CNN election coverage through the years [via HuffPo]

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:

CNN just loves to hep it up on election and convention nights by "hosting" bloggers, corralling them into a blogger pen where they can feel like they might actually be part of the MSM, if only for a night. November 4th will be no different—New York dating columnist Julia Allison has already Twittered that she'll be there, unwittingly proving once again how ridiculous (and ridiculously all-inclusive) this little gathering is. After the jump, see the invite to "select bloggers" promising "wireless Internet access and small TVs... And of course, there’s complimentary food and open bar throughout the evening."

♦ The battle over Project Runway rages on: Harvey Weinstein is now claiming that Bravo intentionally undermined the success of Season 5 by changing the show's airtime, running "mundane and unappealing" ads, and "revealing spoilers about future episodes." [THR]
♦ Barack Obama will appear on The Daily Show tomorrow night. [AP]
♦ The New York Times is not running out of money, say execs at the paper. [NYO]
♦ MSNBC moved into second place in the primetime cable news race, beating CNN for the month of October. [THR]

♦ Campbell Brown is reportedly pregnant. [TVNewser]
♦ Arianna Huffington and Tina Brown aren't in competition. They're best friends! [NYT]
♦ The Robb Report is on the market. The price? "Upwards of $100 million." [Folio]
♦ NBC has exiled the struggling Lipstick Jungle to Friday nights. [Variety]
♦ CNN's new (and appallingly unfunny) political humor show starring D.L. Hughley debuted this past weekend. [NYT]

♦ The Rachel Maddow publicity machine rolls on (not that we mind, of course): According to today's Times, she's a "fresh face," MSNBC execs adore her, and her show's ratings have defied all expectations. [NYT]
♦ For reasons we will never understand, Fox & Friends is now more popular than CNN's American Morning and MSNBC's Morning Joe combined. [LAT]
♦ Sarah Palin will sit down with Brian Williams tomorrow. [TVNewser]

A cameraman caught CNN legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin checking Facebook in the middle of Wednesday's presidential debate. Come on, admit it: You were doing it, too. (Why is GOP media consultant Alex Castellanos's name scrolling through the frame? Yeah, we couldn't figure that out, either, but we're told it's Toobin on screen, not Castellanos.)

It is already October 15th! How did that happen? I guess you could say that the Earth rotated around the sun a specific number of times and that days winnowed into nights which bled into days and so on and so on in the circle game. I think that's it. So, how have we been spending these ever-marching autumn hours? Watching TV, of course! Lots and lots of TV. Some has been good (Mad Men, The Daily Show), some has been bad (90210), and some has just been puzzling (Two and a Half Men?). So as we approach the ever-important November Sweeps Week—when networks set their ad rates based on inflated, extraordinary episodes that don't actually reflect typical week-in, week-out quality—let's take a second to give a quarter term report card. How has television been faring, you know, quality-wise (because we already know that ratings are in the toilet)? We'll analyze after the jump.

Jim Downey was once fired from Saturday Night Live, along with cast member Norm Macdonald, for repeated "OJ Did It" jokes on Weekend Update. He eventually made his way back to the show as chief political satirist, which basically puts him near the center of both politics and pop culture this year, with his sketches, no less pointed than his OJ material, earning mention in televised debates and re-airing on cable talk shows. But the influence of Downey and his show has been artificially inflated, he tells the Observer, by fearful news networks, who would "like to make sarcastic comments about candidates , but their role as news people prevents that:"

Everybody, quick, open an office in Abu Dhabi! The oil-rich desert metropolis is opening a new "media hub" consisting of bizarre, bubble-like office buildings, and major news outlets are rushing in. CNN is opening a whole new bureau there! And they'll be joined by the FT, the BBC, Reuters, and some book publishers. How the hell did a city that got its first paved road in 1961 suddenly become the place where news networks simply have to have their Middle Eastern headquarters? By offering reporters more cool futuristic offices, and fewer car bombs: Abut Dhabi took its billions in oil wealth and, through sheer force of will and money, made itself into a default location for news outlets to situate themselves. CNN, for example, can now cover the Middle East exclusively from the Middle East, while staying safely in the lap of luxury. Invest more in Baghdad, where the news is? Or invest in a state-of-the-art new facility in Abu Dhabi, which has far more world-class restaurants and fewer I.E.D.'s?

A tipster writes to us: "Holy crap... Are you watching CNN *right now*? They replaced the news ticker with content from SMS Text and Twitter, and now CNN is like TRL, in the middle of the day, etc. Rick Sanchez is the Carson Daly of CNN now." And lo and behold, the tipster was not kidding. Alongside footage of a McCain speech were actual childish text message and Twitter (the online refrigerator note) shortbursts like "we're in deep doodoo" sent in to anchor Rick Saanchez by viewers. Stay tuned for such upcoming salient crawl commentary as "Luvz U Palen, LMAO" and "Wut Up Barack, Hit Me!" Click above for a short sample clip.

