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DOW JONES NEWSWIRES Fitch Ratings lifted its rating on Iceland to investment grade, citing the nation's progress in stabilizing its economy and pushing ahead with structural reforms. The upgrade puts Iceland's long-term foreign currency issuer default rating at triple-B-minus, placing it on the first rung of investment-grade territory. The outlook is stable. As one of the first countries to take a hit from the global financial crisis, the country is now showing a "promising" economic recovery, said Paul Rawkins, a senior director at the ratings firm. He added that Iceland has successfully completed a program with the International Monetary Fund...

Oprah Winfrey may be feeling the pressure over her fledgling network’s sputtering ratings. A tweet from the talk show host’s Twitter account asked followers, “Every 1 who can please turn to OWN especially if u have a Nielsen box,” in what seems to be a plea to boost ratings numbers. Winfrey publically apologized for the tweet, which was subsequently deleted — after being informed that the move may have violated Nielsen policy prohibiting networks from influencing ratings. “I removed the tweet at the request of Nielsen,” Winfrey said in a statement Monday. “ I intended no harm and apologize for...

S&P Sounds Alarm On US, G20 Downgrades Antonia van de Velde, CNBC January 31, 2012 Concerns over the size of United States debt reared their head once again as ratings agency Standard & Poor’s warned that health care costs for a number of highly-rated Group of 20 countries, including the U.S., could hurt growth prospects and harm their sovereign creditworthiness from the middle of this decade. S&P downgraded the United States credit rating for the first time ever in August of last year. "Governments' fiscal burdens will increase significantly over the coming decade, with the highest deterioration in public finances...

FITCH GOES ON RAMPAGE: CUTS SPAIN, ITALY, BELGIUM, CYPRUS, AND SLOVENIA Simone Foxman January 27,2012 Fitch just cut the long-term issuer ratings of 5 EU countries: Belgium: AA+ to AA Spain: AA- to A Italy: A+ to A- Cyprus: BBB to BBB- Slovenia: AA- to A It affirmed Ireland's BBB+ rating with a negative outlook. Borrowing costs have been sinking for these countries lately–particularly for Italy and Spain—after the European Central Bank announced liquidity support measures in early December that have lessened mounting worries about the health of the banking system. While Fitch says that it supports EU leaders actions...

38 Million Watch State of the Union Address for 2012 January 25, 2012 – On Tuesday, January 24, 2012 President Barack Obama delivered his State of the Union address. The address was carried live from 9:00PM to approximately 10:15 PM on 14 networks.* The sum of average audience for those networks was 37,752,613 viewers, with a combined household rating of 24.0. The networks carrying the address were ABC, CBS, FOX, NBC, CNBC, CNN, FBN, FOXNC, GALA, MSNBC, MUN2 and on tape delay on TEL, TF and UNI. p>

Link only as per posting guidelines: USA Today Gist of article: Ratings for title game down 8 percent from last year; barely (by 0.3 percent) above all time low; all BCS games down 12 percent from last year

"We’re experiencing the beginning of the repercussions of the financial crisis,” said Michel-Edouard Leclerc on Wednesday during an interview on Europe 1, France’s largest radio network. He is the CEO of the second largest retailer in France, E. Leclerc, a privately owned cooperative association with 555 stores—mostly hypermarkets—in France and 117 stores in other countries. Sounding like a CEO one minute and like a populist presidential candidate the next, he emphasized that his company has done relatively well in 2011, sales being up 5%. Strategy: offer deals and cut prices. The whole industry, he said, “ate up inflation” with their...

Fox News is still leading the cable news ratings race—but for how long? Fox's overall ratings for November dropped 13% compared to the same month last year, reports Mediabistro.

BANK DOWNGRADE RAMPAGE: Goldman, Bank Of America, Morgan Stanley, Wells Fargo, And Citigroup Just Got Cut By S&P Simone Foxman Nov. 29, 2011, 4:48 PM Standard & Poor's ratings service just cut the ratings of Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, Morgan Stanley and Citigroup from A to A-, according to Bloomberg. Wells Fargo was also cut from AA- to A+. The agency gave both Wells Fargo and Goldman Sachs have a negative outlook. Those cuts were part of more than 37 ratings reviewed by the agency. Bloomberg says those are dependent upon "criteria change[s]" that were published on November 9....

