John McCain's appearance delivered another big number for "Saturday Night Live."

He wasn't quite as much of a draw as Sarah Palin two weeks ago, but still big -- a 9.0 household rating/20 share in Nielsen's 56 overnight metered markets, compared to Palin's 10.7/24. Palin's seg aside, it's "SNL's" highest number since a holiday compilation seg aired in December 1997.

There was a surreal quality to the cold open with McCain as McCain and Tina Fey as his running mate. You gotta give him credit for trying, but he just looks tired, and like his running mate two weeks ago, desperate. The bit even pokes fun at the rampant rumors of division within the McCain-Palin camp, with Fey/Palin's bid to sell "Palin in 2012" T-shirts on the sly.

Silly as it is, I got the biggest giggle out of the joke about "McCain Fine Gold."

And although it's been made clear in this space that I am a Keith Olbermann fan, I gotta admit that Ben Affleck, this week's "SNL" host, gets him to an indignant T in this seg spoofing his trademark anti-Bush rants on MSNBC's "Countdown with Keith Olbermann."

John Cleese paid a visit to MSNBC's "Countdown with Keith Olbermann" on Friday. He had an appropriately wicked bit of verse to share, an ode to Bill O'Reilly. This one isn't quite as side-splittingly funny as his poem a few weeks ago about Sean Hannity, but it's a good distillation of O'Reilly's insanity.

(Keith presses Cleese on the definition of "berk," but doesn't really get an answer, as you can see in the clip posted below.)

Bill O'Reilly's No Spin Zone,
is rated highly by his own beloved mother,
but ... no other.
Except that Bill, for all his faults,
still has one skill, a skill of sorts.
He can amuse a true dumb ox,
the dullest crayon in the box,
the kind of ox that watches Fox.
And Bill will pander to this group,
with propaganda, right-wing poop,
knee-jerk views and censored news.
Thus Bill O'Reilly earns his crust,
behaving vilely as he must.
He will not shirk from Rupert's work.
He really is a perfect berk.

This really made me laugh.

It's "I've come for an argument"/"How to walk silly"/"This parrot has ceased to be" funny. It's a poem about a certain TV journo, penned by John Cleese and delivered with aplomb by Keith Olbermann on tonight's edition of MSNBC's "Countdown."

(As usual, my husband, who was a "Countdown" fan before "Countdown" was cool, deserves a finder's fee.)

Ode to Sean Hannity

Aping urbanity,
oozing with vanity,
plump as a manatee,
faking humanity.
Journalistic calamity,
intellectual inanity,
Fox Noise insanity.
You're a profanity, Hannity.

The on-air brawl between MSNBC's Keith Olbermann and Fox News' Bill O'Reilly is getting down and dirty and high-level within NBC Universal and News Corp.

The Washington Post's Howard Kurtz has the whole inside story of CEO intrigue and bare-knuckle tactics -- all of which has to be good for the ratings of both programs. The Washington Post's story is getting so much attention that as of this evening I could not pull it up on the Post's website to save my life; the page just kept getting stuck in loading mode. Is there anything more frustrating than the getting the blank white screen and hourglass symbol when you really want to read something?

Hopefully the Post's web wizards will come up with a fix soon. There's nothing TV news loves better than a good feud, especially if it involves two of their own plus the powerful likes of Roger Ailes, Rupert Murdoch, Jeffrey Immelt and Jeff Zucker.

The cable newsers cleaned up, but Super Tuesday coverage was a snore for the broadcast webs, as Variety's chief Nielsen pollster, Rick Kissell, reports. The drama of Clinton vs. Obama and McCain vs. Romney vs. Huckabee was no match for the "American Idol" and "House."

I spent most of my time on the upper end of the dial, have to admit, though it was nice to see Tom "silver fox" Brokaw back on NBC News. I flipped around quite a bit, and for money the best news delivery mixed with insta analysis came from the MSNBC team led by Chris Matthews and Keith Olbermann (pictured left).

As others have noted, CNN's John King was impressive with his mastery of the county-by-county combat in various states. And CNN gets the win for grooviest interactive graphics with the touch screen states that King and Wolf Blitzer were all over last night.

All told, a big night of news for the Democratic race translated into a win for Dem-leaning CNN, with an average of 3.64 million viewers for its primetime coverage. FNC was a close second with 3.49 million average, followed by MSNBC with 2.11 million.

POSTED BY MICHAEL LEARMONTH

MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann carried the flag for NBC News at TCA on Tuesday, but as usual, Fox News wasn’t far from his mind, or anyone else's, for that matter.

Posted in the lobby was a bit of guerilla marketing that had all the hallmarks of a Fox News stunt. Someone hung a poster with the faces of all of cable news’ 8p.m. anchors PhotoShopped onto horses with the headline, “Fourth in a four-horse race,” pointing out that since June Olbermann has been finishing fourth in the 25-54 demo 24% of the time.

A sign, perhaps, of respect, and the fact that the 8 p.m. time slot is the most competitive in cable news. Fox News' Bill O’Reilly dominates, but Olbermann is up 67% in the second quarter over the same period last year, gains he freely attributes to his on-air feud with O’Reilly and his anti-Bush commentary. (Olbermann called for the resignation of President Bush and Veep Cheney the week of July 4.)

MSNBC is hoping to take his recent gains to the next level by associating him with the Campaign '08, despite his partisan rantings. Olbermann co-anchored MSNBC's election night coverage with Chris Matthews last fall, and the network announced he would be moderating a Democratic candidate’s forum for the AFL-CIO in Chicago on Aug. 7. Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, John Edwards, Bill Richardson, Joe Biden are among the candidates who have RSVP'd for the jawboning sesh with more than 5,000 union members and their families.

Despite his animus for Fox News, Olbermann defended that network for scheduling a Democratic debate, to which Clinton, Obama and Edwards have thus far failed to commit.

“I don’t think I would be advising any of the candidates to turn down free TV time, whether its on Fox News or Al Jazeera,” he quipped.

-- Michael Learmonth