TVSquad

CNN's Wolf Blitzer must be running on Energizer batteries. Between his duties on his weekly The Situation Room program and Sunday's two-hour Late Edition talkfest, Wolf is on the air 17 hours a week. While this makes him the leader in face time over any other television anchor it probably doesn't bode well for his social and family life. Not to mention that he's probably missing the new season of According to Jim. So, the cable news network is doing something to free his schedule up.

Sometime in the new year, Wolf will step down from his Late Edition duties and will be replaced by chief political and magic map correspondent John King. The revamped Sunday schedule will begin at 9 a.m., with the first hour dedicated to politics and opinions on the new Obama administration. Later hours will touch on national and world affairs with commentary on current events. And, most likely, John will use the powers of the magic map to make some of the less likable pundits disappear.

One of my favorite moments of the hours and hours and hours of Anna Nicole Smith coverage on the cable networks was when CNN's Lou Dobbs told Situation Room host Wolf Blitzer what was coming up on his show at the top of the hour. After he told viewers what was coming up (Iraq news, Wall Street news), he promised that for the entire hour there would not be a single mention of the death of Anna Nicole Smith.

Now it's Jack Cafferty's turn. And he did it on Wolf's show too. Video after the jump!

TVNewser posted what looks like a pretty awful typo on Monday's edition of CNN's The Situation Room: a picture of al-Qaeda second-in-command Ayman al-Zawahiri and a cut-out in the shape of Osama bin Laden. The headline next to that picture is "Where's Obama?"

Obama? It may be a slip of the keyboard, but putting a picture of al-Qaeda and the name of the junior senator from Illinois, Barack Obama, together, seems like it would be sort of a Freudian slip, don't you think? For one thing, "B" and "S" aren't close to each other on a computer keyboard, and for another thing, the potential presidential candidate has been accused of being associated with radical Islamic militants. Anyway, Raw Story has the entire sequece of events, including Wolf Blitzer's on-air apology to Obama (the video of which is at Crooks and Liars). If I were Bob, I'd say something like this: "This would be something I'd expect from Fox News, not CNN," but I'm not, so I won't.

[via Lost Remote]

(S31E16) Not too shabby. For her third SNL hosting gig, Lindsay Lohan wasn't all that bad. I did find it odd that she's doing SNL again so soon though. Especially after that big hoopla about the Vanity Fair article a few months ago. But her arms did look much plumper this time around. Besides, she has a new movie coming out and I would assume that she and Tina Fey have a good relationship. So I guess it does makes sense that she would be doing SNL again so soon. See that? I answer my own questions.

The Situation Room - It seems like we've officially reached the point where every single cold open that SNL does is going to be a take-off of one of the many political pundit shows from across the cable universe. I'm fine with that. I'm just saying that I can't remember the last time a cold open that wasn't Hardball, or Anderson Cooper, or this. I suppose it makes sense though when the government is giving out plenty of material to spin into a sketch. Might as well use it. This was funny. Wolf (Chris Parnell) had numerous guests commenting about the recent news that White House Chief of Staff Andy Card had resigned (well, I guess it's not that recent). It seems everyone they interviewed, who now worked for the President, had come from a temp agency. I loved it when Kristen Wiig (she's the new Resident Iran Expert) asked to have her time card initialed.