TVSquad

NBC just sent me a series of photos showing the interviews that will be conducted during the network's "A Woman's Nation" series. As part of the series, NBC, CNBC and MSNBC personalities will interview each other about "the state of women in American life," as the accompanying press release has stated.

In most of the pics, the pairs -- Andrea Mitchell/Rachel Maddow, Kathie Lee Gifford/Jenna Bush Hager, Mika Brzezinski/Hoda Kotb, Natalie Morales/Suze Orman -- sit on the comfy chairs, legs crossed. As you can see from the pic above, Ann Curry, who's paired up with Meredith Vieira, wants to be different: shoes off, feet tucked under her rear end. She's really into this conversation, know what I mean? She's listening. She's comfortable.

It's so Ann Curry, isn't it?

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.

The cold, icy death hand of economic uncertainty and depression-era apple bargaining has finally pointed its bony finger at the TV industry and said, "I choose you."

The Hollywood Reporter reports that NBC Universal has already laid off 30 people as part of their ongoing effort to cut costs across the board.

So far, the 30 people who have been given their pink slips worked in the sales departments. More pink slips are expected to land on desks later this week in the news division, the first areas of the media industry that normally take a bullet when Wall Street starts firing in all directions like Hunter S. Thompson on an ether binge.

No one is safe from the snarky and sarcastic jabs of the blogger's literary Uzi. If they've got you in their laser-scope sights, nothing on God's green Earth is strong enough to stop them.

But not all publicity is bad publicity. In some cases, it's revived the careers of celebrities who flopped out of the spotlight like so much unsupervised fish. Rick Astley wouldn't have had the chance to perform during the last Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade if the Internet hadn't turned his ear-drum-grinding song into an ear-drum-grinding Internet prank. Chuck Norris wouldn't have become a born-again celebrity, columnist, and media pundit without a certain web site making him sound like he could kick God's ass unless God has Chuck Norris' fists.

Now another blogger has another target in their sights, giving an overlooked celebrity who is on TV just about every night the rare chance to swing the spotlight on them with a simple pull of the trigger. And it's not NBC Nightly News' Brian Williams. It's NBC Nightly News' Brian Williams' ties, thanks to high school English teacher Nancy Donnelly and her popular blog, the Brian Williams Tie Report.

Pew Research Center's biannual survey on how Americans get their news revealed significant shifts underway from print to new media, and even from television to the internet. But it looks like that idiot box remains our number one source for just what's going on in the world around us. The article shows the demographics to be pretty much where you'd expect them to be as far as who goes where for their news. The younger, more affluent and/or more educated you are the more likely you are to go online for your news. The older, poorer and less educated you are the more likely you are to rely on the TV.

I live in a pretty small town that's chock full of poor, uneducated people and I can assure you that most of those citizens still think of computers as that fancy technology they use in them colleges and whatnot. And the Internets, well that's where you go for sin! But the young people, who have grown up with computers and the web are more savvy than their parents and if they can afford a computer, then they're online. Most are playing World of Warcraft, but they're still on there.

If you're a political junkie -- guilty -- you're likely looking forward to the upcoming conventions. Just the prospect of an election with no incumbent running sets 2008 up as an exciting election, and with only 24% of the country believing that America is going in the right direction, this is definitely a time for change.

NBC News is opting to insert an element of change in its convention coverage. The network announced today that the late Tim Russert's son, Luke, has been hired by NBC News and will be put on his father's beat, politics.

Luke Russert's first assignment is Decision 2008, where he will be correspondent-at-large at both the Democratic and Republican conventions. While this hiring smacks of nepotism -- or allegiance to the memory of Tim -- Luke is not without some journalistic skills. He's a Boston College graduate, majoring in History and Communications, and has been co-hosting a sports talk show on XM Satellite Radio. He shares the microphone for that program, 60/20 Sports, with political analyst James Carville.

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.

NBC is trying to save money everywhere.

Longtime Dateline host Stone Phillips is being let go by the network, for money reasons. Phillips' current co-host, Ann Curry, will continue to do the show. I guess NBC wants someone in there who is already under contract and does other stuff at the network. Curry is the newsreader on The Today Show too. She'll be joined by various NBC reporters as rotating co-hosts.

No word on what Phillips will do now. I wonder why they didn't just keep him on and have him do other things at the network and MSNBC? Maybe he didn't want to, who knows.

It's not often that TV news executives are well-known, but Gordon Manning was one of those people.

Manning was with NBC and CBS news for several years, involved in many of the top news stories of the 20th century, including the student uprising in Tiananmen Square in 1989 for NBC, CBS' Watergate and Nixon's trip to China coverage in 1972, and even set up an interview between NBC's Tom Brokaw and Mikail Gorbachev in 1987, just before his meeting with President Reagan.

Manning was famous for something else we all see now: the color-coded election night map! NBC first did that in 1976.

Manning died Wednesday in Westport, CT of a heart attack.

On August 29, NBC will launch "NBC News on Stage" on iTunes, which will include the Today live summer concert footage of John Mayer performing three songs from some album I'm never going to purchase. If Mayer isn't your cup of tea, other programs to be added to the list include interviews with the Rolling Stones, Jerry Garcia, U2, Judy Garland, Johnny and June Carter Cash, Madonna, and Ray Charles. NBC is not offering this or any of its news programming on iTunes for free, which, to quote Mother Theresa, is a big stupid load of crap. The John Mayer segment, which will also feature interviews and behind-the-scenes stuff, will cost $3.99 and will only be available for a limited time.

If you didn't notice (which is fine, people shouldn't obsess over things like this like we do), MSNBC debuted a new news crawl and new on-screen graphics this morning. So far, it's a thumbs down.

While CNN and FOX News have cleaner, squared off graphics, MSNBC has gone with funky, pointy boxes on the right hand side that show the time and the MSNBC logo, while the left hand side shows the stock report. It's great that they separated the time and stocks, so now both can be on the screen at the same time, but the way they've done the boxing, it looks odd (and the text on the screen sometimes overlaps the new graphics, which isn't good). The crawl is odd too, because it doesn't crawl across the entire screen, only half of it (the stocks block the rest of the screen), and since only so many words can stay on the screen at once, it takes several seconds to even figure out what the story is about (but maybe that's on purpose, to make you stick around longer).

The new MSNBC logo is good though. It keeps the colorful peacock but it's now a lot thinner. Too bad they didn't put good boxes and a better setup around it. And I think it's time to get rid of the "MS" part. Why not just make it NBC News Channel now?