Bad news for both of the "Chris Matthews For Senate" enthusiasts: the clear-haired shouting head "is expected to sign a long-term contract to remain as host of MSNBC's 'Hardball,'" Politico reports. After all his hollering about maybe leaving the show to run for the Senate —which was almost surely a negotiating tactic—"It's widely believed inside the network that Matthews will get a pay cut from his $5 million annual take." This man is an expert in the Machiavellian arts. [Politico]

♦ Anna Wintour has responded to rumors she's leaving Condé Nast: "I have no plans to leave American Vogue now or in the foreseeable future." [NYO]
♦ Chris Matthews could be seriously considering quitting MSNBC to run for Senate. Or he could be using it as a negotiating tactic. [Politico]
♦ The Grammy noms were announced last night, in case you missed it. [AP]
♦ NBC has halted production of Knight Rider. [THR]
♦ More on the changes afoot at Random House. [NYO]
♦ ABC will air Homeland Security USA, a reality show produced in cooperation with the Department of Homeland Security, in January. Really. [NYT]

Is haggard MSNBC host Chris Matthews actually running for Senate from Pennsylvania? Against five-term senior Republican Arlen Specter? Really? Politico says he's house-shopping in Philadelphia! He's asking insiders whether he should step down from MSNBC before his contract expires! Oh, and about that contract: it expires in June.

Extremely tall man David Gregory will be your next host of Meet the Press. He's still famous mostly for dancing and for arguing with Bush press secretaries, which proves that he's a serious journalist, and it also served the press well to look like it was totally standing up to Bush just as it served the administration well to look like innocent victims of the liberal media. That is how the world works. Who knows how he'll perform on that show, because frankly the format itself is outdated and useless. The late Tim Russert was no prize either, friends. But Gregory is just... kind of annoying.

Bill O'Reilly and Chris Matthews are both famous cable news shouty persons, yes, but beyond that how much do they have in common? Both cling to a Northeastern Working-Class Catholicism that colors their broadcast personae even though they've both been rich and famous long enough to leave most of the lessons behind besides the strict moralism. But Matthews is an old Democrat working for liberal-leaning MSNBC, and O'Reilly is a culture war conservative with GOP in-house propaganda machine Fox. One more thing they share: they're not particularly liked by their peers! Matthews is seen as an overenthusiastic, affection-starved dog, at least if last April's devastating Times Magazine profile is to be believed. O'Reilly is just seen as a dick, if Michael Wolff is to be believed.

Citigroup is a pathetic loser of a corporation having needed three bailouts in as many decades. "Another large exposure for uncertain benefits," the corporate apologists at the Wall Street Journal editorial page declared of the latest Citi rescue. But the global banking giant is one of the largest tenants of Mort Zuckerman, the owner of Citigroup's world headquarters and of the nearby 59-story Citigroup Center, which Citi partly occupies. Why is NBC News allowing Zuckerman to pimp a rescue for Citi?

The unabashed love for MSNBC normal-person liberal Rachel Maddow has spread from the liberal blogosphere to the mainstream blogosphere and now into the mainstream media. Maddowmania infection alert, America! Click to watch a clip of her telling Conan O'Brien that straight men send her fan mail, despite the fact that that makes them gay. Newsweek has a mythmaking (but good!) profile of Maddow out today that actually quotes her boss calling her "magic." And Marketwatch media person Jon Friedman says that he was in a restaurant when Maddow walked in—and everybody turned to look! "That is star quality at work." Instead of getting to work engineering the inevitable Maddow backlash—the internet's main job—we'll simply ask: How does Keith Olbermann feel about all this? Poor Keith was the voice of liberal America for a moment; now, he seems old and strident. Largely thanks to unflattering comparisons to Maddow—even though it was Keith who urged MSNBC to give her a show! Now everybody talks about Maddow, and it seems like forever since people gave Olbermann serious attention. He's been definitively upstaged, for the moment. But like we said, the Maddow backlash will come. It always does. Early fans will drop her now that she's popular, like hipsters giving up on bands. Her mistakes will draw more attention. Slate will run some piece about how terrible she is, per its contrarian mission statement. And the pendulum will swing back towards Keith for a while, before some time passes and both of them settle into "plain old liberal TV host" territory in the public mind. That's assuming that Olbermann doesn't fly into some jealous rage prematurely and say something snide about her, which would only serve to increase her popular period an make him an unsympathetic figure once viewers grow bored and go looking for an alternative. Just bide your time quietly, Keith; the internet which Maddow loves so much does not love anybody for an extended period of time. Although this will probably keep her neck deep in public sympathy for months:

