Msnbc

Here's some "Breaking News" from MSNBC: The cable news channel has dumped two of its high-profile yakkers - Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews - from the anchor seats of its political coverage. David Gregory, a legitimate news broadcaster, will lead the political coverage going forward. Liberal bloggers are upset by the move, arguing that MSNBC caved in to pressure from John McCain's campaign and the right wing. Criticizing the media has been a cheap but effective tool by the McCain camp - but on this score MSNBC has no one to blame but itself.

WASHINGTON - Thirty minutes northwest of Capitol Hill, past the foreign embassies and American University, is the NBC News bureau that's the home of Hardball anchor Chris Matthews, now an employee of the rebooted Comcast Corp. - a newer, flashier, more ratings-driven cable giant. One day last week, Japan was in the headlines with its post-tsunami nuclear crisis, and Sarah Palin was visiting Israel. "What phony baloney," MSNBC host Matthews cracked during his afternoon editorial meeting about the former Alaska governor's trip.

Mayor Nutter will occupy the ultimate public stage this week - a national television program - as he hunts for a way out of the Philadelphia School District's fiscal morass. With the district in a $629 million hole, the mayor is scheduled to appear Wednesday on MSNBC's Hardball With Chris Matthews as part of the program's special focus on - what else? - "education challenges and solutions. " He won't be the only Nutter on the program. The mayor's wife, Lisa, who is president of an organization that creates job-readiness programs in city high schools, is expected to join him. It's all a part of what NBC News has tagged the "Education Nation On-the-Road" show, with the limelight this week shining on Philadelphia on Today and the NBC Nightly News . Events include a teacher town hall Sunday at the National Constitution Center.

The final broadcast of "Countdown with Keith Olbermann" aired Friday night as MSNBC and Olbermann announced they would part ways. The news appeared abruptly and comes just two months after MSNBC's highest-rated host was suspended for two days following reports that he gave donations to a Democratic political candidate, which violated the company's ethics policies for news employees. Neither Olbermann nor MSNBC gave much of an explanation for the departure. In a statement, MSNBC said: "MSNBC and Keith Olbermann have ended their contract.

Comcast Corp.-owned NBC Sports will broadcast Olympics events on the cable channels CNBC, MSNBC and Bravo, in addition to the 24-hour NBC Sports Network. MSNBC, in a ratings battle with Fox News and CNN, will air 155.5 hours of wrestling, badminton, basketball and other Olympics events. CNBC will air 73 hours of men's and women's boxing, and Bravo will carry 56 hours of tennis between July 28 and Aug. 3 — Bob Fernandez

On the eve of the House Judiciary Committee's convening to consider starting the impeachment process, a handpicked group of Philadelphians gathered in Memorial Hall to sharpen their barbs, polish their sound bites, and sound off on the topic, live on the cable news channel MSNBC. Forty city residents - lawyers and professors, students and community leaders, priests and playwrights, homemakers and teachers - sat in folding chairs under white-hot lights, in front of roving cameras, and told MSNBC hosts Jack Ford and Jodi Applegate, and panelists including Congressman Chaka Fattah (D., Pa.)

It was evident that Tim Russert and I were trying to out-gravitas each other, and just as evident that he was winning. It was Jan. 21, and Russert, host of "Meet the Press," was at the calm center of the hurricane that was a new story involving President Clinton and someone named Monica Lewinsky. "One of best friends told me today, 'If this is true, he has to get out of town,' " said Russert, more in sorrow than in anger. I looked as worried as I could - as newscasterly, as stricken.

"This is an MSNBC special: White House in Crisis - Day 38. Here's Keith Overhyper. " "Good evening. Just when you thought we'd hit a lull in the Monica Lewinsky affair, two explosive developments. Presidential spokesman Mike McCurry says the President now admits to having nodded to Monica Lewinsky in the hallway, perhaps several times. Meanwhile, before the grand jury, a former White House aide confesses that the President once called her at home, but claims nonetheless that she did not have sex with him. Plus, George Stephanopoulos tells Sam and Cokie that the White House social secretary has lost confidence in the President.

Listening to the Pope and the President both trying to speak English afterward was probably the most entertaining aspect of the whole thing for me. Don Imus, "Imus in the Morning," MSNBC, July 24 Commenting on the 30-minute conference between Pope John Paul II and President Bush regarding stem-cell research

Melinda Emerson opened the door to her Manhattan hotel suite, enthusiastically welcoming two visitors she then apologetically abandoned for a laptop. It was just after 9 on a Thursday morning. And 9 to 9:30 a.m., Emerson explained, is heavy traffic time in the Twitter world, where she's SmallBizLady to 125,000 followers. Granted, that's not even a crowd measured against Lady Gaga's 16.7 million Twitter fans or Justin Bieber's 15.2 million feverish disciples. But then again, Emerson's audience, which also extends to Facebook, LinkedIn, and her blog, is a group of people just now realizing that social media are where they need to be to succeed.

