Did you miss any of the action-packed, political coverage from the cable news channels last night? Don’t worry! Mediaite is here to help you sort through what you missed, with all of the best moments from the closest Iowa Caucus in history.

As his contract nears its end next year, CNN’s Don Lemon has evidently been taking some time out to reflect on the state of cable news. And he’s not exactly loving what he sees. In an interview with the Atlanta edition of Creative Loafing that lovingly extols his physical attributes (“He has a full, masculine [...]

Anyone living in the greater New York area has likely been glued to their televisions this morning, at work or at home, watching the overhead helicopter shots and on-the-ground reporting from the Occupy Wall Street protests. Yes, this may be a local story at heart, but there are occupy movements in every major city, and the scope of OWS has gone global.

While we pay a lot of attention to the ongoing battle for the number two spot in the cable news rankings, the indisputable heavyweight champ is the one that just celebrated it’s 15th anniversary in grand fashion. Despite some rather significant transitions in their team of on-air talent — Glenn Beck‘s departure and Megyn Kelly‘s return from maternity lead — Fox News had a remarkable third quarter in ratings.

Isn’t it ghastly? Will we be accused us of capitalizing on the nation’s grief? Is it still too soon?

Those were just some of the questions we faced when deciding whether to replay NBC’s 9/11 coverage when I was General Manager of MSNBC back in 2006. As I watched MSNBC air that coverage for a sixth year today, many of those same questions remain.

During a heavy news day with coverage of Libya, the East Coast earthquake, and Hurricane Irene, both Fox News and CNN saw an significant increase of viewers of their cable news channels.

The cable news ratings game is best adjudged by trends: who is moving up or down from month to month or year to year. And while last month the big story was HLN’s enormous ratings (due almost exclusively due the Casey Anthony story) there is another item worth noting, eventhough the story might be somewhat unremarkable: Fox News was the #1 cable news network for the 115th consecutive month going back to January of 2002, and the network was the fourth most-watched cable network in all Primetime.

Cable news coverage of current (and potential) GOP candidates has been constant and self-fulfilling; the media’s declared frontrunners have predictably garnered the most coverage, and the “longshot” candidates have been covered far less, while all three cable news networks have been covering the GOP candidates in roughly the same proportions. Analyzing the specific mentions of candidates on all three major cable news network, however, reveals that MSNBC has dedicated more coverage to the GOP White House hopefuls than Fox News and CNN.

Andrew Breitbart is sounding the war drums, but George Soros, John Podesta, and all the usual suspects are safe. In fact, he’s not after a liberal at all this time. The Shirley Sherrod affair has torn asunder the once amicable relations between Breitbart and his now-former ally in the war on liberal elitism Glenn Beck, to which Breitbart has offered $100,000 in charity donations in exchange for a lie detector test to prove it was he, and not Breitbart, who aired the unfairly edited video.

While its probably too soon for Fox News to start thinking about changing their much ballyhooed slogan of “most-watched cable news channel in America,” there is little doubt that executives at all three cable news outlets are well aware of a rather stunning new development: CNN appears to have regained its mojo, and its ratings increase of the last two weeks suggest that the cable news wars might just be getting a lot more interesting.

As the nation begrudgingly emerged from the inevitable perfectly avoidable government shutdown that wasn’t Friday night, both Democrats and Republicans scrambled to make the ordeal into some sort of political victory. Tonight, Jon Stewart did his best to find the people on cable news asking the important questions about our budget, but instead delivered lines like “who came out ahead politically?” and “who are the real winners and losers?”

The huge resources required to cover the disaster in Japan, uprisings in Egypt and war in Libya have drained budgets at American news networks, according to an analysis by TheWrap. “We’ve already had a year’s worth of breaking news coverage, and it’s not even the end of March,” David Verdi, NBC News VP of worldwide newsgathering, told TheWrap.

Brent Lang and Dylan Stableford ran the numbers, adding up all the airfare to shuttle correspondents around the world, plus the costs of keeping them on scene and the satellite costs of getting their stories on television, and concluded a continued big news year could be a problem:

The man best known as the longtime anchor of ABC’s Nightline, Ted Koppel, says “wildly opinionated” cable news has left him “saddened,” and he believes viewers deserve–and the times require–”a little more serious objectivity.”

