cable news

A skirmish involving President Donald Trump, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, the Washington Post and MSNBC has escalated into unusual personal bitterness this week, with election security legislation and Trump’s attacks on U.S. Rep. Elijah Cummings as the triggers.

At the second Democratic presidential debate, which will unfold over two nights in Detroit on Tuesday and Wednesday, viewers will note some differences compared to the first debates.  CNN pledges not to ask questions that require a show of hands by the politicians or that confine all the contenders to a one-word “yes” or “no” answer.

CNBC is totally revamping the personnel structure for its Business Day programming, with a whopping 11 different CNBC producers either heading to different CNBC shows or receiving promotions on the shows for which they’re currently working.

Emotion now blankets the media landscape like an infant’s crib at bedtime. Google “Shepard Smith emotional,” and up come nearly 3 million results, many of them focused on the Fox anchor’s recent visceral response to immigrant suffering. A search of “Rachel Maddow crying” delivers more than 1 million offerings. Contemporary culture trusts feelings over facts, rewards heated emotion — tears or anger — and rejects medium cool. The effect on journalism is unmistakable. And a lot of the blame can be placed on those all-too-common twin devils: television and the internet.

Just when we thought Donald Trump was done with his Twitter tirade for the weekend, he managed to fit in more jabs directed at Fox News. Nearly three hours after his initial Twitter tantrum, the former Celebrity Apprentice host dug into Fox News in a fresh batch of tweets slamming the news network for hiring Donna Brazile and criticizing its daytime anchors.

NY1’s Roma Torre has spent three decades in TV, winning two Emmys. But when she lost opportunities to men and younger women, she was told “That’s just the way it is.”

Lester Holt, the anchor of NBC Nightly News, is the glue that holds the evenings together. He will be onstage for all four hours, joined by NBC’s Savannah Guthrie and Telemundo’s José Díaz-Balart for the first hour. In the second hour, Meet the Press host Chuck Todd and MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow will join him.

On the show that never ends, Jeanine Pirro is the defender who’s always on offense. Trump has told aides that in the White House, he has at times felt surrounded by people he cannot trust, people who are aligned with him for their own political purposes. He doesn’t worry about that with Pirro.

President Trump on Monday dismissed a new poll from Fox News that showed him losing to multiple 2020 Democratic presidential candidates, saying “something weird” is happening at the network favored by conservatives.

Executives from leading local and national news players in the OTT space discuss their various options for packaging and presenting content on the platform. Also crucial is figuring out how best to differentiate one’s OTT service from the many competing options, overcoming a lack of viewing metrics and personalizing content for viewers.

MSNBC implemented a big shakeup in programming this week, appointing SVP of Programming and Development Jonathan Wald and MSNBC Executive Editor Dan Arnall to lead dayside. The former head of dayside, NBC News SVP Janelle Rodriguez, will take control of NBC News Now, the network’s streaming service.

Five female anchors now deliver most of the daytime news programming at MSNBC: Nicolle Wallace, Andrea Mitchell, Hallie Jackson, Stephanie Ruhle and Katy Tur.