http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQaYS0h7zB0

The Today Show, using Twitter, YouTube and some good ol' fashioned reporting, got to the bottom of the 7.2 earthquake that struck in Baja California late yesterday and was felt all the way in Downtown Los Angeles. Apparently, the takeaway here is that California is "Earthquake Country." Well okay then.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

And finally, on The Wanda Sykes Show on Saturday night (yes, that's still on), R&B singer Erykah Badu spoke out for the first time about her controversial naked performance art video shot in Dealey Plaza. See, it was actually done to honor John F. Kennedy. Regardless, that didn't stop the Dallas Police with charging her with misdemeanor disorderly conduct.

So with the booking advantage effectively neutralized, who would triumph in the ratings?

In the end, it was David Gregory who came out on top.

On Sunday morning, NBC's Meet the Press attracted 3,290,000 total viewers and 1,070,000 in the 25 to 54 demo, narrowly topping ABC's This Week with George Stephanopoulos (3,080,000 total viewers; 1,010,000 in the demo) and CBS' Face the Nation with Bob Schieffer (2,740,000 total viewers, 900,000 in the demo).

In D.C., Meet the Press' relative advantage was even greater.

From NBC's press release:

In Washington, D.C., "Meet the Press" won with 108,000 viewers (4.1/12 HH)  more than all the competition combined. The NBC program had a +125% lead over ABC's 48,000 (1.8/5 HH), +414% more than CBS' 21,000 (0.8/2 HH), and a +272% advantage over FOX's 29,000 viewers (1.2/3 HH).

It was back in December 1987 when, with just over a year left in his second term, Reagan played host to a Washington summit with Soviet premier Mikhail Gorbachev. In terms of domestic politics, it was a touchy, sensitive moment for the president, with his own conservative base enraged by his plans to sign the I.N.F. treaty during the meeting.

So, in an effort to rally the nation before Gorbachev’s arrival, the White House arranged for the anchors from all four major television news outlets—Dan Rather of CBS, Peter Jennings from ABC, NBC’s Tom Brokaw, and Bernard Shaw of CNN—to interview Reagan together. On December 4, the anchors took turns asking questions, and then their networks repackaged the footage into 30-minute specials that aired at different times that night.

Facing a similarly critical moment—the fate of his health care reform push is now on the line—Obama went for the same saturation effect on Sunday. But his modified “Full Ginsburg”—sitting for individual interviews on every major Sunday morning interview show except “Fox News Sunday”—wasn’t quite as efficient.

The problem was as unavoidable as it was easy to see coming. It was obvious what topics each interviewer would bring up in his 15 or so minutes with Obama, and there really aren’t that many different ways to ask about them.

For instance, any host who didn’t spend a few minutes on Jimmy Carter’s comment last week that some of the most outlandish opposition to Obama’s health care effort comes from people who believe a black man “ought not be president and ought not be given the same respect as if he were white” would have been accused of journalistic malpractice; but what else can you really do except ask Obama whether he thinks there’s something to it—as David Gregory, George Stephanopoulos, Bob Schieffer, and John King all did?

Obama, of course, had his talking points down cold for the Carter question. Whether, in his heart and soul, Obama actually shares Carter’s view is immaterial; the White House believes (probably accurately) that the political cost of saying so would be unbearable. So Obama spent a few minutes giving the same basic answer to each interviewer: Yes, there are people who don’t like me because I’m black, just like there are people who do like me because I’m black; but no, that has nothing to do with the health care debate.

He even repeated exact phrases, for instance telling both Gregory and King that the Carter story had been “catnip” for a media that rewards rude behavior with “15 minutes of fame.”

It was the same story on other topics. After grilling him on health care and Carter, each interviewer reserved a bloc of time for Afghanistan, where Obama may soon be asked by General Stanley McChrystal to send even more troops. But no matter what unique twist they put on their questions, the interviewers all received the same stock answer, with Obama noting that Afghanistan policy had been “adrift” when he took office and, essentially, asking for time to get it right.

Both King and Schieffer asked why he was still talking about formulating a plan after announcing a new one back in March; Obama reminded them both that he’d said back in March that he’d revisit and re-examine the plan after six months.

