Msnbc

Fallout over the racially insensitive comments by radio talk-show host Don Imus intensified yesterday as MSNBC announced that it will immediately cease simulcasting the Imus in the Morning radio program. Meanwhile, two major sponsors suspended their advertising from the show, and a former NAACP president who is on the CBS board joined those who have urged Imus' dismissal. A week after Imus referred to the mostly black Rutgers University women's basketball team as "nappy-headed hos" following the team's second-place finish in this year's NCAA tournament, opposition to the longtime radio personality continues to mushroom.

Gorgeous green spring came suddenly to Minnesota this year after weeks of tedious budding and blooming, a great burgeoning of foliage, and Bleak Street became the Via Paradiso, and we pale stoics took out pen and paper and wrote, "O love love love you are the best who ever was" or words to that effect, and we sat outdoors in the evening and thought of various reforms we mean to institute. More joyfulness, kindness to strangers, a general quickening of spirit, etc. I once knew a man, a true iconoclast, who drank bourbon for breakfast and chain-smoked Pall Malls and held severe views about women, the church, American lit and society in general, a sort of post-beatnik, and every spring he vowed to reform and clean up his house, which had holes in the ceiling where he had poked his broom handle at the squirrels who ran around in the attic.

Interest in the conflict in Kosovo has sent viewership of the all-news cable channels soaring, according to Nielsen statistics for the first seven days of the crisis.In prime time, CNN averaged 1,084,000 homes, a jump of 79 percent above the first three weeks of March, when it averaged 604,000 homes.MSNBC, which has been slumping in prime-time ratings since the Monica Lewinsky story subsided, averaged 348,000 homes, an increase of 107 percent from 168,000 in early March.The Fox News Channel averaged 269,000 homes, up 23 percent from the 219,000 homes it averaged in the first three weeks of the month.

Jay Monahan, 42, a lawyer and legal analyst for NBC News and the husband of "Today" show host Katie Couric, died of cancer yesterday in New York. Mr. Monahan -- who had worked for the network for two years, often appearing on MSNBC -- underwent surgery for colon cancer June 6. The couple married in 1989 and have two daughters, Elinor, 6 1/2 , and Caroline, 2.Maj. Gen. Ralph Corbett Smith, 104, the Army's oldest surviving general officer, died Wednesday in Palo Alto, Calif. General Smith -- who served under Gen. John J. Pershing in a punitive expedition against Mexican revolutionary Francisco "Pancho" Villa -- was a combat veteran of both world wars.

If you think television couldn't possibly report the Clinton-Starr-Lewinsky drama any more breathlessly than it has in the last week, wait till the videotape of the President's grand jury testimony is released Monday.Three all-news cable channels -- MSNBC, Fox and CNN -- have promised to run the uncut, unedited testimony the instant it is received from the House of Representatives, ratcheting up their soap opera coverage yet another notch despite poll after poll in which viewers say they have heard enough about the matter and want to move on.And that is the big disconnect: While cable news reports round-the-clock that the President is all but finished, the polls on Clinton's approval ratings and the public's attitude toward impeachment suggest a different social reality.

When John Nicol, director of technology for MSNBC's Internet news site, came to work at 7 a.m. Jan. 22, he smelled trouble. MSNBC's powerful computers were being strained to the limit by Web surfers frantic for the latest on some former White House intern named, uh, Lewinsky.Nicol launched an emergency plan developed after the October stock market drop, when investors desperate for market data nearly halted MSNBC in its electronic tracks. Technicians swiftly stripped the luxuriant MSNBC front page to a bare-bones report of the scandal for quick downloading.

Getting information on the air fast has always been something to brag about in television news. But how fast is too fast?That is one of the questions being asked in the wake of allegations of a sexual relationship between President Clinton and a former White House intern.In the new world of competing all-news cable channels and the Internet, information on the Clinton story has been moving at a dizzying speed, obliterating traditional news cycles and raising concerns that television might be adding a false sense of urgency to the story.

All the networks and cable channels attached some form of advisory yesterday to their saturation coverage of President Clinton's testimony before a grand jury, but none was quite as memorable as CBS anchorman Dan Rather's."

As Keith Olbermann was plotting his departure from ESPN to MSNBC, a bigger threat to the all-sports network officially set sail yesterday as two broadcasting giants officially joined forces on a new venture.Fox/Liberty, which already controlled nine regional sports channels in an amalgam called Fox Sports Net, purchased a 40 percent equity stake in eight similar channels run by Cablevision a price of $850 million.The 17 channels give Fox Sports Net nearly nationwide coverage in 55 million homes, and will spread its programming into such key areas as New York, Chicago, Philadelphia and Boston.

New-kid-on-the-block MSNBC proved it can play with the big boys Wednesday night by matching, and at times bettering, rival CNN's live coverage of the crash of TWA Flight 800.The new cable network, launched with fanfare only two days earlier, benefited from the unflappability of anchor Brian Williams and the technological superiority of New York station WNBC, which used a specially equipped helicopter to produce live pictures of the crash scene that CNN...