Like any other governor/aspiring president, Sarah Palin had to pardon a Turkey right before Thanksgiving. But then, because she's a moosehuntin' MAVERICK snow eskimo, the former Republican vice presidential nominee had to do something fun 'n differ'nt, like give a TV interview in front of a guy chopping off animal heads, and then call the activity "neat... levity." We'd hate to see what a rip-roaring good time looks like for the Alaska governor, but points to her for drumming up some free national TV exposure that reinforces her frontierswoman image without doing her any real harm. Video after the jump (keep an eye on MSNBC's leftist subtitles!).

Unreconstructed Liberals have their own reasons for disliking the Clintons, and movement conservatives obviously have even more, but what the hell explains the pathological antipathy the Washington Press Corps still feels for President Bill and Senator Hillary Clinton? The roots of it go back 16 years or so, but what's amazing is to see it still in such pristine condition, as if we haven't had eight terrible years to get over it. Now, as the Hillary Clinton for Secretary of State job offer becomes yet another press-driven telenovela, with the Clintons as, I dunno, the country's presumed dead ex-lover who just turned up on the day of our wedding to Barack Obama, or something, it's instructive to see how the press corps still sees the former first family. Christopher Hitchens comes at the Clinton issue as an old-timey Leftist (leftists hate liberals!) and also a drunken contrarian, but his comments and criticisms have been accepted by the resolute centrists of the DC press corps as a, bizarrely, an argument against Clinton with a great deal of popular support. The opinion of Chris Hitchens represents the views of precisely one person on this planet. He is representative of no one on the left, right, or in the center. You wouldn't know that from listening to Joe Scarborough:

♦ Time Inc. is slashing another 250 jobs. [NYP]
♦ CNN is spending a fortune on fancy-shmancy technology and new talent, but it's making a mint, too: The network is recording double-digit profit growth for the fifth straight year. [NYO]
♦ Dan Abrams is starting some sort of research firm/expert network/PR agency now that he's been replaced by Rachel Maddow at MSNBC. His first client is Ron Perelman. [NYT]
♦ 60 Minutes has been the most-watched program in the nation for the last two weeks, believe it or not. [NYT]

Chris Matthews is becoming the Rodney Dangerfield of TV news hosts. Even his NBC colleagues at the Tonight Show give him no respect. Host Jay Leno just last week led with dashing Matthews competitor Anderson Cooper of CNN, who was first to sit on Leno's couch and got extra time to chat after a commercial break. Matthews? After flying to LA for the appearance, he came out last night after a segment called "Things We Found On eBay," two turns on the couch by self-styled redneck Larry The Cable Guy AND after a special skit involving Larry. Then Larry insulted Matthews with a joke about "The Chris Matthews Show," not realizing the program is known as Hardball (UPDATE: Joke's on me — that's an actual show! I guess Matthews looked annoyed at being interrupted so crudely, or somesuch). Leno awkwardly tries to salvage the situation in the clip after the jump.

