So it turns out "crazy" old Dan Rather has turned up some actual, you know, evidence for his theory of a vast right-wing conspiracy to take him down at CBS News four years ago: CBS memos show the guy who led the "investigation" into Rather's 60 Minutes story on the president's Air National Guard service was appointed after getting "high marks from the G.O.P." Another Republican was rejected after being deemed not sufficiently right-wing by a CBS lobbyist and executives. Craven CBS News suits even considered having Rather's work reviewed by Ann Coulter and various other terrible right-wing demagogues:

It's just a brief item, reporting that NBC chief Jeff Zucker was spotted with "old pal Katie Couric huddling over dinner at Elio's." But Page Six's sighting of the CBS Evening News anchor with her old Today boss will inevitably stoke further speculation about the possibility she might take over for Tim Russert at NBC's Meet The Press. The alleged dinner comes barely a week after the Times reported NBC executives were bandying Couric's name as a possible anchor for the Sunday-morning interview show. Gossip aside, let's move on to speculation: Wouldn't the gig just be an awful reprise of the CBS Evening News disaster?

♦ Keith Olbermann has signed a new, four-year contract with MSNBC. He'll earn $7.5 million a year, which is 25 percent less than what his arch-nemesis Bill O'Reilly is collecting from Fox News. [TVDecoder]
♦ MSNBC's new slogan—"Experience the power of change"—has absolutely nothing to do with Barack Obama's victory, naturally. [NYT]
♦ The job cuts at Time Inc. are underway. People is looking for 18 people to take buyout packages. Time is looking for 20 volunteers. [WWD]
♦ Jared Kushner says revenues at the Observer are up 40 percent, although the paper is still losing $2 million a year. [Guardian]
♦ Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa, from DreamWorks/Paramount, reeled in $63.5 million in its first weekend. [NYT]

Network news divisions got skittish about calling presidential elections following their colossally terrible performance in 2000. In case you forgot, they all called Florida for Al Gore, then uncalled it, then called it for Bush (following in the trustworthy footsteps of Fox News!), then uncalled the whole election. Their newfound prudence was rewarded in 2004 when leaked exit polls said John Kerry had the whole thing in the bag (oops). But this year the TV guys have their swagger back. Here's a CBS News executive telling the Times why California can suck it:

Wow, CBS News correspondent Dean Reynolds just unloaded a pissy rant on the Obama campaign, saying the Democratic presidential nominee is going to be punished for not coddling campaign reporters well enough. And it sounds like he thinks Obama deserves it. In a "reporter's notebook" posted to CBSNews.com, Reynolds complains that Obama's people pick up journalists' luggage at a very inconvenient hour. It keeps them waiting for up to two hours in parking lots with nothing to do, bored. And they sometimes force them to travel when they could be on live television, goosing ratings for their corporate overlords. Don't even get Reynolds started on Obama's weak-ass plane!

As if 60 Minutes correspondent Lara Logan hadn't kicked up enough dirt in Iraq — she supposedly broke up a marriage and caused a lovers' brawl — she's now under investigation by the feds for looting. A reporter for Broadcasting & Cable somehow got into Logan's CBS office with a camera, and lo and behold, found some serious war spoils, including a two portraits of Saddam Hussein that Logan picked up from wrecked buildings. The authorities have already gone after other TV journalists for taking home souvenirs, which is, as ERS News noted, illegal under Iraqi law, so it was a bit dumb of Logan to let anyone into her office with camera. But then nothing screams "I am a hardened war reporter" like an ornament from inside enemy territory. And by Logan's standards this is a fairly low-grade scandal. Heck, by the standards of Iraqi looting it's a low-grade scandal. But it involves a pretty TV lady, so maybe try and get outraged by the clip after the jump.

"The CBS Evening News gained only about 10 percent in audience from the previous week — and it was actually down from the same week the year before." [Times]

Sarah Palin spent some more time with Katie Couric, her new undermining roommate, who seems to have accumulated like 20 months worth of interview material, all of it horrifically damaging to the Republican vice presidential nominee. This time around, Palin couldn't name any newspapers or magazines she regularly reads, except for "all of them," which she clarified to mean whatever four-year-old copy of U.S. News she finds in the waiting room at her dentist's office. Then she didn't know what the morning after pill was. Katie was like, "whatever, I'm so out of here." Then Palin said she "loved" her lesbian friend, and Katie got excited again, about seeing Palin naked and "unfiltered" at the big debate. When will Palin finally vote Couric out of her sorority house and end this embarrassment? Cringe for her in the attached clip (click the video icon to watch).

Sarah Palin just keeps going back for more car-wreck interviews with Katie Couric. After forecasting a possible Great Depression and saying something indecipherable about her state's relations with Russia, the Republican vice presidential nominee reportedly went silent when called on to name Supreme Court cases other than Roe V. Wade. Also, in the attached clip, Palin and John McCain both implausibly try to blame "gotcha journalism" for reporting on Palin's support for cross-border raids into Pakistan, a position shared by Barack Obama and attacked by McCain during the presidential debate. (Click the video icon to watch.) Now, Politico reports, the Republican ticket is pulling Palin back to the safer waters of right-wing talk radio. Putting McCain's popular-but-inexperienced running mate in front of more TV cameras was a calculated gamble by the campaign to broaden her appeal. It's now safe to say that it failed.

