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Preliminary Nielsen ratings show “NBC Nightly News” dropped -36% on Friday from last week’s Monday-Thursday average among A25-54 viewers. NBC’s competitors were down too, but not as much: ABC was down -16% while CBS was down -17% on Friday.

When Rosie O’Donnell made her triumphant return to “The View” in September, she promised a calmer version of the host who previously fled the program in 2007 after a single season. But O’Donnell’s unhappiness at “The View” led her to announce on Friday, via a story in the New York Post’s Page Six section, that she was exiting the show after five months. ABC executives agreed to release her early from a 11-month contract, estimated to be worth $5 million. In a brief interview with “Entertainment Tonight” over the weekend, O’Donnell attributed her departure to a desire to focus on...

My nomination for Libtard Newser softball question of the year

If it was CBS instead of NBC there would only be 60 Minutes left on the clock ticking down on Brian Williams.So before they select his replacement I thought it might be helpful if we weighed in with our preference for the new face of NBC’s Nightly News. It’s a shame that Joanie Rivers left us so soon, as she would have been my hands down favorite.Instead of thinking what everyone else was saying: how refreshing.So Little Mo and I have rounded up the rest of the usual suspects for your consideration. Please review carefully and then cast your vote(s)...

Could not believe when someone told me this.

Embattled NBC News anchor Brian Williams is backing out of scheduled appearance on David Letterman’s “Late Show” on Thursday. That news from NBC came Sunday, a day after Williams said he was stepping away from NBC’s “Nightly News” as the network looks into the anchor’s admission that he had told a false story about being on helicopter hit by a grenade while reporting on the Iraq war. Williams had spread the story of his helicopter being under attack during a previous “Late Show” interview with Letterman. He apologized for the statements on Wednesday, and NBC News launched an internal investigation...

Planning for next year's election, Hitler finds out Brian Williams has imploded.

Investigative journalist Sharyl Attkisson says the government is growing increasingly savvy at evading reporters through the use of social media and other avenues to push “their propaganda and spin.” Speaking at a Hillsdale College conference on American journalism, the Emmy Award-winning journalist and Daily Signal senior independent contributor called out the press for going soft in pursuit of the truth.Attkisson said that “unless something pretty drastic happens, it stands to continue and get worse no matter who is president next.”The author of “Stonewalled: My Fight for Truth Against the Forces of Obstruction, Intimidation, and Harassment in Obama’s Washington” said it’s...

Bill Maher ended his show tonight finally talking about Sarah Palin‘s rambling Iowa speech that was the final straw for many Republicans and conservatives. But Maher had just one question for them: “What took you so long?!” Maher mocked the revelation as an “emperor has no clues” situation and asked Republicans why they took so long, saying, “The rest of us have been watching this dog eat grass for seven years!” However, while Maher was glad that many conservatives are finally admitting Palin “is a crazy person,” he said they should maybe consider what else they’ve been “wrong” about, like...

Via Ace and Twitter user Niedermeyer’s Dead Horse, yet another tale of Brian Williams’ heroism on that fateful day in Iraq in 2003 has emerged, this time from 2007. Don’t forget that the absolutely false version of his helicopter ride being hit by an RPG had been floating around since 2004, this time the story has even more compelling detail. Williams tells Fairfield University reporter Emily Fitzmaurice in November 2007 about all of the close calls he’s had as a reporter, including the 2003 incident in Iraq in which he looked down the tube of the RPG launcher. Pick up...

The following memo was sent from NBC News President Deborah Turness to NBC news staff on Friday: All, This has been a difficult few days for all of us at NBC News. Yesterday, Brian and I spoke to the Nightly News team. And this morning at the Editorial Exchange, we both addressed the wider group. Brian apologized once again, and specifically expressed how sorry he is for the impact this has had on all of you and on this proud organization.

NBC should fire Brian Williams. It’s not just because the face of its news division has become the trending punch line on social media after his harrowing account of a near-death experience in Iraq was exposed as false. It’s not just because his explanation for the discrepancies in fact were simply absurd, or because his apology was more parsed than abject. It’s because he fabricated a story. This is one line in journalism that must never be crossed, should never be rationalized and can never be mitigated by any sum of years of honorable service in the profession. * Williams...

