NBC's "Today" show maintained its strong lead over ABC's "Good Morning America" and CBS' "The Early Show." "Today" was the only morning show that was up week-to-week in total viewers.

Last Monday, "Today" drew 6.35M total viewers, the largest single-day average for the show since January. "Today" has posted its strongest start against the competition since the 2002-2003 season.

The averages from last week:

Total Viewers: NBC: 5.89M / ABC: 4.45M / CBS: 2.80M

A25-54 rating: NBC: 2.0 / ABC: 1.4 / CBS: 0.9

	5p:	6p:	7p:	8p:	9p:	10p:	11p:
FNC	Beck:	Baier:	Shep:	O'Reilly:	Hannity:	Greta:	O'Reilly:
	689	525	477	1069	744	571	519
CNN	Blitzer:	Blitzer:	Tonight:	Brown:	King:	Cooper:	Cooper:
	138	118	148	193	258	216	151
MSNBC	Matthews:	EdShow:	Matthews:	Olbermann:	Maddow:	Olbermann:	Maddow:
	108	102	175	316	240	208	127
HLN	Prime:	Prime:	Issues:	Grace:	Behar:	Grace:	Showbiz:
	126	121	195	359	188	259	145

continued...

In the Fox News Sarah Palin ratings race, the win goes to Sean Hannity.

Hannity's interview with Palin Wednesday night, a cable news first as she makes the rounds promoting Going Rogue, drew 4.20M Total Viewers and 1.15M in the A25-54 demo.

Last night, Bill O'Reilly's interview with Palin drew 4.12M Total Viewers and 1.07M in the demo. But O'Reilly has two more nights of Palin -- tonight and Monday.

continued...

Fox Business will cover the Senate vote on healthcare reform tomorrow night. Coverage begins at 8pmET with David Asman anchoring from New York and Peter Barnes reporting live from Capitol Hill.

> Update : MSNBC will break in to documentary programming for the vote with David Shuster anchoring (after watching the Michigan/Ohio State game apparently).

MSNBC's "Morning Joe" was live today from John McDonogh High School in New Orleans. The special broadcast was set up to kick off the "Brewing Together Day of Service" partnership and volunteer effort between MSNBC, Starbucks and the HandsOn Network. (You can find out more here.)

After the show, Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski spoke with TVNewser (via flipcam) from New Orleans about their project as well as media coverage of Katrina and its victims.

Glenn Beck will be in Florida tomorrow wrapping up a two-day, seven-city speaking and book-signing tour. During his stop at The Villages retirement community north of Orlando, Beck promises to reveal how his Fox News show will look come January, which is the one-year anniversary of the show:

Cincinnati Enquirer columnist John Kiesewetter explains why Fox News anchor Bill Hemmer wears a purple tie every Friday (aka "Purple Friday") on "America's Newsroom."

It's to support the Elder High School Panthers, his alma mater whose football team currently has a 9-2 record for the season with one more game to go against those Anderson H.S. Redskins tomorrow night.

John King the CNN anchor and former White House correspondent tells Marketwatch.com's Jon Friedman what sets him apart from Lou Dobbs and how his show, debuting next year at 7pmET, will be different than Dobbs's.

"I had and have a great relationship with Lou and wish him the best. I have to be me here. Lou passionately believed in advocacy journalism. I passionately believe in steering conversations, not shaping them. That makes us different -- doesn't make one right and one wrong."

But most importantly, will we see the Magic Wall in King's new show? "Of course you will," King told Mediaite. "One of the things we think is very important is to use technology in ways to make information more accessible, understandable and interactive with our audience."

(Special thanks to @jonmediaweb for the headline inspiration)

In last night's Part One interview on "The Factor," Gov. Sarah Palin sat down with Bill O'Reilly and discussed two of the most memorable interviews from last year's campaign season.

Palin called Charlie Gibson's "Bush Doctrine" question on ABC one of the "gotcha techniques" of the mainstream (or "lamestream") media and she said of the Katie Couric interview on CBS, "It was quite obvious that it was going to be an annoying interview," and that her response was the result of "my inexperience with having to deal with a badgering, condescending line of questioning."

As The Swamp points out, Sean Hannity's Palin interview on Wednesday night drew big numbers for his FNC program, its second largest audience of the year.

TVNewser will have the ratings for O'Reilly's Thursday night program later today.

According to sources on the set of "Good Morning America" yesterday, staffers were talking about the "get" that was Chaz Bono.

When the subject of George Stephanopoulos vs. Chris Cuomo came up, the staffers wondered if George could or would even want to pull that interview off. "It's great morning TV to have that exclusive and Cuomo pulled it off without making it feel awkward," one staffer said. "I don't know if George can do those types of interviews and This Week?"

Another expressed concern that those interviews wouldn't even happen with Stephanopoulos there. "The interviews that Cuomo is good at, George couldn't and probably wouldn't want to do. You need those for ratings and if George doesn't want to do them or can't pull them off with some sensitivity, we lose ratings," said the staffer.

A GMA insider responds to TVNewser, "This sounds like someone trying to create an issue where there is none. Both George and Chris are skilled interviewers and terrific broadcasters."

At the end of her show this morning, Oprah Winfrey made it official telling her audience, "After much prayer and months of careful thought I have decided that next season - season 25 - will be the last season of 'The Oprah Winfrey Show.' And over the next couple of days you may hear a lot of speculation in the press about why I am making this decision now, and that will mostly be conjecture."

Oprah then teared up as she talked about the show's roots. "These years with you, our viewers, have enriched my life beyond all measure," said a choked-up Oprah. "So why walk away and make next season the last? Here is the real reason. I love this show. This show has been my life. And I love it enough to know when it's time to say goodbye."

The news of Oprah's departure was first reported late yesterday on the Websites of the TV stations on which her show airs.

As for the impact on those stations, primarily ABC affiliates, but NBC and CBS too, the NYTimes spoke with Larry Gerbrandt, an analyst for the firm Media Valuation Partners, who says "any show that ABC comes up with to replace her will not draw anything near the ratings guarantee they could count on with Oprah. At least for the first year, ABC is going to take a serious hit."

And not just ABC affiliates but the network too. Oprah feeds in to the afternoon newscasts and those afternoon newscasts feed in to "World News with Diane Sawyer."

This morning, Sawyer now in her final weeks anchoring "Good Morning America," called Oprah's departure "the end of an era."

So now the two-year swan song begins. What will Oprah's departure really mean to the stations? Who gets the Oprah exit interview? Diane? Barbara? Katie? And who will be the next Oprah? That question we're putting to you:

(Special thanks to TVNewser Chicago contributor Alissa Krinsky, and TiVo, for the Oprah quotes)