Speaking to Howard Kurtz on CNN, Koppel discussed an article he wrote last fall, calling out opinion hosts like Fox’s Bill O’Reilly and then-MSNBC host Keith Olbermann for creating a culture of partisanship that dimishes all cable news:

Cable news ratings, December 6, 2010:

•MSNBC’s Chris Matthews‘ 7 p.m. version of Hardball had a solid night Monday, beating both Rachel Maddow and Lawrence O’Donnell and finishing second only to Countdown’s Keith Olbermann, with 228,000 viewers 25-54 compared with Olbermann’s 245,000.

Cable news ratings, December 1, 2010:

•December brings encouraging news for struggling Parker/Spitzer, which began the new month as CNN’s second-highest rated show in prime, among viewers 25-54.  P/S was second only to Anderson Cooper 360 and beat Larry King, Wolf Blitzer, and John King USA.

Cable news ratings, November 26, 2010:

•CNN’s holiday special TIME Frames with John King was not a timeslot winner, coming up fourth among viewers 25-54 and being soundly beaten by MSNBC’s fill-in fare Caught on Camera and Fox’s holiday edition of FOX Report.

Cable news ratings, November 24, 2010:

•Holiday week ratings are usually no good for reading tea leaves, but with word today that Dr. Drew Pinsky‘s set to join the primetime lineup at HLN, it’s hard not to look at those numbers. Nancy Grace remains solid at 8, and Joy Behar dips at 9, but perhaps the week spot is the re-air of Nancy Grace at 10, which had just 97,000 viewers 25-54. At 11:00, the re-air of Showbiz continues to be quite strong for HLN.

On Meet The Press today, Senators John Kyl and Dick Durbin discussed the START treaty and its slow progress in the Senate. Durbin went so far as to say that people who pay for cable news should ask for refunds when they watch C-SPAN and see nothing happening.

Despite Mayor Michael Bloomberg‘s impassioned plea last week for the Ground Zero mosque — the Wall St. Journal called it “rather stirring and quasi-elegant” — it seems the majority of New Yorkers across the state have not been won over. Though a closer look reveals it is not quite that simple.

There’s no doubt that last week’s Shirley Sherrod controversy began as a new media story – started by Andrew Breitbart on BigGovernment.com.

But there is also no doubt which type of media drove it into the ground – cable news.

While the Keith Olbermanns and Bill O’Reillys of the world continue to live under the media spotlight, an NPR story today takes a look at another TV-news journalist, who gets considerably less media attention: Savannah Guthrie. In profiling Guthrie, NPR not only reveals more about her, but also examines an overall shift in cable news.

Remember the days when there were no 24-cable news networks? I don’t– and there are millions of Americans who can’t, either, because the oldest cable news network is now 30 years old. Happy birthday, CNN! To celebrate, Wolf Blitzer played old clips of the nascent network, including their very first broadcast, and sat down with the network’s head, Ted Turner, to reflect on the good old days.

Lindsay Lohan was in court today because of…something, and the cable news networks were not going to miss this opportunity to use the camera in the courtroom.

CNN, Fox News, MSNBC and HLN all went wall-to-wall as Lohan (with dark hair and a dark suit – does Styleite approve?) heard the update on her probation status.

Chris Matthews on MSNBC called it “(Almost) Super Tuesday.” Martha MacCallum on Fox News said it’s “Semi-Super Tuesday.”

Yes, the day is finally upon us. Elections in a few primary Senate races! Let’s break out the election night toys, it’s time to go full throttle on cable news!

When Pete Williams of NBC broke the news at 10pmET on Sunday night that Elena Kagan would be Pres. Barack Obama‘s Supreme Court nominee, it signaled cable news would make the story a focus in the short and long-term.

So what would be Kagan’s “wise latina” – the storyline closely associated with the nominee? We broke down the first 24 hours on cable news.