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Ah yes... the “last minute blitz.” Good morning everyone and if my posting is spotty today, it’s because I’m connecting through another computer and they’ve been restarting that thing every #@%*& 10 minutes and I haven’t been able to get a connection to the Internet.

I’m honestly not sure what to say about this week’s lineup— we have this week, on the four major shows, the winner of Iowa, the winner of Wyoming, and the probable winner of New Hampshire in Huckabee, Romney and McCain.

I notice nobody wants to mention Duncan Hunter’s third-place showing in Wyoming yesterday or the fact that he’s been working the state of New Hampshire all weekend while the GOP has been debating. Maybe if they’d cover him like they did the rest of the candidates he’d be at a little higher than 1%.

Edwards’s appearance on This Week is the only Democrat appearance this week, other than Late Edition’s giving of time to Bill Richardson, who’s in distant fourth behind the Clintobamedwards Cluster and ahead only of Kucinich, barely. Also on LE is Ron Paul (who did surprisingly well in Iowa and could get a boost in NH from the libertarians and other associated breakfast cereal types— fruits, nuts and flakes) and Fred Thompson.

Why more Republicans than GOP members? Quite simply, Obama appeared the past couple of weeks and Clinton won’t go anywhere near them after “the cackle,” Dodd and Biden are out of the race.

Ratings coming up... maybe...

SUNDAY TALK SHOW RATINGS ANALYSIS
Weekend of December 23, 2007

NBC MEET THE PRESS....3,881,000 (34%) (-790,000)
CBS FACE THE NATION...2,586,000 (23%) (-735,000)
ABC THIS WEEK.........2,254,000 (20%) (-868,000)
FOX NEWS SUNDAY.......2,217,000 (19%) (+123,000)
CNN LATE EDIITON......  473,000 ( 4%) (-125,000)

Preliminary data for weekend of December 30, 2007

FNS - 6PM FNC.........  720,000
MTP - 6PM MSNBC.......  217,000

Due to the Christmas/New Year's holiday Nielsen is still several days behind on publishing ratings. I finally got the ratings for 12/23 this past Wednesday and am still waiting on the live plays from 12/30. 12/23 was largely an off week for viewership due to the Christmas holiday, although the big winner was Fox News Sunday, who jumped to within 37,000 viewers (~1.5%) of This Week (likely a statistical tie) for its best performance in terms of audience share in the four months that I've been monitoring it.

This past week's preliminary cable replay data (published with the overnights, so it comes faster) shows both shows' audience up over the week prior.

Data (c)2007 Nielsen Media Research and includes viewership from cable replays.

One interesting fact I find about Duncan Hunter who has always been my favourite candidate though I am realistic enough to acknowledge countrywide and among non Republican circles does not stand a chance.

Duncan Hunter went through a period a couple of years ago when he was on the Sunday Morning talk shows more than other Republican or so it seemed but since he indicated he would run for President the invites have dried up. I think the MSM have ensured that he did not get the necessary traction he needed early on and now it is too late.