In a hearrt-warming reminder that Brian Williams’ heroism doesn’t just extend to taking enemy fire while riding in a helicopter in Iraq – oops – but saving puppies, Williams wrote in 2011 while he was still peddling his war-time heroism that he once joined firefighters and saved a puppy from a burning house. Williams boasted of his heroic exploits for USA Today.... SNIP "My firehouse was a modest engine company — three engines, three garage doors and about 30 of the best men I’ve ever known. "We fought all the usual fires that break out in the suburbs: brush fires,...

NBC News anchor Brian Williams, who apologized on the air Wednesday night for lying about an experience covering the Iraq War, is now facing scrutiny over his gripping accounts of Hurricane Katrina, the disaster that burnished his nightly news bona fides almost a decade ago. Williams’ account of seeing a body float by in the French Quarter — which remained largely dry — and even a claim of catching dysentery from drinking Katrina floodwaters have raised eyebrows among bloggers and elsewhere since he took it on the chin this week over a claim that he rode in a helicopter that...

NBC News anchor Brian Williams' 2006 claim that he saw a dead body float past his hotel window during Hurricane Katrina is drawing fresh skepticism in the wake of his own admission on Wednesday that he lied about being aboard a helicopter that was hit by enemy fire during the Iraq war. Despite a swift apology on his Nightly News program, Williams is at the center of a media firestorm after it emerged that his old war story that he has retold numerous times over the past 12 years has become increasingly exaggerated. Williams was forced to apologize this week...

The waters have been choppy for NBC News in recent years, with its “Today” franchise having ceded ground to ABC’s “Good Morning America” and its Sunday-morning mainstay “Meet the Press” struggling to find a new identity after the death of longtime host Tim Russert. Amidst that chaos, Brian Williams was supposed to be the anchor – in both senses of the word. Now Williams, whose “NBC Nightly News” is the most watched evening newscast in the United States, has added to the challenges facing the NBCUniversal news division. [Snip] What makes Williams’ admission worse, according to one person familiar with...

In a survey of investigative reporters that makes Richard Nixon’s enemies list look like child's play, nearly seven in 10 said they believe that the Obama administration has spied on their phone calls, emails and online searches. According to a Pew Research Center survey of 454 media figures, 64 percent “believe that the U.S. government has probably collected data” from their calls and email and eight in 10 believe just being a journalist jumps the chance Uncle Sam is spying on them. The survey follows multiple reports of actual spying by federal officials on reporters, and the White House’s effort...

Brian Williams began his recent lecture in NYU’s ournalism department on a harsh note. “It doesn’t matter what you look like, it doesn’t matter who you know. If you can’t write that lead, then get out,” Williams said. But Williams, who visited NYU on April 4, 2007, quickly softened the blow of this severe pronouncement — he admitted to students that his own broadcasting career had gotten off to a difficult start in Pittsburg, Kansas. “I was making $174 a week, and I bombed out after 13 months because I sucked,” Williams said. He left Kansas for Washington, D.C., where...

Writing for the Baltimore Sun, media journalist David Zurawik called for Brian Williams to resign or to be fired by Friday. “If credibility means anything to NBC News, Brian Williams will no longer be managing editor and anchor of the evening newscast by the end of the day Friday,” Zurawik writes. Wednesday evening, after being caught lying, the Nightly News anchor admitted that for the last 12 years he has repeatedly lied about being shot down in a helicopter over Iraq.

NBC News anchor Brian Williams is taking heat after admitting Wednesday that a rocket-propelled grenade did not bring down a helicopter he had been aboard while reporting in Iraq, despite having told the story repeatedly since 2003. “I would not have chosen to make this mistake,” Williams told Stars and Stripes in a statement. “I don’t know what screwed up in my mind that caused me to conflate one aircraft with another.” Despite a subsequent on-air apology during last night’s broadcast of NBC Nightly News, many viewers took to the web to voice their skepticism at Williams’ claim that he...