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Mondo Times editors
Boulder, Colorado USA | Posted at 1:45pm on Thursday, August 20th, 2009 | Msnbc.com has acquired EveryBlock, a Chicago-based Web site that offers news and information down to the neighborhood level in 15 cities. The two companies announced the acquisition on August 17, 2009, and MSNBC had this report:
"EveryBlock, which will continue as an independent brand, allows users to type in their address, neighborhood name or ZIP code to view nearby news coverage, blog entries, civic data, photos and dozens of other types of information — all updated throughout the day.
Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Charlie Tillinghast, president of msnbc.com, praised EveryBlock for its data-driven approach to reporting basic public information.
“EveryBlock’s talented team has a track record of innovation in the industry, and we’re excited to add them to the msnbc.com brand family,” Tillinghast said. “They’ve broken new ground with their unique approach to collecting, organizing and presenting news down to the block level. Their impact and importance in the community space is extremely valuable and carries promise for journalism and new business models.”
“Joining with msnbc.com gives us the resources to turn EveryBlock from a cool, useful service into something much bigger,” said Adrian Holovaty, founder of EveryBlock. Holovaty and the company's staff of five will remain based in Chicago.
In addition to Chicago, the Web site also covers Atlanta, Boston, Charlotte, Dallas, Detroit, Houston, Los Angeles, Miami, New York, Philadelphia, San Francisco, San Jose, Seattle and Washington, D.C."
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Mondo Times editors
Boulder, Colorado USA | Posted at 1:44pm on Wednesday, July 1st, 2009 | NBC News is launching a reality TV series about real terrorists. "The Wanted" will begin airing on Monday, July 20, 2009.
The new series is from executive producers and co-creators Charlie Ebersol and Adam Ciralsky, who said, "It's like nothing you've ever seen on TV before. The pairing of rigorous investigative journalism with high-end production values has resulted in a fast-paced show which we hope will leave viewers wanting more."
NBC News describes the new series as "a groundbreaking television event" involving "an international hunt for an accused terrorist." The press release continues:
"The Wanted" brings together an elite team with backgrounds in intelligence, unconventional warfare and investigative journalism. The show focuses on real operators, in search of real targets -- all in an effort to see individuals brought to justice."
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Mondo Times editors
Boulder Colorado USA | Posted at 9:25pm on Tuesday, June 9th, 2009 | NBC News has launched an African American news website called "TheGrio" on June 8, 2009. The press release says:
NBC News and Three Part Media LLC today launched The Grio (www.TheGrio.com), a video-centric news site devoted to stories and perspectives that appeal to the African American community. The announcement was made by NBC News Senior Vice President Adam Jones.
TheGrio.com uses the vast resources of NBC News, including owned and operated stations, affiliate stations, and msnbc.com, as well as the nation's leading newspapers and websites, to aggregate pertinent video and written content for the site. The Grio also features original video packages, news articles, and blogs on a variety of topics including breaking news, politics, health, business, faith, and entertainment. Contributors to TheGrio.com include Rev. Al Sharpton, Melissa Harris-Lacewell, and Santita Jackson. The site dives deeper into stories of black interest that mainstream news outlets currently only touch on.
"Coinciding with the 40th anniversary of the assassination of civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in April 2008, NBC News premiered "Meeting David Wilson," the remarkable and inspiring story of a young man's reconciliation with his ancestors' history as slaves. In building this partnership, David Wilson demonstrated an articulate, passionate and inquiring mind committed to serving the needs of his community," said Adam Jones. "This collaboration led to the idea of leveraging NBC News resources and David's editorial talents to create a daily news website that would target the interests and concerns of African American consumers."
"TheGrio.com is the first video-centric news community site devoted to providing African-Americans with stories and perspectives that appeal to them but are underrepresented in existing national news outlets," said The Grio Managing Editor and Founding Member of Three Part Media David Wilson. "TheGrio.com's goal is to be the biggest and most reliable aggregator, producer, and distributor of black news online."
Ford Motor Company has signed on to exclusively sponsor The Grio during its launch phase.
