columbia Journalism Review) Dean Starkman writes: "Last summer, Barron’s published a tough story on Jim Cramer, concluding that the manic and popular star of CNBC’s Mad Money program did not, for all his bluster to the contrary, beat the broader market with his stock picks. While the story didn’t make much of a splash at the time, it sparked a quiet but surprisingly fierce feud between the two business-news organizations, one that seems out of proportion to the story that caused it. Within days of publication, for instance, CNBC officials told Barron’s reporters who had appeared as on-air guests for years that their presence was no longer desired. Ed Finn, Barron’s editor and president, says no one told him so, but he believes CNBC banished his reporters from on-air appearances in response to the disputed August 20 piece, “Shorting Cramer” by senior editor Bill Alpert."
CLICK HEREMontel employee gets fired for having a brain aneurysm
(New York Magazine) Last March, Erin Primmer, 35, had been a producer on The Montel Williams Show for two years. She was making $110K a year and was generally healthy until all of a sudden, on March 29, 2007, smack in the middle of Montel's show on "Survivor Stories: Ripped From the Headlines," she had a brain aneurysm, collapsed on the floor, and was rushed to the hospital. Fortunately for Erin, it wasn't the kind of brain aneurysm that kills you — but it was the kind of brain aneurysm that kills your career. According to the lawsuit she is filing against CBS, when Erin returned to work, she was told that her contract wouldn't be renewed, that they needed someone physically “at the top of their game,” and “capable of handling the pressure” and that the next year was going to be “worse.” It was in fact worse: Montel's show was canceled two weeks ago. And a good thing, too, because Erin's lawyers are saying she was improperly dismissed, and their PR firm, Rubenstein and Associates, are out for blood.
NAB wants National-Only rule for satellite radio
(Radio Ink) Saying a combined XM Satellite Radio and Sirius Satellite Radio may well have "different needs and incentives for the use of terrestrial repeaters" than they do as separate companies -- including "a heightened desire to offer locally oriented programming, including local advertising" -- the NAB is asking the FCC to adopt final repeater rules that block the satcasters from offering local content on their repeater networks.
(Rick's note: Remember, the same guys that want to stop satellite radio from claiming their local turf is helping satellite radio by accepting their advertising. Do you think they'll ever figure out that short-term greediness is causing all of their problems?)
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Anderson Cooper asks Sanjay Gupta: "What do steroids do to a man's bits and pieces?"
(Huffington Post) The full video is at the link.
An Interview with Ken Sumka
(Chicago Radio Spotlight) This past weekend on Chicago Radio Spotlight I spoke with WXRT's Ken Sumka. Ken talks about WXRT's impending move to new digs, plus his job as the airborne traffic reporter for WBBM-AM. Coming this weekend? WIND's John Calhoun.
