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."

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.

CBS chief Leslie Moonves made a visit to the CBS News offices today as a show of support for embattled anchor Katie Couric. Associated Press' David Bouder has all the details in this report on Moonves' journey into the newsroom and meeting with Couric and "CBS Evening News" exec producer Rick Kaplan, who insisted that reports of Couric's exit from the anchor chair have been greatly exaggerated. "She's not been at it two years and everybody is writing her obituary," Kaplan told the AP. "That's fine. Success is the sweetest revenge."...

Meanwhile, NBC News has locked up the services of its intrepid Middle Eastern correspondent Richard Engel. Engel has been upped to chief foreign correspondent for the Peacock, which is promising to raise his profile on "NBC  Nightly News," MSNBC and other platforms. Engel, who is conversant in Arabic and fluent in Italian and Spanish, made a name for himself covering the early days of the Iraq war as a freelancer for ABC before joining NBC News in 2003. "There aren't enough superlatives to describe the work that Richard has done in some of the most dangerous places on Earth for NBC News," said NBC News prexy Steve Capus in touting Engel's promotion.

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

Call him the angry young man of cable news, on Nielsen steroids. (Please, no investigations or subpoenas needed, just a little blog humor.)

No doubt about it, Keith Olbermann has the the big mo for MSNBC these days. In the just concluded second quarter, MSNBC's 8 p.m. ET primetime anchor "Countdown with Keith Olbermann" soared 72% in total viewers, from an average of 412,000 during the same period last year to 710,000 during the April-May-June frame this year. His adults 25-54 numbers are moving in the right direction, though not quite as fast (averaging 241,000 viewers vs. 156,000 in the year-ago measure.) "Countdown" is now a solid No. 2 in its 8 p.m. berth to Fox News Channel's titan of cable primetime, "The O'Reilly Factor" as CNN struggles to get its act together in that hour. CNN, which had the "Paula Zahn Now" (aka Paula Zahn soon-to-be-gone) in the time slot for most of the quarter, dropped 2% in viewers to an average of 594,000 for the quarter.

Beyond the numbers, "Countdown" for my money has evolved during the past year to be as good if not often better, smarter and sharper than "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart" in taking on the headlines in a no-nonsense manner, cutting through the hot air and nonsensical stuff that permeates politics and pop culture, and perhaps most importantly, producers are never too proud to invent a segment just to showcase the goofiest bits of film footage they can pull down off the vast global satellite smorgasbord that the resources of NBC News afford them. And when they don't have the resources, they make do, in a low-tech, low-budget and proud of it way, with whatever's lying around the offices (i.e. the popsicle-stick figures at right). But there's substance to "Countdown" too. Keith is never better than when he's fired up, as he was in the pic above on Monday night at the news that Scooter "leaky sieve" Libby is getting off almost scot-free. And the regular "Oddball" segment of "Countdown" is almost always good for a laugh out loud moment, unless Michael Jackson's involved.

I give NBC Universal credit for having the corporate stomach to let Keith be Keith, an unabashedly liberal-leaning populist voice, and damn good reporter when real news breaks. I don't think it's political altruism on the Peacock's part, just good counterprogramming. After all, "Countdown" squares off against "O'Reilly Factor," in more ways than one, as viewers of both shows know (and are probably tired of by now.) Just to prove that there's room enough on the dial for all perspectives, "Factor" was also up quarter-to-quarter (to 2.22 million viewers from 2.07 million in the '06 frame.) In fact, having "Countdown" and "Factor" air at the same time is kind of the electronic equivalent of the olden days of having staunchly Republican and staunchly Democratic newspapers offering dueling headlines and perspectives on the day's events. It's (still) a great country.