Continuing her battle against Anderson Cooper, Greta Van Susteren takes to her blog once again in Round III of the bloodsporting she's been enjoying.

Van Susteren is relaying concerns from her own Fox News and MSNBC, reported by TVNewser, about CNN's decision to title its 10pm election coverage broadcast Anderson Cooper 360, which attaches to Cooper's show the ratings gains that the networks inevitably capture during election nights.

It's been CNN and FNC's standard practice to retitle this programming as "special coverage," so Nielsen doesn't award viewership spikes to a show that's not actually airing in its normal form.

Following the Nielsen conference call, 360 executive producer David Doss called his competitors' stance bullshit: "It’s an absurd argument. It’s not as if the primaries are staged for CNN’s benefit. It’s the biggest news of the day. Of course it counts."

Our take? Who cares if it should count. Just make sure there's enough material to keep this Greta-Anderson mudslinging action a'coming and we'll be v. v. happy. Thanks!

As of last week, NBC's Today scored its 655th consecutive week winning the ratings game, putting it in the top spot for 12 straight years and counting. "Since the start of the year Today is up about 3 percent, leading Good Morning America, which is down 6 percent, by about 1.2 million viewers a week." And in case you weren't wondering: "The Early Show on CBS trails far behind the other two programs." [NYT]

"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]

"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]

The award the Tonys received for skipping over bubble gum fare like Legally Blonde and Xanadu? A 5 percent increase in ratings from last year, to 6.2 million total viewers. [MW]

Hoping for a week of beating Bill O'Reilly in the advertiser friendly demographic of 25-54, Keith Olbermann gets upset by Tuesday night's results: FNC won 582,000 to 368,000.

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.?

Terry Murphy will replace Wil Surratt as the executive producer of The Big Idea with Donny Deutsch, effective today, says TVN. Oh, and there's also this bit of news: The Big Idea clocked just 114,000 viewers in May, "scratching" on its Nielsen ratings, since it fellow below the threshold of 122,000 viewers needed to even register.

ABC's The Mole, which put Anderson Cooper on a map other than his mother's, returned to the network last night after a weeks-long semi-subliminal advertising campaign. And performed terribly, with a mere 1.9 rating for the 18-49-YO demo. [MLM]

Though we only trust Nielsen's ratings numbers about as much as Lindsay Lohan's denials about enjoying a smooch with Samantha Ronson now and then, the ratings company is the bearer of bad news for the starlet and her fam.

Lohan's guest appearance on Ugly Betty's season finale only bumped audience numbers up by 300k from the previous week's episode; and that number was down 16.2 percent from last season's finale. [E!]

Not only that, but Lohan fatigue is on its way to officially becoming a trend: E!'s Living Lohan, which only mama Dina, sister Ali, and that little boy appear in, couldn't even beat Denise Richards' own reality show It's Complicated, which premiered back-to-back. Living nabbed 1.45m viewers to Richards' 1.5m. [Us]

At least there's a break between now and Lindsay's Carlos Gardel biopic Dare to Love Me, which might mean box office receipts will be down a mere 85 percent from I Know Who Killed Me.

The CBS Evening News set another record low laste week, with 5.33 million total viewers, down from the previous week's then-record-setting low of 5.34m. [TVN]

No matter: Outside the Sex and the City premiere, Katie Couric was all sunshine and peaches: "Don’t worry about me," she told Roger Friedman. "I’m OK."

Well, she does have that cancer thing to look forward to.

Figuring out why FNC's morning show Fox & Friends is pulling in hoards of viewers (twice as many as CNN's American Morning in several major markets) isn't an exact science, but some purported experts claim to understand the winning formula:

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Though its mega-franchise American Idol saw ratings drop off this season – will tonight's season finale vote tally even break records? – Fox will be crowned the winner of the 2007-08 television season, with the ratings numbers to beat the competition. Nevermind that all together, network TV audiences fell by a whopping 10 percent this season over last, though Fox is up 5 percent. [Variety]

Ever get the feeling that when, on the off chance you tune in to your local CBS station around 6:30pm, that you're watching a race horse who needs to sent off to the farm? If the answer is no, it's because you always have somewhere better to be at 6:30pm, which might include a neighborhood watering hole, your son's soccer practice, or drowning in the Hudson River.