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Mondo Times editors
Boulder Colorado USA | Posted at 5:05pm on Tuesday, June 2nd, 2009 | MSNBC is gaining while CNN is fading in the cable TV news battle, Michael Calderone wrote at Politico.com on May 31, 2009:
"While Fox News dominates the cable competition — with an audience last month the size of the other two networks combined — CNN had at least been able to claim the No. 2 spot.
But in March, MSNBC overtook CNN for the first time in both total prime-time viewers and the 25-54 demographic. CNN narrowly edged MSNBC in total viewers in April, but again lost the demo.
CNN executives point out that looking year-to-date, the network still leads MSNBC in total prime-time viewers. The competition, however, is focused on more recent trends.
“We’re on track to beat CNN in prime-time for the third month in a row,” said MSNBC spokesperson Jeremy Gaines. “That firmly establishes us as the No. 2 cable-news channel in prime-time.”
It’s not as if MSNBC’s nightly numbers have been rising like Fox’s during the first few months of the Obama administration; rather, both Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow have watched their post-Inauguration numbers soften.
But when it comes to the prime-time metrics on which the industry focuses, MSNBC now has bragging rights. So in the afterglow of the March numbers, MSNBC President Phil Griffin took a shot across the bow at CNN.
“What do they stand for?" Griffin told The Associated Press. "That's their biggest challenge. CNN ain't what it used to be, and that has given us an opening because we stand for something and they don't."
The full story:
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0509/23118.html
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Mondo Times editors
Boulder Colorado USA | Posted at 9:38pm on Thursday, May 21st, 2009 | The Nielsen Online numbers for April 2009 say that MSNBC is tops among online news sites:
"Of the top five news sites, none belongs to a newspaper. MSNBC.com is number one, with nearly 40.1 million unique visitors for the month, followed by Yahoo News (39.1 million), CNN.com (37.2 million), AOL News (23.4 million) and Fox News (18.1 million, but up nearly 67 percent over the previous year)."
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Eric Kallgren
Boulder, Colorado USA | Posted at 10:56am on Wednesday, March 25th, 2009 | Viewership of network television news continues to decline, while the audience gets older.
In March 2009, the Pew Project for Excellence in Journalism released its report "The State of the News Media," covering the year 2008:
"The audience for network television news programs shrank again in 2008, continuing a quarter- century of decline.
To a greater degree than before, Americans turned instead to other outlets for news. On election night, for example, the total audience watching cable channels nearly equaled that watching the broadcast television networks for the first time.
For all that, however, nearly 23 million viewers still tune into the three nightly newscasts each day, several times the number that are tuned into the three cable news channels at any given moment during prime time.
Among major trends in 2008:
• The three commercial nightly newscasts over all lost viewers for the year, although the declines were about half of those of recent years. In the race among the networks, NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams remained No. 1 and even had slight gains in audience. ABC’s World News with Charles Gibson remained second although it lost virtually all of the audience gains it enjoyed a year earlier. The CBS Evening News with Katie Couric fell farther behind.
• The audience for the morning news shows fell for the fourth year in a row. But those losses, too, were not evenly spread across the board. NBC’s Today Show, the longtime leader, gained viewers while the second-place ABC’s Good Morning America lost. The CBS Early Show posted a slight 1 percent loss in viewers for the year.
• NBC’s coverage of the 2008 Olympics in August was the second-most watched Olympic Games ever, and there is some evidence this translated into temporary viewership gains for NBC’s evening and morning news programs. Both NBC Nightly News and the Today Show enjoyed a bump of almost 1 million viewers each in August when NBC was broadcasting the games. The gains did not last.
• Two full years with a younger set of network anchors has done nothing to attract younger viewers to the evening newscasts. The viewership of the morning news shows also got older on average."
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Mondo Times editors
Boulder, Colorado USA | Posted at 2:34pm on Wednesday, February 4th, 2009 | On February 3, 2009, the Associated Press reported that Joe Scarborough has a book coming out in May:
"Cable television isn't enough for MSNBC's Joe Scarborough. He has a book coming out in May.
