You'd be forgiven for missing Katie Couric's post-debate exchange with Sen. Hillary Clinton on Wednesday night, because it happened on the Internet, and we hear the web is just not that popular yet. But after CBS's broadcast of the Obama-McCain blinkathon, Couric didn't have a cable news channel to appear on, so she headed to the Information Superhighway, where she's been hosting these "webcasts" of late. Maybe people watch them! But probably not. And yet they should! Because of lively conversations like this one, where Clinton explains not the differences, but the similarities between she and Gov. Sarah Palin. Namely, they are both women.
Since ouster from CBS in 2006, after getting kicked off the CBS Evening News in 2005 after Memogate, veteran journalist Dan Rather has busied himself with two schemes. The first is running and hosting Dan Rather Reports, the HDNet news magazine. And second, it's suing his old bosses at CBS for some $70 million, claiming wrongful termination and accusing Sumner Redstone & Co. in engaging in a smear campaign that branded him unemployable by other networks. (Not HDNet, apparently.) Now, wouldn't it be great fun if that pair of projects could somehow come together. They just might, in this way: A source who was contracted by Rather says the news anchor has yet to pay him some $22,000 for work completed for his HDNet show. Is Rather just refusing to pay, or does he need some of the proceeds from this CBS lawsuit to pay his bills? CONTINUED »
When an insanely wealthy family dumps hundreds of millions in stock of their own company, on lookers can't help but wonder: WTF? So when the family of Sumner Redstone — he the chieftan of Viacom and CBS, as well as movie theatre chain and holding company National Amusements — did just that on Monday (though now they say only $233m was chased in, not the $400m previously reported), rumors started flying it was because National Amusements was about to tank thanks to the incoming recession. Except: So not true!, says the movie theatre head Shari Redstone, daughter of Sumner. CONTINUED »
Samantha Bee and Jason Jones are two correspondents on Comedy Central's The Daily Show who are married in real life (much like Steve Carell and his ex-DS costar and current wife, Nancy Walls). And now the duo are getting their own pilot on CBS, "which will revolve around the behind-the-scenes world of a celebrity chef (played by Jones) and the two women who run his cooking empire (one of whom will be played by Bee)."
While CBS isn't really known for their great comedy right now (ugh, Two and a Half Men), a smart show from these two actually gives us hope for next season, at least as much as that Office spin-off NBC's been promising.
A clip of the Bee/Jones dynamic, after the jump.
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Bob Scheiffer is going to wreck this last debate. The CBS anchor is already planning his moderator status on an episode of The West Wing (to be fair, Aaron Sorkin characters are way more precise and eloquent than anything you're going to hear tomorrow night), and is hoping for a "freewheeling" debate where the candidates just talk honestly and sufficiently about the issues at hand, all the while being mindful of the time constraints. Oh, wait, that's not what freewheeling means?
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It is, perhaps, fitting that Viacom and CBS chief Sumner Redstone's holding company is called National Amusements, because this economic crisis surely is a national freakin' amusement. Redstone's company, of course, is named after the chain of 1,500 movie theatres his family owns, and which also holds controlling stakes in both media giants. And it was that stake that he was forced to sell off on Friday. Four hundred million dollars worth of stock (of the nonvoting variety), in fact, to pay down debt that is suddenly due in an era when refinancing loans, even for the wealthiest among us, is harder than getting a ticket to space. [LAT]
Riff is going to the dance to make nice with Bernardo, so this Thursday America will be able to witness the ultimate mambo as John McCain makes his long-awaited appearance (probably) on The Late Show with David Letterman. Unless he backs out again, of course.
The question is: Will Letterman take the Bill O'Reilly route and go all soft and sweet once he has his opponent in the chair? Or will he continue to berate McCain and hope the audience he's already lost during the debacle is less than the numbers he's bringing in for his on-air beat-down? Let's take a look at the McCain/Letterman time-line and place our bets accordingly:
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On Wednesday, Oct. 29 at 8pm, less than a week before you cast your vote for freedom or dictatorship, Barack Obama's campaign will air half-hour commercials on both NBC and CBS. In booking the airtime, not only did Obama throw Ben Silverman's future into turmoil by bumping the unwatched Knight Rider off its regular time slot, but he also pumped nearly $1 million into the coffers of each network. At NBC, he will pay $891,250 for the privilege, and at CBS he will spend $961,000. Those prices, of course, are ridiculously discounted — and that's because federal law requires political candidates to be provided the "lowest unit cost" for airtime on a broadcast network (different from cable). Which means they get airtime on the mad dirty cheap.
But just how cheap? Well, consider that NBC will charge advertisers $3 million per 30 seconds during the Super Bowl next year, where nearly 100 million viewers are expected to show up.
So, let's use some fuzzy math and say that Obama will capture just 20 percent of that audience across both networks, or 20 million viewers. So, while 30 minutes of Super Bowl airtime would cost $180 million, or $36 million for just 20 percent of the audience, Obama will spend just 5.55 percent of that sum for the same thing. Oh, and while his programs won't leave anybody with a giant ring to wear, it could determine who gets to live in the White House. So that's sort of a big deal.
BIG NEWS you guys: President Barack Obama bought up a half an hour of national airtime on CBS and NBC to address U.S. voters less than a week before elections:
Obama's theme is not just change but unity, so he's appealing to the whole nation rather than a handful of tossup states," Sabato said. "He wants to win the popular vote by a good margin, which will enable him to govern."
And he's got the cash for it.
"This is another indication, if there needs to be any more, that Barack Obama's got more money than [available] television time to buy," said Evan Tracey, COO of the Campaign Media Analysis Group in Arlington, Va.
