Roughly a month ago Rush Limbaugh mocked MSNBC host Cenk Uygur by saying “”I don’t know what a Cenk Uygur is,” before adding “I don’t know where a Cenk Uygur works.” And while most would see those as unkind words, he was actually doing the former YouTube star of the Young Turks series a favor, by single handedly giving Uygur much needed relevance in the dog-eat-dog world of opinion media wars. Alas, it looks like it was too little, too late for the Young Turk, as his days hosting the 6PM may very well be numbered.

Chris Ariens reports for TVNewser:

Now TVNewser hears Uygur may be moved out of the 6pm hour, possibly to be replaced by Al Sharpton. When the host changes happened earlier this year, the 6pm hour was simply known as “MSNBC Live,” a telling sign that MSNBC was trying out Uygur.

Sharpton has hosted the 6pm show for the last two weeks. This past week, the hour was second, to Fox News, in A25-54 viewers Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday.

It many ways this move makes sense. Sharpton is a known, if controversial, quantity, who’s not shy of confrontation. Uygur hosted a show on YouTube, and while he certainly enjoyed some nice moments hosting the 6PM show, he never made the impact that MSNBC executives were likely hoping for.

So…how did Uygur get here? When the 10 PM time slot on MSNBC was up for grabs in early 2009, Uygur wrote a piece on The Huffington Post “announcing his candidacy” for the position, and encouraged activists to petition MSNBC for the position. He even posted a YouTube video on The Young Turks channel telling viewers how to contact MSNBC and demand TYT get a show on the network.

Last October, Uygur’s persistence appeared to pay off, as he was given the interim host position at 6 PM, and MSNBC President Phil Griffin was giving him some high praise. “Cenk’s fresh perspective and his passion for politics make him a great addition to the MSNBC team. He’s developed a big following on MSNBC and we welcome him to this new role.”

Before getting the interim host position, Uygur was a frequent guest host for Ed Schultz and Dylan Ratigan, and got his own “Daily Rant” segment on the latter’s show.

Despite Uygur’s claim that his competitive rival would be Fox News, his ratings war has always been with CNN. Over the last few months his ratings have been up and down. In March, MSNBC Live trailed The Situation Room in total viewers. In April, the opposite happened. Uygur hit a ratings peak on May 2, the day after bin Laden’s death was announced, with over a million total viewers, but still got less than half of CNN’s numbers in total viewers and the demo. When The Ed Show was in that timeslot last year, it consistently beat CNN in the demo and total viewers. Excepting the post-bin Laden jump, Uygur’s ratings have been short of spectacular, hitting anywhere from 500 to 700K viewers nightly, less than MSNBC’s other primetime programs.

When asked about Uygur’s future at the 6PM slot in late Spring, a network insider told Mediaite “I think you can note that the ratings have been mixed,” adding “it’s an important time period and we’re paying close attention to it.”

In addition to being the former General Manager of MSNBC, Mediaite founder Dan Abrams hosted the 6PM hour on MSNBC for almost five years and says its a unique challenge at the network. “The 6pm hour on MSNBC has long been one of the toughest hours in cable news. While Fox has a built in audience of viewers many of whom who aren’t interested in watching 6pm local or even the network newscasts at 6:30, CNN and MSNBC have to battle with networks for audience. For any show to succeed there it really has to be different.”

What makes the 6PM time slot even more challenging at MSNBC is that it falls between two airings of Hardball with Chris Matthews. It is a unique parcel of airtime in the cable news landscape, and the the writing appears to be on the wall that Uygur’s days in at 6PM might very well be numbered.

Fox News, on the other hand — the “not a news network” news network — was live the majority of the day, with the exception of the 1-3 pmET business shows and the 8-10 pmET Huckabee/Beck block, breaking for coverage in the afternoon of President Obama’s speech and the live Fort Hood press conference during the 8 o’clock hour (before cutting back to Huckabee). CNN’s simultaneous Fort Hood special also aired during the 8 pmET slot, inconveniently eclipsing the live news on the matter.

When it came time for Nancy Pelosi to give her floor speech during yesterday’s debates, again only Fox was there, as also noted by TVNewser, while CNN went with taped programming and MSNBC cut in with only a soundless visual. To their credit, MSNBC did provide streaming coverage via an embeddable online player, with intermittent live coverage throughout the afternoon on television before ultimately airing the final vote as it happened.

Those die-hards obsessively tracking the progress of the bill were watching CSPAN, of course, but it is interesting to note how on point Fox News was throughout a hectic news day, especially so soon after their chops were questioned so extensively by the White House. It’s almost as if the passage of the health care bill in the House was more important to Fox News’ generally right-leaning viewers as the opposition than those who might’ve been expected to celebrate Pelosi’s speech and the bill as a historic achievement.

Whatever the case, where were CNN and MSNBC? It will be interesting to see how the weekend ratings play out, but if recent history is any indication, one bet is safer than the others.

Two of the competitors in the online poll race are taking it very, very seriously.

TruTV anchor Ashleigh Banfield and CNBC anchor Suze Orman are two of the final five, and much of that is their own viral campaigning. We hear Banfield actually sent an email to friends asking for their vote.

Meanwhile, here’s what Banfield put out on her Facebook fan page:

Hey friends!

Round 4 of that Good Morning America Poll just got underway!

And the voting starts from scratch all over again!

If you have a moment, could you please support me again by clicking on this link
http://tr.im/zkJ2
and voting?

Please feel free to …post this on your FB Pages and Twitter.

You may vote from all Computers, Blackberries, and Phones etc, but only once from each.

I’d be very thankful!!
xo
Ash

As for Orman, she’s been enlisting the help of her Twitter army – more than 700,000 strong – with tweets like this: “If you have not yet done it go & vote for me for the new anchor for GMA- this is for fun but it is fun to win.” (She has also appeared in a video talking about the contest).

We’re not sure if Banfield and Orman think ABC News President David Westin is going to be factoring the results of this poll into the decision to name Sawyer’s replacement…but it seems highly unlikely.

Then again, when I was at TVNewser we ran a poll to see who would be Alan Colmes‘ replacement on Hannity & Colmes, and Sean Hannity‘s personal website linked to the poll and drove up votes for the “Hannity Solo” choice.

For what it’s worth, we had Banfield at 9:1 to win the seat in our Mediaite Oddsmakers about the open seat – Orman didn’t make the list. As of this morning, Banfield sits at 39% and Orman at 36%, far ahead of the rest of the pack.

Again, here’s our tip email address: tips@Mediaite.com

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» Follow Steve Krakauer on Twitter

With most of the country’s attention focused on his Kennedy eulogy, the President’s radio address, with his assertion that he would visit NOLA this year, barely caused a blip. Even Twitter seemed relatively quiet on the subject. Speaking of Twitter, it’s hard not to wonder how differently the aftermath of Katrina might have played out had Twitter been around just four years ago.

The Times‘ Brian Stelter, who wrote the TVNewser blog at the time, noted on Twitter (above) that: “What we sometimes forget about #Katrina: while reporters were first responders, story unfolded slowly. Took days for public to comprehend.” What a difference four years and the Internet makes: imagine the level of accountability the President would have had to face had all those people trapped on roofs, and in the Superdome had direct access to the social web. One thing’s for certain, we would not have had to wait for the outrage of anchors and images to kick the country into action — more than likely it would have been the other way around, and as a result it would have been a different event entirely. As we saw in June during the #iranelection, the immediacy and transparency of Twitter has a way of rallying the masses. Also, #heckofajobBrownie would have made for a heck of a hashtag.