Morning Media Newsfeed: Snyderman Back to NBC | <em>World News</em> Skips Midterm Coverage

[emailonly]{{{ sbox300x250 }}}[/emailonly] Click here to receive Mediabistro's Morning Media Newsfeed via email. Despite Criticism, Dr. Nancy Snyderman Will Return to NBC News (TVNewser) NBC News chief medical correspondent Dr. Nancy Snyderman will return to work, but it won’t be until next month. NBC News president Deborah Turness informed the network’s employees of the decision in an internal email Wednesday evening. CNNMoney The timing is noteworthy because Snyderman's apparent violation of a voluntary quarantine scared some members of her New Jersey community and stoked a major controversy earlier this month. Questions about her credibility have lingered and she has not addressed those questions publicly. The Washington Post / Erik Wemple In the memo, Turness celebrates the recovery of freelance cameraman Ashoka Mukpo and the impending end of the 21-day quarantine binding on Snyderman and NBC News crew members who reported several weeks ago from Liberia. “While in Liberia Dr. Nancy and her team delivered first class, first-hand reporting from the front lines of this tragic and monumental story,” writes Turness. While with Snyderman and co. in Africa, Mukpo contracted the Ebola virus and was flown to a Nebraska hospital. Deadline Hollywood Tuesday, Mukpo, officially declared Ebola-free by experts at the Nebraska Medical Center bio-containment unit, celebrated by attempting to rescue Snyderman from the career-nuking situation she created when she violated the voluntary quarantine she’d agreed to, on-air, tweeting “Be nice to her plz.” TVNewser Expect to see Mukpo on NBC News. The network is already promoting “exclusive interviews” with him. ABC’s World News Tonight Skips Midterm Election Coverage (Media Research Center) A new Media Research Center study finds that, in contrast to their enthusiastic coverage of the 2006 midterms when Democrats made big gains, the Big Three broadcast evening newscasts are all but ignoring this year’s political contests. Analysts from the MRC, a conservative media watchdog, studied every election story on the ABC, CBS and NBC evening newscasts from Sept. 1 through Oct. 20 in both 2006 and 2014. FishbowlDC While during the 2006 midterm elections, ABC’s World News Tonight aired a combined 36 full and partial campaign stories. During the time observed this year, that number was zero. CBS’ Evening News and NBC’s Nightly News aired 58 and 65 reports, respectively, in 2006, whereas in 2014, those numbers dip to 14 and 11, respectively. Mediaite Why the blackout by World News Tonight, which recently saw David Muir take the anchor’s chair? The MRC study suggests it’s because of “liberal bias” against an election that is expected to result in big gains for Republicans. An ABC spokesman declined to comment on the record. Politico / Dylan Byers on Media But it may be more of an issue of a change in focus for nightly news programs. For months, ABC has been criticized for ignoring hard news on World News Tonight in favor of more general, lighter news pieces. The change in tone also seems to be working for ABC. It has been steadily catching up to NBC Nightly News in the ratings and has been consistently winning the prized 25-53 demo since before Diane Sawyer handed over the anchor chair to Muir. Reporter Quits Sun-Times, Blasts Paper (Dave McKinney’s Blog) Chicago Sun-Times reporter Dave McKinney has resigned in a letter to Michael Ferro, chairman of Sun-Times owner Wrapports LLC, posted to McKinney’s blog Wednesday. Poynter / MediaWire McKinney was the paper’s Springfield, Ill. bureau chief and was suspended for five days last week after a Republican gubernatorial candidate, Bruce Rauner, complained about a story on which McKinney co-bylined, because he’s married to a Democratic consultant. HuffPost McKinney, in his open letter, writes that the Rauner campaign tried to block the story by suggesting a conflict of interest. According to McKinney, Sun-Times publisher Jim Kirk responded by defending McKinney and the story, but the reporter was nonetheless pulled from his beat and told to go on leave. McKinney also says Kirk offered up other jobs at the paper that McKinney "considered demotions." Crain’s Chicago Business McKinney said in his letter Wednesday: "I'm faced with a difficult decision due to the disturbing developments I've experienced in the last two weeks that cannot be reconciled with this newspaper's storied commitment to journalism." Kirk said he regretted McKinney's resignation, but that he calls the shots at his newspaper. "It is with reluctance that I accept Dave McKinney's resignation," Kirk said in a statement. [emailonly]{{{ jodslot01 }}}[/emailonly] Rehearsals Continue for New CBS News 24-Hour Channel (TVNewser) CBS News is getting closer to launching its streaming channel. Rehearsals have been underway for several weeks with the hope of launching by election day, less than two weeks away. The exact launch date is in flux. Capital New York CBS has filed trademarks for “CBSN” and the tagline “CBS News. Always On” in recent weeks. The channel, which will stream live to TV sets, PCs and mobile devices, mimics the look of cable news channels, but in a less formal newsroom setting. CBS News correspondents Jeff Glor and Elaine Quijano are among the anchors for the service, which will also feature original reporting from all of CBS’ reporters. CBS has been hiring production staff for the service over the last few months. Variety Whether the streaming comes under the CBSN rubric or not, the new-tech service would give CBS more of a foothold in what has become a minute-by-minute churn of news and information being issued from breaking-news bots on Twitter and the usual cable-news suspects, like Fox News, CNN or Al Jazeera America. Already, CNN has launched a service it calls CNNGo that allows viewers to choose the video segments they want to stream. NBC News is the owner of Breaking News, a service that sends headlines via digital feeds when it discovers reliable accounts of important news. World Series Posts Least-Watched Starter Ever (THR / The Live Feed) Rough news for Fox: the all-time low overnight ratings for