Fox News First With The Biggest Story Of The Summer: Roadblock On Nets

Fox News correspondent Brian Wilson broke the biggest news of the summer: Justice Sandra Day O’Connor is retiring. “Nobody else has touched this story,” an e-mailer said at 10:20am. Wilson had three sources, and his BlackBerry was humming with confirmation. FNC posted a story on FoxNews.com immediately .

> Update: FNC reported the news that a retirement was “imminent” at 10:11:23. CNN reported the retirement at 10:22:42. MSNBC had it at 10:23. ABC was the first broadcast network with the news, at 10:22:23.

> By 10:25am, all the broadcast networks and CNN had interrupted programming to report the news.

> Bob Woodruff anchored on ABC (still on as of 10:33am). Brian Williams anchored on NBC until 10:30am. Susan McGinnis anchored on CBS until 10:30am.

> NBC’s Pete Williams was outside the Supreme Court: “All indications were that she was going to stay on the court, so this was a surprise.”

> CNN immediately broke out a graphic of “possible candidates” for the Supreme Court, with Joe Johns narrating.

> FNC’s Chris Wallace called the retirement the “big enchilada” and said the fight to “DefCon Four.”

> On CBS, Bill Plante reported that the retirement “raises the stakes in a major way.”

> The Note wondered this morning: “Will there be any SCOTUS retirements in the next 100 hours?”