On health care, the major reason he granted the interviews, Obama clearly had middle-class voters who currently have insurance on his mind. Invariably, he tried to frame his answers in a way that might convince them he’s aware of their concerns and is looking out for them. On each network, he made sure to point out that the average premium went up by 5.5 percent last year, “this despite the fact that inflation was negative on almost everything else.”

The result of all of this was a series of interviews that all looked and sounded pretty much the same. In total, Obama was on the four shows for about 70 minutes. But after you watched one, there really wasn’t much new ground plowed in any of the others, and it became an exercise in message repetition, with his answers sounding less considered and authentic than pre-rehearsed and packaged.

That said, there were some differences between the interviews. Stephanopoulos was by far the most aggressive questioner, trying to play gotcha with a question—and about 12 follow-ups, one in which he invoked the Merriam-Webster dictionary—about whether an individual health insurance mandate is tantamount to a tax hike.

Schieffer was more curious about foreign affairs, asking the only question about the Bush-instigated missile defense shield that Obama abandoned last week. King was the only host to spend time on jobs and the economy (and to ask if Obama would be getting an H1N1 vaccine shot); and Gregory asked for a non-White Sox World Series prediction.

From a viewer’s standpoint, though, the old Reagan model would have been preferable on Sunday. Once one interviewer had asked about Carter, the rest would have been free to ignore and ask about other subjects. And the interviewers, instead of each straining to make sure they hit every major topic of the day in their 15 minutes with the president, would have had more leeway to pursue interesting follow-ups and to press Obama for more specificity. And Gregory could still have asked about baseball, too.

This weekend, President Barack Obama will be making his first appearance on a Sunday morning public affairs program since taking office. But he won’t be doing it on NBC’s top-rated Meet the Press.

Rather, he’ll be appearing on CBS’s Face the Nation with Bob Schieffer

Last week, Mr. Obama gave an extensive one-on-one interview to CBS’s Steve Kroft on 60 Minutes. Thanks to Mr. Obama’s appearance, the Sunday night newsmagazine put up its best numbers of the year so far, attracting 17.04 million total viewers and catapulting the show into fourth place in all of television for the week, according to Nielsen's rankings.

Mr. Obama’s  choice to appear on Face the Nation rather than Meet the Press will no doubt create more anxiety among those inside NBC who are already worried that Meet the Press may be gradually losing its Sunday morning dominance under David Gregory, who took over moderating duties this past December.

Last week, Newsday’s Verne Gay wrote that the president’s decision to bypass Meet the Press for an appearance on NBC’s Tonight Show with Jay Leno  “would seem like a massive diss of new host Gregory."

“Under Gregory, Meet the Press simply doesn't feel like the force it was under his legendary predecessor, Tim Russert, who died last June,” wrote Mr. Gay.

The president's decision to spend Sunday morning across from Mr. Schieffer rather than Mr. Gregory will only serve to sharpen the contrast.

Yesterday, the commission announced the slate of moderators for the fall debates, which will include PBS's Jim Lehrer, NBC's Tom Brokaw, PBS's Gwen Ifill, and CBS's Bob Schieffer. It's an esteemed group. But also one that's somewhat long in the tooth.

Back in April, we wrote about Google's frustrated attempts to team up with the commission on some sort of new media debate. That attempted partnership ultimately fell through. But it has long been expected that the commission would add some sort of digital component to this year's highly anticipated political showdowns.

From the press release:

PR Newswire has the details:

First presidential debate
Friday, September 26
The University of Mississippi, Oxford, Miss.
Jim Lehrer
Executive Editor and Anchor, The NewsHour, PBS

Vice presidential debate
Thursday, October 2
Washington University in St. Louis, Mo.
Gwen Ifill
Senior Correspondent, The NewsHour, and Moderator and Managing Editor,
Washington Week, PBS

Second presidential debate (town meeting)
Tuesday, October 7
Belmont University, Nashville, Tenn.
Tom Brokaw
Special Correspondent, NBC News

Third presidential debate
Wednesday, October 15
Hofstra University, Hempstead, N.Y.
Bob Schieffer
CBS News Chief Washington Correspondent, and Host, Face the Nation

Not on the list: Katie Couric, who was the only broadcast evening news anchor not to moderate a single debate in this year's primary season.

