Chaunce Hayden, the Steppin’ Out editor whose name regularly appeared in Page Six until he found himself embroiled in a false report about a Bam Margera and Lynsi Smigo sex tape, is the center of this Radar profile, which lists his various past careers: male stripper, car washer, failed punk rocker, bartender, swimming pool digger. Hayden acknowledges that nobody actually reads his publication, which is littered around New York and New Jersey, which might be a growing concern because until lately, it’s been his single entry into getting his gossip items, and his name, in the press. Then the Post banned him (Smigo has since filed a $10 million defamation suit against him and the paper); MSNBC blacklisted him after a he caused a commotion on Joe Scarborough’s show; he’s persona non grata at ABC, when he went on-air to report Diane Sawyer had just shushed him; and Howard Stern would like to see him dead after Hayden said, on ABC, that Stern should be looked at for insider trading for allegedly leaking details of his then-impending move to Sirius. Interesting, though, that Radar is reporting all of this. Not because the gossip industry isn’t the pub’s territory — it is — but because paragraphs like this:

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“MSNBC’s ‘Hardball’ No. 1 Among Adults in June at 5 p.m.” shouted one of those endless press releases out of 30 Rock, where numbers are crunched in Excel spreadsheets in such a way that any show could probably be named No. 1 in one category or another. But this time around, MSNBC stood accused of taking things to far — by including Tim Russert’ special memorial coverage in its rankings, pulling data for the 5pm timeslot, not just Hardball. So when CNN and Fox News cried foul, MSNBC had to backtrack. And when the smoke cleared? CNN’s Situation Room came out on top. This is perhaps the most boring “scandal” we’ve ever reported on. [MCN]

Noble public official forgiver Keith Olbermann delivered one of his Digg-bait “Special Comments” last night, except this time he wasn’t devoting 10 minutes to assailing President Bush — he was extending an olive branch, and a “second chance to make a first impression,” to Sen. Barack Obama, who suddenly decided to vote for FISA, the federal wiretapping-without-warrants law that the Bush administration has so long wanted on the books, as well as blanket immunity for the telecom industry who’s been cooperating with officials who may or may not be violating Americans’ Fourth Amendment.

Nevermind that Olbermann was championing Obama just last week for “refusing to cower even to the left on the subject of warrantless wiretapping” — signaling a flip-flop of his own, since Olbermann was championing Obama when he was anti-FISA back when this campaign started — and got thrown to the lions by Glenn Greenwald, who pointed out the discrepancies in Olbermann’s logic. Video below.

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“In the first five-and-a-half months of 2004, the last presidential election year, Fox’s prime-time audience among viewers aged 25 to 54 was more than double that of CNN’s — 530,000 to 248,000, according to estimates from Nielsen Media Research. This year, through mid-June, CNN erased the gap and drew nearly as many viewers in that demographic category as Fox — about 420,000 for CNN to 440,000 for Fox. Meanwhile, CNN has added 170,000 viewers a night, on average, when compared with the last presidential year, while Fox has shed about 90,000, according to Nielsen. (MSNBC, which added 181,000 viewers in that audience, much of it courtesy of gains by “Countdown With Keith Olbermann,” still lagged in third place, with 303,000.)” [NYT]

How was GQ’s Tom Carson’s supposed to know Tim Russert was going to die this month? Perhaps if he had 20/20 foresight, he might not have taken down the late Meet The Press moderator while laying some smack on Chris Matthews.

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Was Keith Olbermann really playing diva when he wasn’t offered a first class train ticket — Oooh! Luxury on Amtrak! — to attend Tim Russert’s memorial in D.C.? Supposedly there weren’t any premium seats left, which sent the MSNBC anchor into a rage, says Page Six. Nevermind that there doesn’t appear to be a service class called “first” (just “business”), and those seats can be had for just a $35 upgrade (or about $100 on the Acela) on the NYC-D.C. route. Also: Didn’t these two guys not exactly care for each other?

Olbermann’s rep, meanwhile, issued this From Now And To Forever statement on all items written henceforth: “Since whatever you’re going to print is an outright lie, you can go ahead and write whatever you want. That’s on the record and applies to all future items you might make up.” Heh. Like we haven’t heard that before.

But the most dramatic part of all this? Knowing the item was going to appear today, Olbermann pulled his usual stunt — last week he did it to Paula Froelich — and named former Jossip editor and currrent Sixer Corynne Steindler to his Worst Person in the World list (she ranked behind Bill O’Reilly, for what that’s worth). Clip below.