Which is good news, because the shows Obama will be bumping that evening will be Gary Unmarried and Knight Rider on CBS and NBC respectively. And since no one watches Knight Rider unless they are hardcore Will Arnett fans, and Gary Unmarried just sounds like a made-up show, it would behoove the Democratic campaign to just buy up the 8 pm Wednesday night slots every week until the election. At least it's a better idea than just spending all your monopoly money for a whole Obama channel on the Dish Network that no one watches.
Is it just a coincidence that CBS reporter Dean Reynolds' name sounds exactly like what the spiteful villain is always called in campy college movies? We don't think so. Especially not after Reynolds took to CBS' "From the Road" blog to whine like a damn teenager on family vacation about how the mean old Obama campaign is mean and rude:
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NBC's Meet the Press is sloooowly dipping in ratings since the death of host Tim Russert. The station was beaten out by CBS's Face the Nation last month, barely ahead of ABC's This Week.
The question isn't: Why is MTP falling, since the answer is obvious: Russert was Meet the Press. The question is, why did it take so long?
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Dan Rather, the cranky former CBS Evening News anchor who's toiling away at HDNet, continues to stay newsworthy thanks to his ongoing $70 million lawsuit against CBS, which the court system refuses to shut down. In the latest round of testimony, Rather's lawyer Marty Gould claims CBS — which ousted him following Memogate — cost his client millions of dollars in compensation because of, drum roll please, fraud! CONTINUED »
CBS News senior foreign correspondent, homewrecker and ruins-salvager Lara Logan can sure juggle a lot of responsibilities. Adding motherhood to the list, she might just want to keep the story of how she got those men in Iraq to swoon all over her a secret. But haha, secrets…Lara Logan knows no such word!
Despite all of Letterman's ragging on John McCain after the senator failed to appear on The Late Show, the two are in talks for a do-over for the sake of their ratings friendship.
The re-appearance is tentatively being called for around Oct. 15th, when the senator will be in New York for the final debate. Expect a lot of awkward grinning and lots of toothy smiles while the two men try to repair their reputations with the other's constituents.
It's a sad day when TMZ's cameras are the ones to bring us Katie Couric's reaction to Sarah Palin trashing her interviewing skills, but alas, it was the paparazzi who caught up with the CBS Evening News anchor. (She was en route to Tiffany & Co.) We could probably turn this situation into a profound declaration about the gossipization of news media, but that would sort of, uh, reinforce the gossipization of news media. [TMZ]
When you're a live TV show, it can sometimes be hard to keep potential indecencies off the air. Like when Jane Fonda goes on the Today show and says "cunt."
But if you're a taped TV show, you go through rounds and rounds of editing before a final product is considered ready for the small screen. It might be assumed, then, that after editors and producers watched a clip for the umpteenth time, they would've caught anything that would set off the censors. But not on Survivor: Gabon, the CBS reality series' 17th season, which is the setting for the hottest inter-orientation romance between a gay guy (Charlie Herschel) and a straight guy (Marcus Lehman).
And it's Marcus who managed to slip past the censors when, like Janet Jackson, he experienced a wardrobe malfunction when his penis slipped out of his boxer shorts during a run on the show's first episode. And then it went on TV. And, of course, that's upset the screaming queens at the Parents Television Council, who, of course, have filed an indecency complaint, claiming the manhood exhibition was not just "shocking" but also "purposeful." Idiots.
But by now, you're already dying to see the dick slip, if you haven't spotted it on the Internet already. So here it is, NSFW, below. (Did we mention this is the first season of Survivor broadcast in HD? Uh huh.) CONTINUED »
You're forgiven for not noticing David Letterman's repeat bashing of John McCain last night, since the most important thing on his show was the excellent Paul Newman tribute. But Letterman did get a swipe in during the monologue at interview bailer McCain, and so did guest Julia Louis-Dreyfus, who, in a show of support, stopped by Letterman at the same time she was expected at another interview, bailing on that one. Con quien?
For those of you who are wondering when Katie Couric suddenly flipped the switch from forgettable evening news anchor to serious journalist, let us remind you: The woman has always had a knack for asking the tough questions. Though her series of interviews with Gov. Sarah Palin have delivered light ratings but endless blog fodder, it's worth looking back some 12 years when Couric was still on the Today show and, rather than applying vanilla scented lotion to her knees and softballing with Bob Dole, she grilled the then-senator and presidential hopeful about his ties to the tobacco lobby. It was fantastic. CONTINUED »
ABC, CBS, CNN, Fox News, and the Associated Press are suing Secretary of State Mark Ritchie and Attorney General Lori Swanson for enacting a law to expand the amount of space news orgs have to remain from polling stations. Previously, the law was the crews had to stand 100 feet away from the booths (inside the buildings), but with the new statutes, that 100-foot circle would start outside the buildings, pushing the networks farther away:
"As a polling reporter moves farther and farther away from the polling place, the likelihood of a voter getting into his or her car and driving away, or of melding into a crowd of non-voters, increases.
"Second, as distance increases, it becomes harder to discern those who are voters from those who are not.
"Third, as distance increases, the statistical reliability of the sample itself decreases because it becomes impossible to interview in the scientifically selected pattern (e.g. every fourth voter, every fifth voter, etc.)."
You can see how this be a problem: After polling, most Republicans veer off to the right of a building to go to McDonalds, while most Democrats tend to get in their car and crumple into a tiny ball to cry. It would be really hard to get a random sampling of the pollsters.
This doesn't bode well for the debates on Thursday: Extra footage from CBS' interview with Sarah Palin revealed that when John McCain dropped by, the two candidates of the Grand Old Party got a little bit persnickety. Jossip's editor in chief David already pointed out that the McCain camp will be trying in the upcoming months to change the spin on Palin, but one really bad way of promoting the VP candidate that even conservatives are starting to distrust?
Blame the people interviewing her:
Editorial Director