Neither does CBS News. Which must be why he told The New York Times recently that he was going to put off his retirement for an indefinite period of time at the behest of CBS News president Sean McManus.

“We’re going to have a transition period, maybe try some people out,” Mr. Schieffer said.

Phew! For a while now Mr. McManus will be busy getting Katie Couric her first presidential debate and finding a new Executive Producer for the Early Show.

Or could they have found their man, but have to wait until his or her contract expires to let Mr. Schieffer go?

Either way, they’ve been shuffling through the dossiers like mad, trying to figure out a post-Schieffer strategy. Here’s what they saw.

The Internal Promotion: Jeff Greenfield

Promoting somebody already on the CBS staff seems like a somewhat unlikely scenario. When it comes to top-tier political talent, CBS News currently has a thin bench, in part because the broadcast news division has no sibling cable news channel to help develop up-and-comers. Of those already on staff, Mr. Greenfield, a senior political correspondent, would seem like the top prospect. His knowledge of politics is encyclopedic. Then again, the 64-year-old New York native is not exactly (a) young or (b) a prototypical Washington insider—which some consider an important requisite for the job.

Another possibility: Scott Pelley. The last time around, Mr. Pelley was one of the internal finalists to replace Dan Rather. Since being passed over, Mr. Pelley, who, like Mr. Schieffer, is a native of Texas—tradition!—has continued to improve his stock with solid work for 60 Minutes. That said, CBS bosses might be hesitant to cannibalize the most successful arm of their news division. A long shot: CBS’ young and hungry Capitol Hill correspondent Chip Reid.

The Experienced Veteran: Chris Matthews

If CBS News wants someone who can step into the Face the Nation job with little hand-holding and a sizable built-in audience, they might choose Chris Matthews—the host of MSNBC’s Hardball and NBC’s Sunday morning The Chris Matthews Show.

Mr. Matthews is the ultimate Beltway blue-chipper (albeit one with enough controversy to scare off some potential F.C.C.-wary broadcasters). Reading deeply into the network tea leaves, he may soon be available. In 2003, during his commencement address at the College of the Holy Cross, Mr. Matthews thanked Bob Wright, then NBC’s chairman (and a fellow Holy Cross alum!), for helping Mr. Matthews hold onto his high-profile job at the network. In 2007, Mr. Wright retired. That would seem to leave Mr. Matthews, whose current contract is said to expire in June 2009, without one of his guardian angels at NBC. Jumping to CBS’s Face the Nation might be a highly appealing prospect to both parties. Best of all, Mr. Matthews would finally go head-to-head with his current in-house rival Tim Russert—a potential Washington blood sport that would be sure to attract tons of buzz and eyeballs.

A less likely choice: George Stephanopoulos. According to various news sources, in the summer of 2006, Mr. Stephanopoulos met with CBS News’ president, Sean McManus, to discuss the possibility of moving over to the Tiffany Network. At the time, CBS News reportedly wouldn’t offer Mr. Stephanopoulos the Face the Nation gig—a potential deal breaker. In the end, ABC matched CBS’s generous offer and Mr. Stephanopoulos stayed put. Mr. Moonves could make a second run at Mr. Stephanopoulos, though it seems hard to imagine why the seemingly content broadcaster would listen to the pitch this time around. Other possible poaching opportunities from the broadcast arena: ABC’s Jonathan Karl; PBS’s Charlie Rose; former NBC anchor Bryant Gumbel; ABC’s Terry Moran; or ABC’s Jake Tapper.

The Politico Angle: John Harris, Jim VandeHei, Mike Allen

In January 2007, CBS News announced that they were forming a partnership with Politico under which reporters from the nascent news operation would make regular and exclusive appearances on Face the Nation. That partnership appears to have frayed recently as Politico reporters have been observed appearing on rival Meet the Press. That said, according to a former network executive, the Politico honchos might still come into play.

