TVSquad

Hey, a lot happens in five shows. Let's get right into it!

COMEDY CORRESPONDENTS
Arsenio Hall was featured twice this week. His first appearance was in a segment that had potential called "This Is What They Said/This Is What They Meant." I was expecting to see video clips of celebrities, politicians and the like spouting their same bullcrap, and then having Hall tell us what he thinks they really meant. Instead, it was Leno reading quotes, including historically famous ones like Julius Ceasar's "Et tu, Brute!" The gag didn't make sense anymore, and even worse the bits weren't funny.

Luckily, he came back later in the week with an on-site spot at Yankee Stadium, where he interviewed players from both teams and even set up a bet against a Yankees player and Phillies fan Kevin Eubanks involving Snuggies.

While NBC is committing all its ten o'clock hours next fall to Jay Leno, MSNBC is looking for a ten o'clock star. They want a show to secure stronger foothold on prime time by filling that hour with a new show.

Right now, it presents a rerun of Countdown with Keith Olbermann, but that's not how it's going to remain. Phil Griffin, MSNBC prez, would like to develop a new hour to go along with Countdown and The Rachel Maddow Show, and presumably build on the audience Olbermann and Maddow are generating.

If you're anything like me (first of all, you have my deepest sympathy), you haven't been able to sit still since The Daily Show and The Colbert Report went off the air for the holidays. It also may be because my body has absorbed more sugary fat from the holidays than one of Tyler Durden's homemade soaps.

Both shows returned to the airwaves Monday with new episodes. Both also had cable news celebrity cameos so big, no lightning fast news ticker announcing an accidental nuclear missile launch could draw your attention away from them.

The Daily Show returned with another appearance by CNN's gray-haired uber-anchor Anderson Cooper and an interesting interview with new Meet the Press moderator David Gregory. The Colbert Report picked up former Hannity and Colmes pushover Alan Colmes and wound things up with an interview with CNN reporter John King.

What was the top TV story of the year? The choice was obvious to all of us, and probably all of you, too: The election. The 2008 race for the White House was not only historic, it was dramatic and played out more on TV with recognizable star personas than any election in recent memory.

And like a great TV show, it was a season-long run of highs and lows, tension and release, defeat and victory. Along the way, Americans made a choice about who will run the country for the next four years, but they were also entertained by a near constant barrage of media coverage in the form of maximum cable news, thousands of commercials, daily political commentary both serious and comic, a plethora of debates, and -- naturally -- Saturday Night Live's take on it all.

It all started about a year ago in the cold of Iowa and New Hampshire...

They passed the torch on NBC yesterday. After weeks of speculation, it wasn't either Ted Koppel or Rachel Maddow that received the choice assignment. Nope. It's David Gregory who'll take over Meet the Press -- effective immediately. On Sunday morning's broadcast, interim host and NBC anchorman emeritus Tom Brokaw made it official by officially letting the world know it was a done deal by presenting Gregory on air.

Apparently, some at NBC were miffed that this information was leaked last week, spoiling the big surprise today, but really, there wasn't much suspense. Joel wrote about it. The selection of David Gregory is a safe, solid and somewhat staid choice.

Shortly after Tim Russert's death in June, I speculated on who NBC might pick to host Meet The Press. At the time, I figured that David Gregory was the best choice, given his pedigree as White House correspondent and the decent job he did subbing for Russert in the past. But over the summer and the heat of the election homestretch, I came to change my mind about that.

I saw Chuck Todd and His Goatee take a bigger and bigger role in the coverage, stepping into Russert's nightly role of presenting and analyzing the latest blizzard of polls to come out, and I thought he'd make an interesting choice for moderator. Then Tina Brown floated the idea of Rachel Maddow as moderator, and I was also intrigued, given her rise to punditry stardom and her surprising even-handed manner.

But, if a report from the Huffington Post is to be believed, Gregory will soon be named the moderator of the program. Which is too bad, because this gave NBC an opportunity to do something different.

Meet the Press, NBC's venerable (six decades!) political affairs news program and a staple of Sunday morning TV, has been in flux ever since the untimely death of Tim Russert. Tom Brokaw has been sitting in the big chair, brought out of semi-retirement and keeping the show together in Tim's stead. But NBC has confirmed that Brokaw is leaving on December 7. They have not confirmed who will become the new face of Meet the Press.

Last week, Bob speculated about Ted Koppel joining NBC to anchor the show, and he was certainly be a credible choice. Tina Brown at The Daily Beast web site has another idea; she says that Rachel Maddow should take over Meet the Press.

My first reaction to Brown's idea was, "No, not Rachel." But that was just because I wouldn't want Rachel to give up The Rachel Maddow Show, her prime time MSNBC show. I enjoy her daily take on the world of politics. She's smart, insightful, a good interviewer, and despite her liberal leanings, surprisingly critical of the left. She could bring all the critical thinking to MTP.

When Tim Russert passed away earlier this year, the talk of course turned to the topic of who would take over for him on NBC's long-running Sunday news show Meet The Press. Tom Brokaw has been doing the show for several weeks now, but could former Nightline host Ted Koppel be the new guy in the interviewing chair?

Koppel has announced that he and The Discovery Channel have parted ways. He still had six months left on his contract but decided to leave. This is all just speculation at this time, of course, but since he's leaving Discovery early and the end of the year is upon us, it's interesting timing.