Last year the SEC and New York attorney general's office opened investigations related to a novel business: a company that hired as "consultants" moonlighting workers with access to proprietary information of interest to hedge funds. Ethical questions will also be asked about the network of insider media consultants Dan Abrams has assembled after Rachel Maddow took the Elle Macpherson-dater's MSNBC slot. With advisors like former Us Weekly editor Bonnie Fuller, ex-Huffington Post writer Rachel Sklar and Lockhart Steele, once of Gawker Media, Abrams Research is meant to be simply a "mock jury of bloggers, TV personalities and newspaper or magazine editors," the Wall Street Journal reports. But it could get so much more thorny than that.

♦ When Barack Obama mentioned on 60 Minutes that he was reading a book about FDR, what book was he referring to? At least one publisher wants to know. [NYT]
♦ National Geographic is getting into the videogame business. [THR]
♦ Pepsi has dumped its longtime ad agency, BBDO Worldwide, in favor of TBWA/Chiat/Day. [NYT]
♦ Rosie O'Donnell is planning to appear on three episodes of Rachael Ray's cooking show this month. [NYDN]
♦ ESPN has outbid Fox for the broadcast rights to college football's Bowl Championship Series, beginning in 2011. [WSJ]
♦ Maxim has named NBC's Amy Robach as "hottest news anchor." [TVNewser]
♦ Just in time for Christmas, Fox News' Sean Hannity is sponsoring a series of "Freedom Concerts." [HuffPo]
♦ Here's video of a stilted Arianna Huffington filling in for Rachel Maddow on MSNBC last night, in case you missed it. [Gawker]

Arianna Huffington's thick Greek accent is usually a social asset. It adds spice to a televised panel discussion, and on the party circuit encourages a conversation partner to lean in intimately to understand the former socialite's words. But give the internet publisher her own hourlong TV show, as with her guest-hosting stint tonight on the Rachel Maddow Show, and the accent becomes a liability, like a single seasoning taking over a dish. "You can't understand a word she says and she even makes my cat get irritated," one tipster wrote 20 minutes into the program.

Arianna Huffington is filling in for Rachel Maddow on her MSNBC program this evening. Until then, the Huffington Post co-founder has been snooping around Rachel's corner office and getting prepared for the show. Arianna's video tour of Maddow's collection of pantsuits after the jump.

Ever watch Countdown with Keith Olbermann on MSNBC and wonder if you were watching a rerun? You weren't. But given Olbermann's tendency to use the same phrases over and over again, you're officially excused for thinking so! [Jossip]

♦ The Times has the skinny on "Martin Eisenstadt," the supposed McCain consultant who leaked info to the press. (He's an aspiring filmmaker, not surprisingly.) In the meantime, MSNBC's retracted its story. [NYT, AP]
♦ You might be enjoying CW's Stylista, but the ratings thus far haven't been especially encouraging. [NYO]
♦ Two new cast members, Michaela Watkins and Abby Elliott, will join Saturday Night Live beginning this weekend. [NYT]
♦ Showtime is developing an hour-long show by Stan Lee about a gay superhero. [Variety]

David Shuster, we tried to warn you. "Martin Eisenstadt" is no adviser to John McCain, our own Alex Pareene reported Nov. 4, but rather a talented comedian. Mother Jones did likewise. And yet! On Monday, nearly six days after that warning, you had to go and identify Eisenstadt on MSNBC as a "McCain policy adviser" who spread word that McCain running mate Sarah Palin didn't know Africa was a continent. The Times did a big expose, revealing that Eisenstadt is really Eitan Gorlin, who perpetuated the hoax with fellow filmmaker Dan Mirvish. MSNBC retracted the story, and we're left to examine your track record:

MSNBC moved to protect America from Joe Scarborough and his vile, cursed curses. According to Broadcasting & Cable, the Morning Joe host will be delayed seven seconds to hopefully prevent a repeat of his on-air "fuck you" Monday morning. That puts the former Republican Congressman in the same electronic dunce cap as Don Imus, who was tape-delayed by the cable network before he managed to broadcast something racist anyway. There's already chatter this makes Scarborough's show less edgy and "dangerous," but a tape delay can't prevent another nasty on-air fracas between Scarborough and his lefty colleagues, now can it?