Tuesday's game one of the World Series translated to the MLB championship's least-watched starter in modern TV metrics. The first game between the Kansas City Royals and San Francisco Giants, an embarrassing 7-1 loss for the Royals, only pulled 12.19 million viewers according to final adjusted Nielsen ratings. Deadline Hollywood That’s a drop of 19 percent from the first game between the Boston Red Sox and the St. Louis Cardinals on Oct. 23 last year. Tuesday night’s game dipped 6 percent from the previous all-time World Series Game 1 low, the 2012 battle between the Giants and Detroit Tigers on Oct. 24 of that year. Variety The World Series opener did a huge 48.2 overnight household rating in Kansas City and a 29.3 in the Bay Area, but this meant that the two markets involved accounted for 12.6 percent (or about one in eight) of U.S. homes tuning in -- a much higher percentage than seen with teams in the playoffs of the NFL or NBA, both of which enjoy broader viewer interest across the country. FCC Pauses Review of Comcast-Time Warner Cable, DirecTV-AT&T Deals (THR) Reviews of Comcast's proposed $45 billion acquisition of Time Warner Cable and AT&T's offer to buy DirecTV for $48.5 billion have been paused by the Federal Communications Commission, the agency said on Wednesday. It's the second time this month that the FCC stopped the clock on its 180-day procedure. The agency says it is targeting early 2015 for completion of its reviews. The AT&T-DirecTV deal was on its 76th day of review while Comcast-TWC was on its 85th day. Variety The reason for the pause is that content companies have raised objections to giving access to programming contracts to attorneys for potential rivals and other groups, said William Lake, chief of the FCC’s media bureau. [emailonly]{{{ sbox01 }}}[/emailonly] Cision Acquires Gorkana (PRNewser) Cision, which announced its merger with Vocus back in June and said this month that its new headquarters will be in Chicago, has acquired Gorkana via its parent company Discovery Group Holdings. The Washington Post Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. Gorkana’s flagship software is designed to help companies track the impact of media coverage on the success of their brands, said Cision chief executive Peter Granat. Cision and Vocus both sold Internet cloud-based software designed to help businesses send press releases, maintain contact with journalists and monitor media trends, among other services. Pandora Offers Listener Data to Artists (WSJ / CMO Today) Advertisers have long worked to cobble together troves of data about digital audiences. Now Internet radio giant Pandora wants to offer musicians the same kind of granular information about their fans. GigaOM On Wednesday, the streaming radio service launched AMP, which will let bands see a trove of important data such as where in the country people are playing their music, their most-played tracks and how their audience breaks down on age and gender lines. The tool, which will be available to the more than 125,000 bands whose songs are played on Pandora, can be claimed by artists at a website. Four Publishing Houses Sign With Consortium for Distribution (GalleyCat) Four publishing houses have signed on with Consortium Book Sales & Distribution. According to the press release. these companies publish a wide range of genres from illustrated books to translation titles. On Nov. 1, 2014, Consortium’s contract with Deep Vellum Publishing goes into effect. The distribution for the other publishers, Alternative Comics, Cicada Books, and Postcart Editions, will start on Jan. 1, 2015. [emailonly]{{{ sbox02 }}}[/emailonly] Elizabeth Vargas to Return to ABC News (TVNewser) Elizabeth Vargas will return to work at ABC News next week. Vargas has completed a second stint in an alcohol rehabilitation center. Vargas first checked in to rehab last November, returned to ABC in January, but had a relapse in August. @CNNbrk Cracks 20 Million Followers (TVNewser) @CNNbrk has hit 20,000,000 followers. “This is rare territory,” says CNN Worldwide president Jeff Zucker. “No other news organization comes close. The only other brands of any type with more followers are YouTube and Twitter itself.” With 14.5 million followers, @CNN is not far behind @CNNbrk. In fact, CNN’s main feed is the second-most followed news account on Twitter. New York Sets Traffic Record in September (FishbowlNY) September was good to New York. The magazine had a record-setting month in online traffic, netting 27 million unique visitors. That takes into account all of its verticals -- Nymag.com, Vulture, The Cut, Grub Street and Science of Us. The record-setting number represents a 51 percent increase from September 2013 for New York. [emailonly]{{{ sbox03 }}}[/emailonly] Indra Petersons Leaving CNN, Weather Operations Return to Atlanta (TVNewser) As part of the workforce reduction at CNN, New York-based meteorologist Indra Petersons will be leaving the network. All shows will now rely on CNN Weather in Atlanta, led by meteorologists Chad Myers and Jennifer Gray. Petersons joined CNN last year, working primarily on New Day. Before CNN, Petersons was a meteorologist at KABC in Los Angeles. New View Co-Hosts Fail to Boost Ratings (THR) ABC's bid to refresh The View brought the show's most-watched premiere in eight years in September (even after some downward adjustment thanks to Nielsen's snafu). But those lofted ratings quickly have fallen to Earth. The show's 18th season has seen post-premiere-week viewership drop below last year, back when the need for a Barbara Walters-free makeover became apparent. Redbox Reports Losses From Joint Venture With Verizon (Deadline Hollywood) The folks at Redbox tell a bleak story in an SEC filing Wednesday about their experience with their now-defunct joint venture: Redbox Instant by Verizon. Parent company Outerwall says that it contributed $77 million to the venture, and received $70.5 million -- including disc rentals tied to the subscriptions and a $16.8 million reimbursement. 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Morning Media Newsfeed: Snyderman Back to NBC | World News Skips Midterm Coverage

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