| | | | VP Debate Night in America! | | | All of you predicting a sleepy "dad debate," I think Mike Pence and Tim Kaine are about to prove you wrong... | | | Jake Tapper says "Thrilla in Vanilla." Tal Kopan proposes "Forgotten in Farmville." Ryan Fonesca dubs it "The Dad-bate." I've also seen "Dull v. Duller," "Put Yourself to Veep" and "2020 v. 2024" on Twitter. The top hashtag is #VPDebate... | | | Will Trump distract from Pence's message? | | | Donald Trump says he'll be live-tweeting starting at 8:30pm. (Pre-game show!) If he does do that, will Trump stay on point or step on the biggest night of Mike Pence's life? Will Hillary Clinton live-tweet too? | | | This JUST in from the WSJ: "Twitter is expected to field bids this week... Salesforce is bidding... Google and Disney may bid too... | | | Anderson Cooper renews with CNN | | Anderson Cooper, who is co-moderating the NEXT debate on Sunday night, just re-upped with CNN. Cooper has a new long-term deal, according to a source with knowledge of the matter. The deal precludes him from doubling as the co-host of "Live with Kelly."
THR's Marisa Guthrie broke the news earlier this evening. She says "Cooper's new CNN contract does still include a carve-out for Cooper to appear on CBS News' '60 Minutes.'" And he will "continue to fill in" on Kelly Ripa's show from time to time... | | Now back to tonight's debate news... | | Elaine Quijano about to be a household name? | | Of the five people chosen to moderate the debates this fall, Elaine Quijano has the lowest profile. Is she feeling any nerves this afternoon/evening during last minute rehearsals?
Quijano, formerly of CNN, has been at CBS since 2010. Dylan Byers writes: "She is a digital news anchor -- the daytime anchor at CBSN, CBS News' 24-hour livestream channel -- and she's never moderated so much as a primary debate... The breadth of Quijano's work is impressive..."
-- Major Garrett tells Dylan: "Elaine is one of the best story-tellers and journalists I have ever worked with... She has earned this moment in the spotlight but does not see it as moment for her -- or even CBS -- but a moment for the candidates and the country." | | Does youth make a difference? | | | Quijano, 42, is the youngest journalist to moderate a CPD debate since 1988, when Judy Woodruff moderated. She is also the first Asian-American journalist ever to moderate... | | Will tonight's face-off top the 2012 debate between Joe Biden and Paul Ryan? My guess is no... I'll be happily surprised if it surpasses 50 million...
Here's the ranker for past VP debates, via Brad Adgate:
2012 - 51.4 mil
2008 - 69.9 mil <-- Sarah Palin
2004 - 43.5 mil
2000 - 28.5 mil
1996 - 26.6 mil
1992 - 51.2 mil | | | Via the commission: "The debate will be divided into nine time segments of approximately 10 minutes each." Moderator will ask a Q, each candidate will have 2 minutes to answer, and then they'll discuss it for ~6 minutes... | | | Who's holding focus groups? | | | CNN is focus-grouping again tonight... with undecided Virginia voters... Real-time reactions will stream during the debate here. CBS is also focus-grouping... Frank Luntz will be with a group of voters in Ohio. CNN is also conducting a post-debate poll of debate watchers, just like last week... | | More than just "Disney Channel dads" | | | Brian Lowry emails: It's fashionable to dismiss Pence and Kaine as boring -- the political equivalent of Disney Channel dads -- but that might actually make for a bit more robust discussion of policy matters. And it will be interesting to see what sort of defense Pence mounts on Donald Trump's behalf, particularly on the tax issue. Will he join the Christie-Giuliani chorus and call him a "genius," for example? Besides, Biden-Palin was really an outlier in terms of style and personality within VP debates; Dick Cheney and Joe Lieberman are closer to the norm... | | | The commission admitted that there were "audio issues" in the hall at Hofstra last week. Is there ANY possibility of a repeat tonight? | | | Notice what we're not talking about... | | | Fact-checking. Trump's absence from the stage means there's a lot less pre-debate chatter about the moderator's role challenging falsehoods. But CBS and many other news outlets still plan to fact-check during and after the debate... | | "If you could bottle the indifference with which America will treat the Pence-Kaine debate, it could put several time zones to sleep."