“It wouldn’t surprise me if you saw one of the Politico stars, VandeHei, Harris or Allen, making a play for Face,” said the source. “Politico has a relationship with CBS already, those guys would love their own TV show and they have the political creds they need for that role.”

Format Buster: Al Gore and Newt Gingrich

Larry Sabato, the director of the University of Virginia Center for Politics, says that if CBS decides to tweak the format of the typical Sunday morning show, they should consider taking two garrulous former pols, one from the right and one from the left, who could match up evenly in a spirited weekly clash.

“If you’re talking ideal: Al Gore and Newt Gingrich,” said Mr. Sabato. “They could get their guests engaged and argue with them in a constructive way. That would be a circus. But it would be an instructive, educational circus.”

Eric Schmeltzer, a New York–based independent political correspondent, said that given that Sunday mornings are already saturated with serious, balanced news programs, CBS could try an alternative approach. Perhaps by tapping a comedian (say, Tina Fey) or an outspoken liberal (say, Bill Moyers).

The Slip Back: Gloria Borger

Last year Ms. Borger, the network’s former national political correspondent and erstwhile Face the Nation panelist, left CBS News for CNN. Ms. Borger has all the qualifications—sharp, nonpartisan, Sunday-talk-show-savvy—to possibly make her ex-executives yearn for a second go-round. But would CBS really go with two ladies at the top of their news division? Perhaps. And, given the opportunity, Hillary Clinton might choose a female running mate.

Chasing-a-Younger-Demo Strategy: Anderson Cooper

Historically, CBS News has seemed to prefer hiring broadcast rather than cable news talent. But in the never-ending search for younger viewers, it might make sense for CBS to add a youngish anchor from the cable news ranks. Mr. Moonves has already tapped CNN’s Anderson Cooper, who is 40, as a contributor to 60 Minutes. Might he reach to Mr. Cooper again? Other possible young cable talents on the rise: Fox News’ Shepard Smith, 44; MSNBC’s David Gregory, 37; and CNN’s John King, 43.

The Recasting, Reshuffling Strategy: Katie Couric

With CBS Evening News stuck in a distant third place in the evening news wars, Mr. Moonves could use the Sunday morning opening as an opportunity to juggle his top news talent.

Reese Schonfeld, the former president of CNN, said that if it were up to him, he would move Ms. Couric to Face the Nation, expand her role on 60 Minutes, give her a series of prime-time specials, à la Barbara Walters, and recruit somebody else for the Evening News. “She’d probably end up making more money for the company that way than by sticking around doing the third-place evening show,” said Mr. Schonfeld.

A Dean of the Washington Press Corps: Dan Balz

CBS could add some gravitas at the top of its news division by hiring someone with a strong print background in politics, such as Mr. Balz, of The Washington Post; or Ron Brownstein, the political director of the Atlantic Media Co.; or Jon Meacham, the editor of Newsweek.

A Twofer Times Two: Matt Lauer.

Poaching Katie Couric from rival Jeff Zucker didn’t exactly torpedo the moneymaking machine that is Today quite as quickly as Mr. Moonves would have liked. Time to finish the job?

In the interview, Mr. Battaglio asked if this would be Mr. Schieffer's last presidential cycle.

Mr. Schieffer responded: 

The no-shot curiosities—like Mr. Hunter or Mike Gravel—usually show up early in the campaign for their perfunctory segment or two in a nationally-televised hot seat. Ron Paul was supposed to among this class of candidates, and for a while it seemed that his Sunday morning exposure would be limited to being told by George Stephanopoulos over the summer that he had zero chance of winning the presidency.

But now, less than two months before the first primary and caucus votes will be cast, the networks want an unexpected second serving of the 72-year-old Texas congressman, thanks to the stunning fund-raising success he’s enjoyed—capped, for now at least, with the $4 million he took in over the internet in one day last week.

Dr. Paul sat down with Bob Schieffer on CBS’s “Face the Nation” on Sunday, and this time was treated by the host much more as a serious presidential candidate—albeit one with some ideas that don’t often get aired in big-time American politics—than some freaky side-show at a circus.

