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Yes, the Hardball host started a fundraising phenomenon in the 6th congressional district in Minnesota with his Oct. 17 MSNBC interview with incumbent Michele Bachmann. She called for a media investigation into members of congress to see which of them might be anti-American.

But, Chris, come on. Be a little generous to the internet effect. You implied on Monday night's show that it was entirely the power of your show that drove outraged viewers to contribute hundreds of thousands to Bachmann's opponent.

You did good, but what you did was to start a viral effect. Check out the blogs that helped spread the influence of your interview in the first few days. Factor in the rabid use among politics junkies of microblogging tools like Twitter that have replaced our RSS readers to pass around these blog and video links, and there you go.

A single interview in isolation would not have caused the Democratic National Committee to take notice of Elwyn Tinklenberg's campaign. Thank you for getting the snowball rolling, but individual contributions flooded in from the combined influence of your interview and the net effect. The DNC recognized the resultant phenomenon. There was a team at work here, and as quarterback it would be gracious of you to acknowledge the whole squad.

Who wrote the first two words that came out of Tamarin Hall's mouth this morning at the 9 o'clock hour?

"Running scared."

She was talking about the market. Hardly helpful.

Newspapers, magazines, politics blogs, network news and cable news: please don't be seduced by the controversy the McCain campaign is introducing into the race.

You know they're angling for wall-to-wall coverage on a Rev. Wright level in an effort to distract us from news about the economy. It can't work this year unless you enable it. Do you imagine we care about what some old hippie did 40 years ago when our personal economies are crumbling around us this morning?

If you must, give the latest smear four inches or two minutes -- the way you might treat whatever happened in Iraq or Afghanistan today.

Same goes for liberal bloggers and Olbermann and Maddow. Sure, you want to lead the outrage, but doesn't that only feed the beast? People are interested this cycle. They're going to watch and read anyway. You don't need to stoop to this.

Do the right thing. Don't buy into the contrived drama. You're better than that if you want to be. Thanks.

Howard Owens talks (among other things) about the value of trying small seat-of-the-pants ideas that can move a media property forward. Yes.

Insistence on applying metrics stops these little efforts, Owen says. I think there's also a print mindset that likes things always finished, which is antithetical to the mind of the online tinkerer, who perpetually works in draft, and likes it that way.

Print editor: Is it done?

Online editor: No, it's never done. Isn't that great?

Print editor: I hate that part. How can you stand it?

Online editor: Well, the downsides are balanced by all kinds of joys. The least of them: can you snatch back your magazine out of the reader's inbox?

Concreteness and product and sure bets versus flux and process and experimentation.

Don't mean to pick on the Bill Moyers Journal site. I've seen other traditional media get podcasting lingo wrong too. I wonder if they know it makes them look, like, not with it when they're trying so hard to get with it.

YOU DON'T "SIGN UP" FOR PODCASTS AND RSS FEEDS. You just get them. Sorry, didn't mean to yell. I know you're trying. It's hard to get really mad at public broadcasting. Heart in the right place sort of thing.

Must be a holdover from standard language about signing up for email newsletters. Or maybe they're afraid people will be afraid of the word "subscribe."

Maybe this widget has been around for a while but I only noticed it today at the bottom of a story about disputed war casualty counts. (You may have to log in to WaPo.) Made in Flash and served on the Clearspring widget platform. I'll check out Clearspring.

Dave's wondering if the television networks, who are making a killing on downloadable episodes on iTunes, will start making programming for the internet.

Anybody who loves a show that gets cancelled hopes there's some chance it will come back. I've thought about this, and I believe that really hardcore fans will accept a different or scaled-back form of the show or book or movie they can't get enough of.

Think about Star Wars novels. Almost-serious readers will devour them, when they wouldn't be caught dead in the checkout line with a novelization. There's something like the same phenomenon in fanfic. It's fanatics wanting more of the world they love.

The trouble is, it's not in the interest of the broadast networks to make something for the obsessed enthusiast; the audience is too narrow.

I've had a couple of ideas along these lines. One is citizen's performance and the other is big business.

The citizen idea: make podcasts of fanfic. Just adapt the better stories as audio plays.

The entertainment biz idea: carry on a series in animation. It used to be expensive to paint every frame, putting the cost up around live action, but not so anymore. Actors would be more likely to sign on for a sound recording session scheduled at their convenience -- lots of them do it for games (hey, maybe the game makers could get into producing these). It wouldn't matter if the sets had been struck. (I remember hearing that the dismantling of Rosalyn was the main reason Northern Exposure could never be revived without a lot of expense.)

I'd watch an animated Northern Exposure or West Wing or ThirtySomething or L.A. Law. Would you? Not necessarily, but you might love to see your own faves revived. Americans are getting more with animation in the last 15 years or so. It's definitely not just for kids anymore, though I don't think we're anywhere near as accepting of it as legit art as the Japanese.

Doesn't it seem like a natural for a place like Comcast to offer pay-per-download TV programs like iTunes does? It could have something to do with its being an AT&T spinoff. The former Bell cousins tend to be kind of heavy and sluggish on their feet, not poised to act quick on what's hot now. I worked with one of the cousins for a couple years and loved it but the bureaucracy was a big roadblock. I think at organizations like this the expectation of slow movement is a self-fulfilling prophesy.

Or, what do I know. Maybe that's not it at all and there's some FCC stricture against it. LOL!

This American Life's staff finds it parody-worthy too.

The band member they have doing it doesn't get it quite right, not announcery enough.

You know what's really got me steamed? The "in a world" announce style has broken out of theatrical release trailers and into TV show promos and commercials. Next time you're watching an NBC show think about noticing it when they pimp their own network shows.

Wouldn't it be funny to hear a woman doing that trailing-off-to-gravel-at-the-end-of-sentences thing? Just thinking about it that way makes you see what a stupid fad it is, and offers a hint that it might be some macho thing?

I'll admit it; I can fall for a gravelly male voice as quick as the next woman. Listening to Nick Nolte or Kris Kristofferson makes me go weak in the knees (though Clint Eastwood somehow doesn't do it for me) -- and the hero in my unfinished novel has a voice like that. But it doesn't work on me when it's packaged up in a formula. Nothing does, at least I don't like to think so.

So sad about John Spencer who played Leo McGarry on West Wing. I've always liked him as the matter-of-fact streetsmart guy on WW and on L.A. Law.

Here's the eerie thing. Near the end of the last episode shown, everybody including Josh and Leo are thinking Josh needs Leo's seasoned input in plotting 11th hour campaign strategy. And Leo says ...

Listen to the 17-second mp3.