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On last night’s Countdown, Keith Olbermann preemptively named Page Six’s Paula Froelich his “Worst Person in the World” after finding out she was working on an item, for today’s column (here’s the item), that accused colleague Chris Matthews of gunning for the Meet The Press gig at Tim Russert’s funeral. Matthews denied the charge on the record, and said the “agent type” he was speaking to was real-estate developer Bob Monahan, and that their conversation wasn’t about his plot to secure the gig, but about an upcoming speech Matthews was going to give to a group of mayors. As for Olbermann, P6 quotes a source saying he’s threatened to quit if he isn’t named to the MTP gig; Olbermann also denies the claim. And it better be true, because everybody we’ve spoke with says Olbermann and Matthews are about the last people NBC News president Steve Capus plans to install on the Sunday morning talker. Russert himself took a liking to political director Chuck Todd, though it’s also unusual that Russert is said to have bandied about Todd’s name as his pick of successor, since Russert, while still alive, had no plans of giving up the show anytime soon.

Yesterday morning, MSNBC was running a spot for last night’s Hardball, with background artwork showing female silhouetted dancers with the phrase “HER NEW OUTLOOK?” as the headline. It was a promo for Matthews’ talking point that evening, about Michelle Obama’s image makeover, which is taking place on the cover of Us Weekly and The View. It was also deemed, by eagle-eyed critics, as a sexist ad, what with those three silhouetted dancers. So MSNBC pulled the ad, after it ran “once or twice.” This is very bad for Mr. Matthews, who’s weathered through weeks of endless accusations of sexism, many of them well-founded. It’s unfortunate, then, to have this ad pop up now — when his punching bag Hillary Clinton is officially out of the race, and the most prominent lady right now among the Democrats, Ms. Obama, appearing to be his new target. It’s also unfortunate that he’ll take most of the blame for this, when it was probably the graphics department that’s entirely to blame. Watch the clip here.

This past Sunday’s special Meet The Press racked up some 6 million viewers, bringing the show’s second-highest ratings ever — only the MTP the Sunday after 9/11 did better, with just under 9 million viewers. Compare that against the show’s average 3.9 million viewers. MSNBC’s viewership on Friday, after Tim Russert’s death was announced, spiked 220 percent; competing cable networks faired well, also. So when Jack Shafer wonders, among many other critics, what “possessed NBC News to televise a never-ending video wake,” and why other networks followed suit, well, there you go. It wasn’t so much any of the networks’ interest to boost ratings (though the cynic in us suggests otherwise), but Russert’s death clearly impacted Americans the way any high-profile passing does, and the news divisions fed that beast.

… based on reports from earlier this month, the Countdown host posted this item on Daily Kos:

Kindness to the grieving - even if it’s forced, even if it just augurs a later pouncing - is appreciated.

For what it’s worth, he didn’t position himself publicly on this for obvious reasons, and we had had a very pleasant, very constructive “what can we do to keep our two styles from hurting each other’s broadcast, or the whole organization,” conversation. But Tim Russert was as supportive of what I did as anybody else at NBC, and his role on the MSNBC election coverage was voluntary and enthusiastic.

So that matter is all cleared up now. Right? Right?

One might think 30 Rock wouldn’t be particularly excited about Peter Boyer’s 6,200-word New Yorker profile of Keith Olbermann that’s intent on revisiting every charge of polarizing bias aimed his way in recent weeks and months. But, apparently, they weren’t, since everyone from MSNBC head Phil Griffin to Olbermann himself participated in the article. Then again, the profile isn’t as anti-Olbermann as, say, Fox News’ PR department could have hoped.

Olbermann, who says he chose his 4th floor corner office at 30 Rock because it has a view of Fox News’ studios across Sixth Avenue, has enjoyed both Jesus and pariah status atop his Countdown post. His fans are legion; his critics are loyal. Some of his biggest naysayers have, rightly so, come from across the avenue: Names like Bill O’Reilly and Steve Doocy come to mind, and those are just the ones with public soapboxes.

But many of the folks who have tired of Olbermann’s routine also walk the same halls of 30 Rock he does.

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TVNewser calls bullshit on this video making the rounds supposedly featuring a, um, NSFW “audio malfunction” on MSNBC. [Watch video here]

Because Rickrolling is all the rage with the kids, some pranksters had the bright idea to create the website FightTheSmears.org, a, um, companion site to FightTheSmears.com, Barack Obama’s homepage for fending off Internet falsehoods. Except the .org version was a hoax site and, rather than come to Obama’s defense, it perpetuated the rumors. (It’s since been replaced by an explanation message.)