In addition to revealing that he didn’t own a computer until 1997, Dr. Paul advanced his usual arguments in favor of the gold standard (paper money, he believes, is the main source of inflation, “an invisible tax on the poor”) and against an interventionist foreign policy. (“We defended Seoul, Korea, better on 9/11 than we did Washington, DC,” he said.)

He also fielded the obligatory can-you-really-win question by pointing out the strides his campaign has made in the last year, none of which anyone in politics thought were remotely possible.

“I also know what the odds are,” he said. “But I'll tell you what: Don't try and tell my supporters that there's not a chance, because they believe it…My name is out there. I may well win.”

Determining where precisely Dr. Paul fits in the G.O.P. mix is a perplexing task. Judged by his standing in the polls, he has barely distinguished himself from the likes of Tom Tancredo and Mr. Hunter, although lately he’s begun to edge into mid-to-high single digits in some surveys. But if you judge him by the money he’s raised, and the number of donors he’s attracted, Dr. Paul is a giant.

No matter how he ultimately fares, though, Dr. Paul has made a contribution to the G.O.P. race and to the national political dialogue in a way that the other long-shot Republicans haven’t and can’t—simply because he’s the only Republican candidate willing to defy the foreign policy orthodoxy that has emerged within his party during the Bush years.

While the other Republican candidates refuse to break with the Bush administration on Iraq or any other weighty foreign policy questions, Dr. Paul proudly trumpets his outrage and tells his fellow Republicans that they are following their President off a cliff. A strong Paul showing in the primaries will make a powerful statement about how a significant chunk of the party’s grass-roots really feel about the cheerleading for the White House they’ve been asked to do for the last seven years.

On “Face the Nation,” Dr. Paul once again played the role of refreshing contrarian, this time on Iran. With President Bush and the architects of the Iraq war now training their sights on the Islamic republic, the jockeying has been intense among Republican candidates to strike the most muscular posture against Iran.

But Dr. Paul questioned the two very basic premises behind all of the drum-beating now going on: the assumptions that Iran has to be our enemy and that a nuclear-armed Iran would somehow represent an unprecedented threat to regional and global stability.

“I think our policy towards Iran is a threat,” Dr. Paul said. “That's what I fear. You know, I fear that tomorrow we might bomb Iran. That really scares me.”

Mr. Schieffer asked whether we should simply allow Iran to build the bomb.

“We have a more sensible policy,” Dr. Paul replied. “We talk to them. And we trade with them. We remove the sanctions. I mean, the Soviets had 40,000 [nuclear warheads].” The U.S., he pointed out, continued to talk with the U.S.S.R. throughout the Cold War.

In raw political terms, Dr. Paul is obviously on the wrong side of the Iran issue within the Republican Party. But he’s got all of that contrarian terrain to himself—and Iran is hardly the only issue where this is the case. And that goes a long way to explaining why Ron Paul is getting second and third invitations to Sunday morning news shows, while the other Republicans who began as asterisks in the polls have already exhausted their 15 minutes.

Of course, it’s not the way he talks, but the words that occasionally slip from his mouth that have fed the right’s bid to caricature him as an unstable fringe figure: the erratic, America-hating lefty who called President Bush a loser and a liar and who said the war in Iraq is lost.

Mr. Reid makes no apologies for his periodic bursts of candor, which he suggests simply mark him as a no-B.S. guy. But, other than on the Senate floor and at obligatory press briefings, Democrats do not showcase “Give ‘em hell Harry,” and he is largely absent from the talk show circuit. It’s tempting to conclude that this represents a risk-minimization strategy by the Democrats, who fear Mr. Reid is never more than a sentence or two from provoking some kind of media firestorm. In reality, though, the main problem with Mr. Reid as the public face of the party is that, most of the time, he just comes across like any other aging and bloodless creature of the Senate.

He reminded us of this yesterday, when he made what host Bob Schieffer proudly billed as a rare Sunday morning television appearance on CBS’s “Face the Nation.” In such a setting, Mr. Reid demonstrated that his drab demeanor can be both a blessing and a curse for his party. It’s a blessing because he’s never too “hot” for what is a famously cool medium, and a curse because there’s little in that style to differentiate him from his fellow politicians and, thus, to grab the attention of the casual viewer.