Comcast Corp.-owned NBC Sports will broadcast Olympics events on the cable channels CNBC, MSNBC and Bravo, in addition to the 24-hour NBC Sports Network. MSNBC, in a ratings battle with Fox News and CNN, will air 155.5 hours of wrestling, badminton, basketball and other Olympics events. CNBC will air 73 hours of men's and women's boxing, and Bravo will carry 56 hours of tennis between July 28 and Aug. 3 — Bob Fernandez

Debates canceled as three pull out A debate scheduled for March 1 in Atlanta was canceled after Mitt Romney's campaign announced that the candidate had no plans to participate in the event being sponsored by CNN and the Georgia Republican Party. Two other candidates, Rick Santorum and Rep. Ron Paul, quickly followed suit. In an e-mail, the Romney campaign said he was unable to make the debate because of scheduling demands before the March 6 Super Tuesday primaries and caucuses.

Melinda Emerson opened the door to her Manhattan hotel suite, enthusiastically welcoming two visitors she then apologetically abandoned for a laptop. It was just after 9 on a Thursday morning. And 9 to 9:30 a.m., Emerson explained, is heavy traffic time in the Twitter world, where she's SmallBizLady to 125,000 followers. Granted, that's not even a crowd measured against Lady Gaga's 16.7 million Twitter fans or Justin Bieber's 15.2 million feverish disciples. But then again, Emerson's audience, which also extends to Facebook, LinkedIn, and her blog, is a group of people just now realizing that social media are where they need to be to succeed.

At 9 a.m. yesterday, we were mourning Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith 's reputedly perfect marriage, having read reports that the two actors had separated after 13 years. By 3 p.m., we were laughing with joy: It's all hooey! We also shook with fury: How could such insanity happen? Welcome to that most lucrative of cash crops, gossip mongering. In Touch Weekly got the ball rolling by citing an Unnamed Source who said the Smiths were kaput. Why ?

NEW YORK - Pat Buchanan said that he didn't mean to slur President Obama by referring to him as "your boy" during a discussion with Al Sharpton. The former GOP presidential candidate and current MSNBC analyst appeared on "Morning Joe" yesterday to explain remarks he made on that network's Sharpton show 12 hours earlier. They were discussing Obama's political strength when Buchanan said that "your boy" had caved in past negotiations and was likely to do so again. "My what?"

Keith Olbermann's still preaching liberal gloom and doom to the choir, but the church pews have emptied. The commentator's Countdown audience, in the show's new home on the little Current cable network, is about one-third of what he averaged on MSNBC. But one man's decline can be another's stunning success. Since Olbermann arrived June 20, the audience weeknights at 8 p.m. on Current has increased fifteenfold, moving the network, founded six years ago by Democratic stalwarts Al Gore and Joel Hyatt, from total obscurity into cable's lower middle class.

Mayor Nutter will occupy the ultimate public stage this week - a national television program - as he hunts for a way out of the Philadelphia School District's fiscal morass. With the district in a $629 million hole, the mayor is scheduled to appear Wednesday on MSNBC's Hardball With Chris Matthews as part of the program's special focus on - what else? - "education challenges and solutions. " He won't be the only Nutter on the program. The mayor's wife, Lisa, who is president of an organization that creates job-readiness programs in city high schools, is expected to join him. It's all a part of what NBC News has tagged the "Education Nation On-the-Road" show, with the limelight this week shining on Philadelphia on Today and the NBC Nightly News . Events include a teacher town hall Sunday at the National Constitution Center.

WASHINGTON - New York Rep. Anthony Weiner denied Wednesday he sent a lewd photo from his Twitter account to a 21-year-old woman, trying to calm a media furor that has only increased by the day and wasn't put to rest by the combative lawmaker's latest comments. Weiner, a Democrat, acknowledged to an MSNBC reporter that he "can't say with certitude" that the photo of a man's bulging underpants wasn't him, but when asked how he could fail to remember having such a picture, he did not directly respond.

WASHINGTON - Thirty minutes northwest of Capitol Hill, past the foreign embassies and American University, is the NBC News bureau that's the home of Hardball anchor Chris Matthews, now an employee of the rebooted Comcast Corp. - a newer, flashier, more ratings-driven cable giant. One day last week, Japan was in the headlines with its post-tsunami nuclear crisis, and Sarah Palin was visiting Israel. "What phony baloney," MSNBC host Matthews cracked during his afternoon editorial meeting about the former Alaska governor's trip.

SO MUCH television, so little time: _ Japan's very bad news has been, not surprisingly, good news for CNN's ratings. The news network is crowing about having beaten Fox News Channel and MSNBC in average of total viewers and those 25-54 for the 24 hours that began at 3 a.m. Friday, but I was more struck by the numbers for CNN.com, which smashed its previous record for "global video starts" that day. Some 60 million videos were launched...