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Cable Scores With Disaster Coverage, Broadcast Slower To Get News Ducks In Row

Unsurprisingly, the cable news channels that focused on the quake/tsunami -- CNN and Fox News -- both experienced "massive ratings bumps," from Friday to early Saturday, according to mediabistro's TVNewser. CNN scored highest, with 2.276 million total viewers against Fox's 2.096 million.

Broadcast channels were slower to get to the story, with some news team members arriving Saturday; Diane Sawyer was en route yesterday and will anchor ABC's "World News" tonight.

The New York Times Media Decoder also dissected the situation of Western television networks "playing catch-up" on the story, since they "are relatively short-staffed in Asia."

(P.S.: We find that trolling the dial looking for updates on a major global story is a good time to discover some excellent sources of international news -- this time, both Russian and Chinese English-speaking channels.)

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Read the whole story at New York Times/Media Decoder »

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