Siriano, Conrad to create gowns for Emmy night Project Runway winner Christian Siriano and The Hills star Lauren Conrad are creating gowns for the Emmy Awards on Sept. 21. Siriano's selection as designer for one of the so-called "trophy girls" who hand over Emmy statues to presenters was announced yesterday. The TV academy previously said that Conrad, who's started her own clothing line, will be dressing a trophy bearer. Siriano will have Project Runway company, with the show's Heidi Klum serving as one of five reality show hosts who are to emcee the awards.

The University of Alabama at Birmingham's Spam Data Mine is warning consumers about a new spam trend using MSNBC that attempts to trick e-mail readers into clicking on a site that will infect their computers. UAB says that since the new spam attack is based on real e-mail messages sent to MSNBC Alert subscribers, it will be nearly impossible to block the spam without also blocking legitimate MSNBC mail. Gary Warner, UAB's director of computer forensics, said that for several days last week, one of the top spam messages detected by the Spam Data Mine was "CNN Alerts: my Custom Alert," which forged a CNN e-mail.

A TV wake of six days and five nights for NBC newsman Tim Russert came to an end yesterday with a moving memorial service on cable channel MSNBC. Aptly representative of the arc of Russert's life, those eulogizing the 58-year-old anchor of Meet the Press ranged from an elementary school nun in Buffalo, N.Y., to the stars of mainstream media and singer Bruce Springsteen. From the announcement of Russert's death shortly after 3:30 p.m. Friday to yesterday's service that began at 4 p.m., TV served one of its primary ritualistic functions as a medium of mourning, offering access and an outlet for the affection that millions of Americans felt for an ebullient anchorman - as well as the grief they experienced at his death.

The most-watched presidential primary season in TV history ended yesterday with a wild roller-coaster ride of conflicting news reports, updates, "knockdowns" and delegate countdowns that left even veteran media executives scratching their heads. "It was exactly one year ago that we televised our first debate, and it's been an incredible ride straight through to today," CNN political director Sam Feist said last night. "And what a last day for the primary season! We had one development after another - and more breaking news banners today on CNN than during any other day in recent memory."

MSNBC has seen fit to protect the American public from this political shocker: All three presidential candidates agree on something. The network is refusing to air a new TV ad that reminds Hillary Clinton, John McCain and Barack Obama that they've all spoken in favor of closing a loophole that allows criminals to buy guns at gun shows. Too "controversial," MSNBC told Mayors Against Illegal Guns, the group behind the ad. ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN and Fox are all airing it. The MSNBC decision is of local interest because, as I wrote the other day, Sheila Dixon is one of four mayors featured in the ad. Not to mention because Baltimore police seized almost 4,000 illegal guns last year.

For all their ability to react instantly to a developing story, cable news channels can be surprisingly slow to make changes in their own houses. Until last week, Fox News had not altered its early evening lineup in eight years. But the cable landscape has been reshaped in recent weeks with each of the three news channels bringing in new talent to anchor some of their most competitive hours. And bucking a long-standing trend, two of the networks have ousted ideologically charged personalities in favor of more traditional and experienced journalists.

Last week on Super Tuesday, all-news cable TV made it plain that CNN, MSNBC and Fox News have displaced the major networks this primary season as the best on-screen source for political coverage. Last night, the 24/7 cable news channels were again dominant, but this time they stole the thunder from local TV news operations - making area broadcasters that were unwilling to cut into network prime-time programming seem all but irrelevant with their 11 p.m. newscasts in cities such as Baltimore.

When MSNBC moved a couple of months ago from its longtime home in New Jersey to 30 Rockefeller Plaza in Midtown Manhattan, Keith Olbermann got his pick of offices. It was a nice perk for the anchor whose bracing mix of irony and stridency made him the first big star the 11-year-old cable channel can call its own. Olbermann chose a room looking directly into the street-front studios of MSNBC's rival, Fox News. If you're walking up Sixth Avenue, look for the huge cardboard cutout of Bill O'Reilly's head gazing out of a third-floor window in the world headquarters of NBC. Rare is the night when Countdown with Keith Olbermann, MSNBC's highest-rated program, doesn't take aim at something said on "Fox Noise" or "Fixed News," Olbermann's pet names for the channel.

I am not a media critic!" said TV commentator Chris Matthews when I asked if he had any thoughts on the Bill O'Reilly-Keith Olbermann "feud," which rages almost nightly on the Fox and MSNBC networks. Chris added: "You can never win criticizing someone in your own business." Although Chris works for MSNBC, he has high praise in person and in his new book for Fox tycoon Roger Ailes, who did so much for MSNBC before he went to the Rupert Murdoch empire. In fact, when we discussed ABC's late genius, Roone Arledge, Chris said that Roger is the only person in television who comes up to Roone, creatively.

Gorgeous green spring came suddenly to Minnesota this year after weeks of tedious budding and blooming, a great burgeoning of foliage, and Bleak Street became the Via Paradiso, and we pale stoics took out pen and paper and wrote, "O love love love you are the best who ever was" or words to that effect, and we sat outdoors in the evening and thought of various reforms we mean to institute. More joyfulness, kindness to strangers, a general quickening of spirit, etc. I once knew a man, a true iconoclast, who drank bourbon for breakfast and chain-smoked Pall Malls and held severe views about women, the church, American lit and society in general, a sort of post-beatnik, and every spring he vowed to reform and clean up his house, which had holes in the ceiling where he had poked his broom handle at the squirrels who ran around in the attic.