It's about 12 hours later and as I look back on MSNBC's Election Plaza broadcast, I can see things a bit more clearly now. Overall, the "place for politics" did a fine job covering the most historic presidential election in my lifetime. It wasn't the most dramatic, but it was living history.

History was in the making because we knew going in whether the Dems or the Reps won, an African-American or a woman would be in the White House by the end of the night. MSNBC captured that political reality with images and by letting the camera run long after Obama's speech just to watch the faces of the people -- including Oprah and Jesse Jackson, both in tears -- celebrate in joy.

The prognosticators and pollsters were all on target by choosing Obama/Biden as the winners, so that means nobody's at Gallup or Fivethirtyeight.com is losing his/her job.

If you're a regular watcher of MSNBC, the Election Night coverage feels like a suped-up version of the usual prime time line-up. They're calling it Election Plaza, overlooking Rockefeller Center, with giant screens, flags and -- my favorite -- the map of the United States on the ice skating rink.

6:30 The main desk is set with David Gregory center-most, Chris Matthews to his right, Keith Olbermann to his left. Yes, Keith is on the left. It some ways it looked like the last supper, only without the food.

6:45 My main problem with MSNBC is this framing device showing information on the right, the top and the bottom of the screen. This is what Lewis Black was screaming about at the Emmys in 2007. There's too much information on the screen. This reminds me of ESPN coverage of the NFL Draft.

As this election season turns into the home stretch, whether you're for McCain or Obama, this is a very exciting time in politics -- and I find myself really missing Tim Russert quite a lot. This point was really driven home for me when I watched Tim Russert's show Meet the Press last week. Tom Brokaw has been a really good anchorman and reporter, but -- I'm sorry -- he's not a good moderator. He's just not. He doesn't get involved in the questioning enough. He doesn't ask the penetrating questions. He doesn't do his homework like Russert did to be right on top of the facts and catch politicians spinning rather than speaking the truth.

Like I said, Brokaw is not in his element with Meet the Press. Fortunately, he's only doing MTP until after the election. I give him credit for stepping in when Russert died unexpectedly and there was a network crisis. However, looking to the future, NBC needs to find the right person to take the big chair. NBC News chief Steve Capus is reportedly thinking about a rotation of hosts, including Chuck Todd (NBC's political director) and David Gregory (host of Road to the White House, MSNBC).

In a move that can be considered either a turn back to neutral coverage of political events or a fearful tactic to curb further criticism on their network, NBC News has decided to dump Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews as co-anchors of NSNBC's election coverage. Replacing them on the upcoming debates and election night will be White House correspondent David Gregory.

Some say the decision to drop the two most popular personalities on the network from the coverage stemmed from what critics both within and without the organization feared was the channel's perceived shift to the political left (though, many have said that MSNBC has always leaned left as opposed to FOX News that leans right. Apparently, none of their shoes have the same-sized heels.). Others say their demotion stemmed from numerous complaints that came after Olbermann's rant after a 9/11 tribute video was shown at the Republican National Convention. Then there are those who feel their on-air tiffs during the coverage resembled something out of Gossip Girl.

I'm sure a lot of you were scratching your heads over the weekend, wondering how Tim Russert's passing merited the all-encompassing, presidential-like coverage it got, especially on his home network of NBC. He's only a reporter, right? Why the wall-to-wall coverage? Well, first of all, it seems that by all accounts, Russert was one of the most well-liked people in the news business, so the outpouring might have been a function of people mourning a friend who was taken from them too soon. But, I have another, more off-beat theory as to why NBC did a broadcast version of sitting shiva for Russert: it was because they have no idea how to replace him.

Think about it: he wasn't only the longtime moderator of Meet The Press, where he took the venerable show and rejiggered its format, making him the face of the show. He was also NBC News' Washington bureau chief and the main political voice for the network. "It's going to take four or five people to replace Tim," CBS' Bob Schieffer told The New York Times.

For now, though, the immediate question is who will replace him on Meet The Press. Speculation is already underway.

Arch, conservative, preppie guy Tucker Carlson has been ousted from his MSNBC show. Carlson's one-hour talk show, called Tucker, has been canceled. NBC News correspondent David Gregory will take over the hour slot, 6 p.m. Monday through Friday, which will be called Race for the White House. This week will be Carlson's last. Gregory starts on Monday, March 17.

MSNBC is reportedly making a series of changes, amping up the political chatter. Considering how much politicking is going on now, including Tucker, it's hard to fathom how switching Carlson for Gregory is going to increase the discourse.

This must be the day for lists. First the Harris Poll says that Ellen DeGeneres is more popular than Oprah Winfrey, and now the Tyndell Report has announced their list of the 20 most heavily used reporters in 2007.

I'm not sure who I would have thought was number one, though I guess the names Andrea Mitchell and David Gregory come to mind, since they seem to be every newscast. But number one is actually ABC's Jake Tapper, who handles a lot of political reporting for the network. Gregory and Mitchell are on the list, at numbers two and three, while CBS' David Martin is fourth and Nancy Cordes fifth. Cordes is listed as being on both CBS/ABC, so I'm assuming she left CBS and went to ABC? I'm surprised to see Steve Hartman on the list, since I thought he only did the Friday night "Assignment America" series. Maybe he does other reporting.

The full list is after the jump.