Clever! So clever, in fact, that MSNBC got caught up in the fake version of the site. While all this gets sorts out, we’re going to long for the days of WhiteHouse.com, when it was a porn site. [video via NB]

With the Democratic primary no longer the media’s obsession, what else can we line television screens with wall-to-wall? Ah yes, the national conventions! In what can only be described as a move for bragging rights, MSNBC will have 20 hours of live programming, from 6am to 2am, for each of the four days both the Republican and Democratic conventions are taking place. Twenty hours. (PBS, meanwhile, will offer continuous live coverage, while NBC, ABC, and CBS will all offer three hours of live primetime coverage.) This means Keith Olbermann, Chris Matthews, Tim Russert, Chuck Todd, Joe Scarborough, Rachel Maddow and all the rest of ‘em better stock up on their adult diapers, because there will be no leaving the studio chair once this monster rolls into town. And for Phil Alongi, the NBC News exec producer for specials who will head all of this, it’s one more chance to juice this spike in ratings from the new crop of politically interested viewers, who will stop caring about most of this come November.

How did we go from naming Rupert Murdoch the “Worst Person in the World” to adding America’s sweetheart Katie Couric to that list? Ah, right: Because Keith Olbermann’s popular segment is as much a place to criticize world leaders guilty of human rights violations as it is for him to defend his own. And thanks to Couric aiming some “anonymous” critical comments at the NBC family, there she is, Keith’s No. 1 target.

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The Countdown host was supposed to take some time off this week — until he found out from Nielsen that he might beat The O’Reilly Factor in the key 25-to54-year-old demographic for the first time in his Countdown’s 5-year history. Of course, O’Reilly still has about twice the total audience size of Olbermann, and Laura Ingraham subbed for Bill on Friday, but is that what advertisers care about? Or MSNBC, when it gets bragging rights and gets to throw more stones at News Corp.?

MSNBC anchor David Gregory may have been dancing up a storm with Chris Brown this morning on Today, but last week, his choreography wasn’t so great.

That’s because Gregory reportedly backstabbed a colleague in order to get on the NBC Nightly News, reporting on the Scott McClellan book scandal, all the while edging out NBC correspondent Kevin Corke, who did most of the reporting.

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On last night’s Countdown, Keith Olbermann named Rupert Murdoch his “Worst Person in the World” for the inside baseball decision of firing HarperCollins chief Jane Friedman, supposedly because she quashed the O.J. Simpson book and fired Judith Regan, despite Murdoch wanting the book out.

But maybe Friedman’s fate was sealed much earlier? Like, three years ago? When her ally Lachlan Murdoch, son of Rupert, left the company, and she had to begin reporting to COO Peter Chernin? And had to start meeting certain financial targets? Which would’ve meant layoffs? That Friedman would’ve had a problem with?

At least one blog post makes the case in fingering MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell for this line about Barack Obama’s Virgina visit: “Interesting images today. Barack Obama, Mark Warner, in Southwest Virginia. This is real [chuckle] redneck … sort of … uhm … bordering on Appalachia … country. This is not the Northern Virginia … uh … you know … high-tech corridor. And these are voters that he would not logically … be … you know, gravitating to. This is the beginning of a pivot.” Evidence of prejudice, or just bad newscasting?

The “Students, Adjunct Faculty, [and] Policy Committee of the Women and Gender Studies Program” at Hunter College aren’t exactly thrilled with who their school picked for its commencement address, which took place Wednesday.

That would be a one Chris Matthews, noted cable news talking head and woman-hater.

In a public letter published Sunday, the aforementioned write, in grandiose terms, “It is, in our view, disgraceful for Hunter College, for all of us who love this institution and most of all for our present and future students who look to Hunter as a bastion of women’s empowerment, to confer this honor on someone whose words in public so contradict the most basic feminist and civic values. Inviting him to be our speaker is asking him to represent Hunter College on this important occasion, and this should never have happened. We are outraged.”

Worth noting: Hunter College originally invited Keith Olbermann, noted ratings machine and ire of his colleagues, to speak. But he backed out, and Matthews filled the spot.

Also worth noting: Hunter College junior Yin Chang was cast in Gossip Girl as the recurring character Nelly Yuki, which, we’re pretty sure, is written into the script as “one of the Asian girls.” And if that isn’t an achievement for all women to celebrate, what is?

The full letter, below.

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