For a good chunk of his ten-or-so-minute segment yesterday, Mr. Reid plodded through Mr. Schieffer’s queries about last week’s Senate debate on Iraq, sometimes getting bogged down in the confusing language of Senate procedure—tossing out, for instance, references to unanimous consent requests and the “so-called manager’s amendment.”

This is not entirely his fault, since the war debate in the Senate is as much about legislative tactics as it is the war itself, and Mr. Reid stands accused by the G.O.P.of stifling their attempts to offer Iraq legislation of their own. It’s only reasonable that Mr. Reid would defend himself, and his fellow Democrats. But, if anything, he demonstrated the futility of engaging in a he said/she said debate over procedure, given how little the broad public knows (or cares to know) about legislative mechanics.

It’s nearly beside the point, from a public relations perspective, that Mr. Reid’s case is strong on the merits. Senate Republicans complain that he wouldn’t permit consideration last week of Iraq amendments that might have attracted substantial Republican support, even as they adamantly refused to lift their threat of a filibuster of an amendment that would have created a troop redeployment timetable—an amendment that enjoyed the backing of a majority of Senators, but not the 60 needed to break a filibuster. And so no votes on actual course change legislation were taken in the Senate last week—only votes on whether there should be votes.

Mr. Reid pleaded with Mr. Schieffer about the unreasonableness of the GOP’s legislative blockade, saying: “I offered on many occasions – not one, two, three, four occasions – many occasions said, ‘Let's vote on all the Iraq amendments – all of them – and have a simple majority for them.' The Republicans wouldn't let us.”

In fact, Mr. Reid’s responses to Mr. Schieffer’s questions about, say, last week’s National Intelligence Estimate, or whether Democrats have a plan to check Iran’s influence in the Middle East, or possible military action in Pakistan, were all generally sound and concise expressions of the prevailing mood of his party.

For instance, here is how Mr. Reid confronted Republican efforts to tag the Democrats’ troop redeployment push as a “precipitous withdrawal:

“There should be a redeployment and after May 1st of next year all American troops should be out of there except those dealing with counterterrorism, training Iraqis, and protecting our assets. No precipitous withdrawal. But academics and military people say Iraq is in chaos right now. Al-Qaeda has an enemy, it's the United States. Even Iraqis, by a 70 percent margin, think that Americans in Iraq are doing more harm than good. So getting the Americans out of Iraq, except for those troops that I've just talked about, I think would lessen chaos rather than increase it.

But the marketing principal of “it’s not what you’re selling, but how you sell it” applies to politics, and there’s not much in Mr. Reid’s game to convince someone who doesn’t already know and like his product to buy in.

It wasn’t until the tail end of his segment that Mr. Reid emerged for the audience a colorful, three-dimensional figure—ironically by straying into the very territory that has earned him the loose-cannon label.

Mr. Schieffer brought up Mr. Reid’s past statements about President Bush, noting that the Majority Leader had apologized for calling Mr. Bush “a loser”—but not for calling him “a liar.” Do you still think he’s a liar, Mr. Schieffer inquired.

“Well, Bob, when I have dealings with people and they tell me one thing and do something else, they're not telling the truth, what else do you have to call them?” Mr. Reid replied, adding that he still likes the president personally. That prompted a follow-up from an incredulous Mr. Schieffer, who wondered if those sentiments weren’t at odds with each other.

“I call them the way I see them,” said Mr. Reid. “I mean, I thought Alan Greenspan—when they asked me about him—I said I thought he was the biggest political hack in Washington. That's how I felt. Why shouldn't I say that?”

At that, a bemused Mr. Schieffer decided to offer the floor to Mr. Reid, inviting the Majority Leader “to take off on” anyone else he desired to. Mr. Reid declined, but noted that “if it comes to my mind and I feel like answering a question, I should do it honestly. I'm going to continue to do that.” Thus ended the segment.

It may be the only thing anyone remembers from Harry Reid’s visit to “Face the Nation.”