Ed Schultz is not completely happy with his new 10 pm Eastern time slot. On his radio show Friday, he said to his Ed-heads: "Where is Ed Friday night? Well they’ve always run the prison junk on Friday night. You, you wouldn’t -- I’m telling you straight, that beats Fox News. Okay, that Lockup and that Jerry Behind Bars, or I don’t know, all that stuff. There is amazing amazing intrigue with prisons."
As usual, when Ed talks about ratings and Fox, he's not exactly right. The Friday night numbers from TV Newser shows that MSNBC's Lockup beat FNC's On the Record among viewers 25 to 54, by 329,000 to 239,000. But among overall viewers, Fox crushed MSNBC: Greta van Susteren drew 1.34 million, while Lockup only had 586,000 viewers.
Elsewhere on the radio dial, Bill Press said on Friday that there is not one "serious contender" in the Republican field of hopefuls against Barack Obama. Press also cited the Tufts study that found almost all talk radio programs contain an "outrageous incident," but as usual for the author of "Toxic Talk," he asserted the right wing was far worse: "It happens once in a while to any of us in the business, but it's not the constant screed of, the constant Niagara [Falls] of ugliness that you hear from Michael Savage or Mark Levin or Glenn Beck or Rush Limbaugh or Sean Hannity or any of the rest of them."
Press's radio show isn't doing so well. On his website, he's urging listeners to keep him from being dropped from the radio in Madison, Wisconsin, a very liberal town. Press's latest column praises the "confession app" for Catholics, but insists the church is still behind the times for feminists:
As a Catholic, and a former altar boy and seminarian, I must say it makes me proud to see the Catholic Church be the first to embrace the iPhone. But what still puzzles me is: How can the same church be so forward-thinking in one area — and yet so backward when it comes to celibacy and the ordination of women priests? If only the Catholic Church were as open about sexuality as it is about technology.
Press has been plugging this line for a while.