--Jeff Greenfield lowering expectations for tonight's debate. We'll see! | | | Tantaros says she wants "accountability" from Fox | | Gretchen Carlson has settled with Fox, but the other ex-host who sued over Roger Ailes' alleged sexual advances, Andrea Tantaros, is still fighting. Today she spoke with Amy Robach in a splashy "GMA" interview.
Key quotes: "Ailes sexually harassed me numerous times. I was walking to a taping once and just said simply hello to him, and he said, 'We need to get you a tighter dress.'" And: "Fox News has plenty of money, they've bought off a lot of women. What they don't have is accountability." (The Murdochs might say that ousting Ailes counts as "accountability.") No other interviews are planned at the moment, her lawyer says... | | | Ailes (?) spotted with Giuliani today | | Cleveland's Annie Wu (WCPN's associate editor of news) spotted a man who looked JUST like Roger Ailes in the back of Rudy Giuliani's limo this afternoon. Via Heat Street, Rudy was in town "to thank a police union there for endorsing Donald Trump..." | | | A personal essay by... someone who wasn't a person at all | | Alex Koppelman emails: Jezebel's Anna Merlan did some stellar investigative work regarding a woman whose article for xoJane about her breakup, caused by disagreement over Trump, went viral -- leading, among other things, to an appearance on "Nightline." There's one little problem with the piece, Merlan discovered: the woman isn't real. In fact, she appears to be the product of a group of men working as Internet marketers and looking to drive some traffic.
It'd be easy just to see the people who created the fake as the villains of this story, which of course they are — but they're not the only villains here, and they're not the ones we should focus on. There have always been bad actors looking to make a quick buck in a shady way; there always will be. It's the media outlets that specialize in publishing these kinds of stories — shocking confessionals good for some cheap traffic — with little or no regard for their accuracy, or for what their publication will do to the (real) women who write them, that need to be taking a hard look at themselves right now... | | | Gannett-Tronc deal: Close but not quite there yet | | | Bloomberg's Alex Sherman and Matthew Monks report: "Gannett and Tronc have bridged a valuation gap that caused months of friction, but are still hammering out the details of a transaction, people familiar with the situation said. The parties haven't reached a final agreement, and an announcement isn't imminent." Read more... | | | Graydon says Trump is leaving a "permanent orange stain" | | | Graydon Carter normally tackles several subjects in his monthly Vanity Fair editor's letter, but he decided to dedicate the whole thing to Trump this month. Trump is a "mad jumble of a man," unlikely to win the presidency, but sure to leave a "permanent orange stain" on politics, Carter wrote... There are several new references to his tiny fingers... Here's the column, and here's my story about it... | | | Most-watched "SNL" season premiere since 2008 | | | Frank Pallotta reports: "SNL" averaged 8.3 million viewers on Saturday night, "a bump of 31%, or nearly 2 million viewers, compared to last season's opener." This was the show's most-watched season premiere since 2008... | | | Colbert live again tonight... | | | Stephen Colbert's guests on the live broadcast will include John Leguizamo; Cheri Oteri; Paul F. Tompkins; and Melissa Etheridge sitting in with the band... | | -- Speaking of Colbert: Brian Lowry says it looks like Stephen Colbert enjoyed his own debate bump: "The Late Show" delivered its biggest audience since February last week, per Nielsen, with 2.74 million viewers, finishing closer than usual to "The Tonight Show" (3.29 million)...
-- And speaking of ratings: "Reliable Sources" was the #1 cable news show at 11am last Sunday in the 25-54 demo. Thanks to all of you who tuned in!
-- "World News Tonight" with David Muir topped "NBC Nightly News" with Lester Holt on the week that Holt moderated the first debate... (LATimes)
-- Are you up to date on the "power struggle for control of Univision?" Media Life Mag has an in-depth feature on it... (Media Life)
-- BuzzFeed's Scott Bryan: "People Are Angry At The Journalist In The 'Amanda Knox' Netflix Documentary" (BuzzFeed) | | | This fantastic Variety illo for its "highest paid TV talent" feature. Check out the rankings here... | | | Catch up on Sunday's "Reliable Sources" | | Tell us what you think... | | | What do you like about this newsletter? What do you dislike? Send your feedback to reliablesources@cnn.com. We appreciate every email. We'll be back tomorrow... | | | Get Reliable Sources, a comprehensive summary of the most important media news, delivered to your inbox every afternoon. | | | | | |
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