The Breakfast Meeting: MSNBC on the Rise, and Judgments on Martha, Conan and Bond

The cable news network MSNBC has redefined itself during the four years of the Obama presidency, Brian Stelter writes, “from CNN also-ran to the anti-Fox.” As it became widely known as the nation's liberal television network, it has passed CNN in the ratings. In its 2008 election coverage, the network still paired the NBC News host David Gregory with its outspoken anchor at the time, Keith Olbermann; in 2012, the liberal host Rachel Maddow anchored the coverage, surrounded by four other liberal hosts and a moderate conservative, Steve Schmidt. In many ways, Mr. Stelter writes, the network, which until 2005 was partly owned by Microsoft, is where Fox was a decade ago - trying to maximize profit from its popularity.

• The much discussed on-air confrontation on election night on Fox News between Karl Rove and the network's “decision desk” over whether to call Ohio for President Obama has been analyzed for what it says about Mr. Rove and his political analysis . But David Carr notes that Fox News ultimately ignored Mr. Rove's caution about the Ohio results still being up in the air: “In doing so, the network avoided marginalizing itself and ended, at least for a night, its war on the president.”

The British Broadcasting Corporation's director general, George Entwistle, resigned on Saturday night after a report on “Newsnight,” one of the network's flagship current affairs programs, wrongly implicated a former Conservative Party politician in a pedophile scandal, John F. Burns and Ravi Somaiya reported. The false report follows recent criticism of the BBC over the revelation last month that a longtime television host, Jimmy Savile, was suspected of having sexually abused perhaps hundreds of young people over the course of decades, sometimes on the BBC premises.

In separate columns, two different media stars who have become one-name brands - Martha and Conan - were faulted over how they have managed their ca reers after times of crisis.

• James B. Stewart writes that Martha Stewart, despite a downturn in her company that has led to recent layoffs of 70 employees, or 12 percent of her staff, is still compensating herself lavishly. In the last three years, Ms. Stewart's compensation from Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, in which she owns 90 percent of the voting shares, was $21.2 million, even as the company was in a downward spiral.
• Conan O'Brien, after being replaced by Jay Leno in early 2010 and moving his talk show to TBS, “still hasn't moved on,” Jason Zinoman writes. The experience of being mistreated by NBC executives permeates the show, up to even this year's Halloween jokes. Mr. Zinoman writes: “Isn't it time to leave this dead end? While some grudges can be leveraged into explosive comedy, this one risks turning Mr. O'Brien into a darkly obsessed figure out of ‘The Larry Sanders Show.' “
• Another one-name brand, Bond, James Bond, had his best opening-weekend results ever, Brooks Barnes reports. “Skyfall,” which comes 50 years after the first Bond movie, “Dr. No,” took in an estimated $87.8 million over the weekend in North American theaters, easily enough for No. 1 last week and a new high even when adjusting for inflation, according to Hollywood.com, which compiles box office data.

The National Book Awards, which will be handed out Wednesday at a dinner in the ornate Cipriani Wall Street, has aspirations to become more glamorous and influential, Leslie Kaufman writes. In its instructions this year, in red ink, judges were told that it was O.K. to nominate writers whose books were widely read; the goal, it seems, is to create the kind of attention that regularly follows an award of the Man Booker Prize in Britain. “It's not about being glitzy,” said David Steinberger, the chief executive of Perseus Books and chairman of the foundation. “It's about increasing the impact great books have on the culture.”

• The widow and literary executor of the poet T.S. Eliot has died in London at age 86, The Guardian reported. Valerie Eliot met her husband at the British publisher Faber & Faber, where she was a secretary and he was a director, and married in 1957. (She was his second wife, and died in 1965.) She edited his poems and letters for publication, The Guardian writes, and refused to cooperate with would-be biographers, in keeping with Eliot's last wishes.

Noam Cohen edits and writes for the Media Decoder blog. Follow @noamcohen on Twitter.