Publisher Crown Forum, an imprint of Random House Inc., says the title is "The Last Best Hope: Restoring Conservatism and America's Promise."
Crown Forum says the book will issue a challenge to Scarborough's own Republican Party to either reform or die.
The publisher said in a statement Tuesday: "The book will offer a searing indictment of the Republican leaders who destroyed their party and crippled our country, while offering a clear path of recovery to conservatives who are ready to take their country back."
Scarborough hosts MSNBC's popular "Morning Joe" news-talk program.
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Eric Kallgren
Boulder, Colorado USA | Posted at 3:18pm on Monday, January 26th, 2009 | On January 26, 2009, Howard Kurtz of the Washington Post offered his "analysis" of the continuing success of NBC's top-rated morning show, The Today Show:
"The "Today" gang teased and kibitzed their way through two days of inaugural coverage in Washington last week, but for all the newsmaker interviews and carefully produced taped pieces, it quickly became clear that the entire venture is powered by personal relationships.
"The show is built on that feeling of family," Vieira says. "You can't fake it. People pick up on any vibe that feels off."
"People always say, 'Show me chemistry,' " Lauer says. "Once you start analyzing it, you screw it up. It's not a recipe. It's not like baking a cake."
Other morning shows take an ensemble approach as well, but top-rated "Today" fields a core team -- Lauer, Ann Curry and Al Roker, who were joined by Vieira more than two years ago -- that has been showing up for breakfast for a long time.
During a major event such as Barack Obama's inauguration, "I think the reason people tune in is they want to see you guys," Curry says, glancing at Lauer and Vieira. "They want to experience it with people they're comfortable with.""
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Eric Kallgren
Boulder, Colorado USA | Posted at 5:14pm on Thursday, January 22nd, 2009 | On January 21, 2009, Jack Shafer of Slate shared his thoughts about Chris Matthews, describing him as a motormouth who talks a lot and says nothing:
"Nobody in TV news stir-fries his ideas and serves them to the audience faster than MSNBC's Chris Matthews. Drawing from a larder filled with old anecdotes, unreliable metaphors, wacky intuition, and superficial observations, the always-animated Matthews steers whatever's handy into the hot wok that is his brain. The sizzling free-associations skitter through his limbic system, leap out his mouth, and look for a resting spot in the national conversation, where they steam like fresh lava in untouchable heaps.
Anything can set Matthews to cooking, but nothing summons his inner chef like a National Event of Great Importance such as yesterday's inauguration. If you watched MSNBC's coverage, you understand why Keith Olbermann wears a body apron and totes a fire extinguisher whenever they co-host: to keep the flying grease from setting his suits aflame."
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Mondo Times editors
Boulder, Colorado USA | Posted at 12:13pm on Monday, December 8th, 2008 | On December 7, 2008, NBC News announced that David Gregory will be the new host of "Meet The Press":
(New York) - December 7, 2008 - David Gregory has been named moderator of NBC News' "Meet the Press," effective immediately. In addition, Betsy Fischer, the program's longtime executive producer has extended her tenure with the top-rated broadcast. The announcements were made today by Steve Capus, President of NBC News.
"For 61 years, this program has played a vital role in our nation's political discourse and millions of Americans' Sunday mornings," said Capus. "We lost a legend this summer, and today we hand the program over to someone who has a true appreciation and respect for the 'Meet the Press' legacy, and a keen sense of what it needs to be in the future. David and Betsy are first-rate and I'm thrilled to have them in their roles at a key time in the program's, and the country's, history. I'd also like to thank Tom Brokaw, whose tremendous dedication has helped to lead 'Meet the Press' through this critical transition and extraordinary election season. He did so out of honor and respect for our friend Tim Russert, and we'll always be grateful."
"I'm honored and deeply humbled as I take on this role," said Gregory. "I'm filled with a great sense of purpose as I join a superb team to cover Washington and the world from a treasured platform in our country. Above all, I want to make Tim proud."
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