NBC's downward slide is getting steeper. Long a ratings laggard, the network has fallen further behind its competitors this fall, heightening the challenge facing its new owner Comcast Corp. as it works to mount a turnaround. Through the first four weeks of the TV season ending Oct. 16, about 3.3 million adults under 50 years old have been watching prime-time TV shows on NBC, according to the latest figures from Nielsen Holdings NV. That is down 9.3% from the same period a year earlier. Much of the decline is concentrated in NBC's entertainment shows. Leaving out National Football League games,...

Roger Ailes tells the AP that there was nothing political in his decision to hire Sarah Palin as a Fox News contributor. “I hired Sarah Palin because she was hot and got ratings,” he told Frazier Moore, AP’s television writer, in a long and wide-ranging interview.

Turns out Keith Olbermann's fans may not be willing to follow him to the ends of the earth. Or in this case Current TV. The Daily News reports that Olbermann's show has lost nearly half its viewers since its June Debut. Current doesn't make Olbermann's ratings public (unless the show has a particularly good week as it did in the last week of August), but the NYDN got its hands on some numbers and they're not great.

Obama ratings sink to new lows as hope fadesBy Jon Cohen and Dan Balz, Tuesday, September 6, 12:05 AM Public pessimism about the direction of the country has jumped to its highest level in nearly three years, erasing the sense of hope that followed President Obama’s inauguration and pushing his approval ratings to a record low, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll. More than 60 percent of those surveyed say they disapprove of the way the president is handling the economy and, what has become issue No. 1, the stagnant jobs situation. Just 43 percent now approve of...

Gallup Daily: Obama Job Approval.Gallup tracks daily the percentage of Americans who approve or disapprove of the job Barack Obama is doing as president. Results are based on telephone interviews with approximately 1,500 national adults; Margin of error is ±3 percentage points. Obama approval 38%, disapprove 54%

highlights of Harrington's story below. Here are some key points: Moody's ratings often do not reflect its analysts' private conclusions. Instead, rating committees privately conclude that certain securities deserve certain ratings--but then vote with management to give the securities the higher ratings that issuer clients want. Moody's management and "compliance" officers do everything possible to make issuer clients happy--and they view analysts who do not do the same as "troublesome." Management employs a variety of tactics to transform these troublesome analysts into "pliant corporate citizens" who have Moody's best interests at heart. Moody's product managers participate in--and vote on--ratings decisions....

President Obama may well come to look back at the summer of 2011 as the halcyon days of high approval ratings despite his current 39-54 negative job approval in the Gallup Poll. The indications are that his ratings will continue to crater and are likely to drop even lower….and then lower again. Underlying his overall job approval rating is his approval rating, in the Gallup Poll, on specific issues. These internals suggest that even more trouble is ahead for the beleaguered president. On the economy — the central issue now by far — only 26% approve of the job he...

Fitch Ratings said Tuesday it will keep its rating on U.S. debt at the highest grade, AAA. It also says its outlook on the U.S. ratings is stable. The move gives the U.S. a reprieve after fellow ratings agency Standard & Poor's set off a tempest in the stock market last week by downgrading part of the U.S. debt rating from the highest grade to the second-highest grade. Fitch cited the United States' "flexible, diversified and wealthy economy," as well as its flexibility in monetary and exchange rates that allows it to adjust to marketplace shocks. The other main ratings...

Moody's Analytics on Monday lowered its outlook for growth in the U.S. economy this year and next, saying it sees "significantly weaker" prospects for the economy than just a month ago as the country struggles to avoid another recession. The report ...cites the recent political wrangling over the U.S. debt ceiling and the revived debt crisis in Europe as leading factors in the bleaker economic picture. "The odds of a renewed recession over the next 12 months, already one in three, will increase if stock prices continue to fall

Jeff Saut: It's Too Late To Panic Joe Weisenthal Aug. 8, 2011, 9:05 AM The latest strategy comment from Jeff Saut is below. Gist: It's too late to panic. That's what you should hvae done months ago. The call for this week: For weeks I have stated that a credit rating downgrade was a fait accompli and possibly already discounted by the markets; this morning that doesn't seem to be the case with the pre-opening futures down ~30 points. Whatever the various markets' near-term reaction, the fact is that everyone is merely offering their intelligent guesses as to the outcome...

...Domestically, you are still better off with federal paper than state or municipals. The S&P is merely confirming the Sovereign Debt Crisis. There is no doubt that we have a serious Sovereign Debt Crisis. However, if that is the real reason for the S&P Downgrade, then it should apply to ALL countries and the real rating should be BELOW JUNK! Why? There is NO collateral! If a country defaults, you cannot go to court and seize property. You can’t run down to the National Art Gallery and start walking out with Renoirs. Illustrated above is a chart of the Total...