On Katie Couric's website, it's always "Sen. Biden" this and "Sen. Biden" that, but the Democratic VP nominee's Republican counterpart gets the catty treatment. She's just plain "Sarah Palin." Conservative slam book American Spectator even found a CBS News editorial aide saying Couric sought approval to not call her "Governor." Because otherwise, you see, Palin might have looked all executive and so forth in her disastrous interviews. Couric is obviously just scared of a more powerful cougar. When will the jealous media elites stop conspiring to make Sarah Palin look bad? Watch Couric finally give Palin the respect she deserves, after the jump.

If Page Six is to be believed, Sarah Palin's "second big interview" will come next week, when the Republican vice presidential nominee will travel with CBS Evening News anchor Katie Couric. (Ha ha, apparently Sean Hannity's interview doesn't count as "big," even within News Corporation.) It remains to be seen whether Couric will lay Palin embarrassingly bare as ABC's Charlie Gibson did last week. But just scoring the sit-down adds to the evidence Couric is mounting a sort of comeback from the dark days five months ago when she was said to be leaving CBS. A summary of Couric's oh-so-modest recent victories:

CBS News may be home to the once-groundbreaking newsmagazine 60 Minutes and even the instigator of an evening-news segment called "free speech," but it'll be damned if it's going to let John McCain use footage of Katie Couric to smear Barack Obama as a sexist. CBS said the ad took Couric's comments out of context, which it apparently did, implying a swipe at Obama that was never taken. But instead of pursuing a lengthy court case that would have to contend with extensive case law protecting political ads, CBS is borrowing a tactic from the Church of Scientology and alleging a copyright infringement, at least according to YouTube's statement on the matter. That got the video removed nice and quick-like, though it still exists on the McCain campaign website. Surely CBS news executives could have taken a a more elitist road than low-grade YouTube censorship. [Politico]

The supposedly liberal news media hired talking heads like George Stephanopoulos and James Carville from Bill Clinton's presidential administration, but they were even more eager to Hoover up "talent" from the conservative Bush White House two elections later. In the image at left, our Photoshop wizard Steve Dressler shows which top Bush staffers have landed job as commentators, and with whom. Hint: It's not just Fox News and the Wall Street Journal editorial page hiring these Republican operatives. Click through to see the full-sized image.

CBS hired anchor Katie Couric to turn return its news division to ratings glory. Didn't happen. So like any good media organization in the 21st century, CBS has resorted to good old-fashioned Diggbaiting. Below a video of Couric in her office, sporting a Digg T-shirt and reading a script — "Oh, hi everybody! Nice to see you. Welcome to CBS News. Sorry about my mess." Putting a woman in well-cut Digg clothing is a trick as old as the site of course. Two years ago alt-porn star Posh Suicide did the same thing, drawing 2,828 Diggs. Couric has a ways to go to catch up: Her video is sitting at a meager 40 votes after 18 hours. But then, we'd already discovered that Digg users aren't quite the slobbering teenage boys spammers assume they are.

Moderators: Lehrer and Gwen Ifill of PBS, Tom Brokaw of NBC, Bob Schieffer of CBS. [WSJ]

"If [CBS head] Les Moonves wants to get rid of her, he's got to shell out around $40 million. He's tried to get her to move on, and she was like, 'Fine. I'll leave - where's my money?'" [Post]

When Katie Couric read a page from her "notebook" back in June, highlighting sexist media coverage of Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign, we wondered if maybe she wasn't also talking about herself. Couric was, after all, facing record-low ratings, and her bosses said sexism was partly responsible for viewer apathy. Well, Couric put to rest any doubts she identifies with Clinton in an interview with Haaretz newspaper in Israel, where she is traveling on vacation. In it, she argues that sexism is more common than racism in America, and that she has felt its effects — just like Hillary:

So we were vaguely aware Katie Couric had a YouTube channel, but had no idea the CBS Evening News anchor put so much energy into it. It's almost as though she feels stifled at work! Can't imagine why that would be. Anyway, Los Angeles Times writer Matea Gold watched all the videos so you don't have to, and wrote up the highlights, which we've assembled into a quick montage after the jump. Couric snaps Larry King's suspenders, chats up the paparazzi, sings with Bette Midler, makes a Saturday Night Live joke and hangs out barefoot with a bunch of mom bloggers.

"Bob Schieffer signed a new long-term contract with CBS News, the network confirmed Monday... The chief Washington correspondent initially planned to retire after the 2008 presidential election." [Broadcasting & Cable]

"COULD Katie Couric be returning to NBC? That was the buzz yesterday morning after NBC boss Jeff Zucker was spotted climbing out of his black SUV on a visit to Couric, who left the Today show to anchor CBS Evening News, at her East Side apartment." This is followed by a highly implausible cover story/denial involving Couric running errands for Zucker. [Post]