Matching advertisement to the contents of a website is financial nirvana, right? Wrong. Computers keep getting the ads wrong, with results that would be hilarious were they not so offensive. Yes, an article about foreclosures might be read eagerly by people who want to refinance their mortgage. But a mortgage ad next to a story about a woman who shot herself while being dragged out of her foreclosed home by sheriffs' deputies? Click the image to see the full screenshot.

Click to view
Current TV's Twitter-enhanced live feed of the Obama/McCain debate on Friday "broke new ground," according to Wired blogger Sarah Lai Stirland. But it's been nearly a month since the September 8 premiere of CNN's Rick Sanchez Direct, in which Sanchez turns the camera on Twitter for the modern version of man-on-the-street quotes. How it works: You add Rick. He adds you back. You then tweet live during his show. He may pullquote you, or run the live stream onscreen. Sanchez, currently following nearly 18,000 people, already drew attention for his live tweet-reading during Hurricane Gustav, when Twitterers filed reported facts to millions of viewers.Current and Twitter's debate stream was interesting, but not new. Mashable and VentureBeat covered the launch of Sanchez's show three weeks ago, noting that CNN's arrival had forced Twitter's management to exempt Sanchez, like Robert Scoble, from their usual limit on the number of feeds one user could follow. If you thought Current's lazy stream of debate tweets was hot, watch the above compilation of the always-slighty-overexuberant Sanchez: "My Twitterboard's about to explode." (Video by 23/6)

You know Rick Sanchez, don't you? He's the CNN personality who once locked himself in a car that was sinking underwater so he could show viewers how to escape, and even had a Florida state trooper taser him for another segment so he could recount the sensation of having 50,000 volts of electricity coursing through your body. Sanchez has been inescapable on CNN as of late: he anchored much of the daytime coverage on the cable network during the financial meltdown last week. But he's just as kooky as ever! After the jump, a clip of Sanchez's greatest hits compiled by the folks at 23/6.

So the press was entirely shut out of Sarah Palin's magical journey through the UN today. They are making up for it by being quietly bitchy. The headlines: "Palin meets her first world leaders in New York." (You know, from first world countries like Afghanistan!) And here is the most sarcastic Associated Press lead sentence ever:

When John McCain goes to war, he goes to war to win. When he got shot down in Nam it was because he went back to make goddamn sure that civilian power plant got bombed. Even after the war, he was pretty sure that a few thousand more bombs would've defeated those commies. So when he went to war against the New York Times and every single major network, we were confident he wouldn't rest until 30 Rock was reduced to rubble and CNN renounced their anti-American ways. But no, he's cutting and running. Before, it was was reported that not a single reporter was going to be allowed to cover Sarah Palin's crazy UN meetings. Now, though? Oh look, CNN gets to send in one producer for a pool report. That's not change we can believe in! What's next, cooperating with the hated New York Times? Funny you should ask! John McCain's war on the Times was going very very well, for him. His campaign was trashing the New York Times and accusing Politico reporters of being "in the tank" and all that, but then some Politico people kept writing about how McCain's campaign kept lying about everything in the world. Then they wrote a story about how McCain actually pretty much lurves everyone at the hated New York Times. Like all of them!

♦ Not only is Rachel Maddow more popular than Keith Olbermann, she's now ahead of CNN's Larry King, too. [HuffPo]
♦ Sunday night's Emmy Awards generated the lowest ratings in history. [THR]
♦ MTV missed out on its chance to buy MySpace, but they have no plans to give up on their sixth-tier social network, Flux. [AdAge]
♦ Life magazine is back. For the third time. Time Inc. and Getty Images will use life.com to offer up "free, downloadable photos from world-renowned photographers." [NYP]
♦ Jeffrey Toobin, who says he "owes his TV career to [O.J.] Simpson," has no interest in covering him again, thank you very much. [TV Newser]
♦ Starbucks and ad agency Wieden & Kennedy are parting ways. [AdAge]
♦ Kanye West is teaming up with Comedy Central on a new series described as "hip-hop meets the Muppets." [THR]
♦ The Times recaps the service held on Monday night in memory of Clay Felker, the founding editor of New York magazine who died on July 1. [NYT]

The Daily News sent a Sarah Palin look-alike to hit the streets (with a camera crew right behind her, naturally). CNN's Jeanne Moos spent yesterday roaming around town with Barack Obama and John McCain masks. Did they move Halloween up a month or something? [Gawker, Mollygood]

"Maddow's averages [on MSNBC] are more than double the final two weeks of Verdict with Dan Abrams." [TVNewser]

Julie Lankamp, a former producer for CNN, was found dead in her Manhattan apartment last night. Her two-year-old daughter was also found in the home, crying over her mom's body. The Post says Lankamp likely died of a cocaine overdose; the Daily News says foul play hasn't been ruled out. Lankamp left CNN ten years ago, and most recently founded Media Melons, a media production company. She also advertised her "sexy and alluring deep voice" for voiceover work.