In the umpteenth story about Katie Couric and her ratings woes, the NYer's Nancy Franklin wastes space chronicling the anchor's storied past, and uses not enough space to explain why evening news fatigue is nobody's fault, and everybody's. (Luckily, though, there was room for this excellent Couric illustration.) Yes, there is a Jon Stewart mention here, because in these type of stories, there is always a Jon Stewart mention.

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Picking up from last week: The CW "has lost about 28 percent of its target audience of 18 to 34 year olds so far this season. Its ratings during this month's 'sweeps' period — the all-important measure upon which future advertising rates are set — are down about 22 percent." That is, um, very bad news.

It's also a chance for the network's brass to deflect accusations that its numbers are pitiful. Rather, it's the guys creating those numbers that have things wrong. Yes, when the reports are bad, blame Nielsen. We do!

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"The Big Idea is a stake in the ground against Fox in primetime," declared CNBC executive Jonathan Wald in October.

"They might want to find another stake. Well-tanned ad guru Donny Deutsch's show is off 15 percent in the ratings year-to-date versus the same period in 2007, according to Nielsen. That's both among total viewers and within the prime 25-54 age group.

"Worse, The Big Idea frequently 'scratches,' or draws an audience too small to mention. That's been the case half of the time so far in May." [Portfolio]

Hang the F on. While American Idol's ratings may be dropping off this season, the numbers the show pulls in are still leaps and bounds ahead of the competition, except for maybe Dancing With the Stars and CSI. The Tuesday-Wednesday shows still pull in some 21-plus million viewers (down from last year's average 30m) and, in the target demographic of 18-49-year-olds, Nielsen says Idol snags 13-14 million people. So why should anybody be surprised the show was renewed for next year? The producers' current contract with Fox allows for the show to be broadcast through at least 2011; expect it to be.

The CW's ratings are down 28 percent this season! During sweeps, viewership dropped 22 percent! Even with Gossip Girl's buzz, the young people network is at risk of folding, say TV experts who are paid to have an opinion about these sorts of things. If things don't pick up by next season, one of the partners – Time Warner/Warner Bros. or CBS/UPN – is expected to pull out, collapsing the network. [WSJ] So why does a network that had promise – courting the young demographic that advertisers love – face such an uphill battle?

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"There are two ways to maximize profitability. One is to go the CNBC route and hire Mark Hoffman and give him the latitude and the budget to invest in coverage and make the network really shine with news. This method will eventually lead to higher profits as the network brand is enriched. The other way is the path NBC chose for MSNBC; to slash the budget - to give up the idea of going toe to toe with resources against CNN and FNC and instead just try to be good enough so that viewers wouldn’t flee the network in droves. Nobody at NBC will publicly own up to this, but I have heard privately from several sources that this is the understood policy of NBC News regarding MSNBC. [...] The day MSNBC moved to 30 Rock was not the beginning of a new era as much as it was the completion of a process started nearly two years earlier with the departures of Neal Shapiro from NBC News and Rick Kaplan from MSNBC and the drive to get MSNBC under the direct physical, creative, and budgetary control of NBC News and maintain the new order of doing things the most cost-efficient way possible." [ICN]

Guess what? Marketers are being more careful with their ad budgets! Guess what else? Big companies like Disney's ABC can't afford to let cash-conscious advertisers spend less on TV buys, because it affects the bottom line, and that scares shareholders!

So that's why ABC is today, during its upfront presentation, rolling out the new "Advertising Value Index," which will supposedly help prove the value of TV advertising by letting clients choose specific criteria, rather than just Nielsen ratings numbers, in choosing where they put their 30-second spots. [WSJ] Things like "income level, education, employment status, how long viewers tune in to commercials or how engaged they are with the program" will all be just a checkbox away.

Except, well, media buyers already have this information.

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