And Biden! And Cheney! And not quite Obama, but close!

The nomination acceptance / unveiling of Sarah Palin drew an Alaska-sized 37.2 million viewers last night on the broadcast plus cable news networks, besting the tallies of Hillary Clinton (26 million) and Joe Biden (24 million) at the DNC, doubling night 3 of the 2004 Republican convention (18.7 million), and falling just short of Barack Obama (38.4 million). [Update: And there's an asterisk on that, in a way, because BET, TV One, Univision and Telemundo carried Obama's speech as well.]

Ms. Palin's running mate, a senator from Arizona, will have his work cut out for him tonight.

Love the show now, but... seriously? / NBC

Oooh, this should be a good way to blow off some work this afternoon. TV Guide has come up with its list of the 10 Best TV Pilots in the issue on newsstands now. Their list, my knee-jerk cavils and additions, and your invitation to play along, after the jump:

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NBC appeals to the heartstrings of ER fans—and reminds the rest of us that the thing is still on the air—by announcing that it will bring back Anthony Edwards for one episode of the we-swear-this-is-the-last season:

BURBANK – September 4, 2008 -- NBC announced that Golden Globe winner and Emmy® nominee Anthony Edwards will reprise his role as Dr. Mark Greene for one episode of NBC's long running show "ER" (Thursdays, 10-11 p.m. ET/PT). Edwards will return in the episode entitled "Heal Thyself," which was written and directed by executive producer David Zabel, and will air on November 13, 2008.

The installment will feature Dr. Greene in a series of newly shot scenes that will feature other characters from the show's past while also giving insight into Dr. Banfield's (Angela Bassett) past and her experiences within the walls of County General.

Clooney! Clooney! Clooney!

OK, I am already probably the last blogger on the planet to link to Mike Murphy and Peggy Noonan's hot-mike embarrassment, but it's too good not to. They now have something in common with Jesse Jackson!

1. Note to cable-news guests: Until they unclip that mike from you, assume that it is on.

2. More seriously, there are a million explanations people give for why new media are competing with the old media, but this illustrates a basic one: say whatever you want about blogs, people generally believe that bloggers write what they actually think. This clubby attitude of having one public story you give on TV and the "real story" you save for your friends and cronies is, politics aside, one of the most damaging faults of the MSM, and rightly so.

[Update: Scott Rosenberg said it first.]

A few more morning-after RNC thoughts:

* The more I think about the Sarah Palin speech, the more I wish I were writing this column again today. Mind you, I'm not saying that Palin is a national figure because of the popularity of reality shows like Deadliest Catch, or that the popularity of these blue-collar reality shows predicts anything about the election. But it is at least interesting that the focus on blue-collar voters in rural areas—which is looking more and more like Palin's target rather than Hillary voters—comes at the same time that TV is (successfully) fixating on the same group, at least as represented by the likes of Black Gold, Ax Men and so on. And some of the shows are probably at least partly responsible for a shift in the pop-cultural attitude toward Alaska—and thus, toward Alaskans—from the quirky exoticism of Northern Exposure and Men in Trees to the respectful roughneck realism of Deadliest Catch.

* I don't know much about this "Themedia Elites" guy Obama picked for his running mate—weird name, I know, I think it's Greek—but he sounds like a real tool. (Those hostile chants of "NBC! NBC!"? Probably not the kind of product placement the network was looking for at this juncture in time.)

* Seriously, though, this morning on MSNBC's Morning Joe, I already heard McCain spokeswoman Nicolle Wallace make the case—full disclosure, it was to my colleague Jay Carney—that it was laughable that Sarah Palin should have to take questions from the media because of how unfair the press has been to her. (When Jay argued that a candidate is obligated to answer questions about her policy knowledge and positions, Wallace answered, "Not from the media!" Which raises the question: If the definition of "the media" is not, in part, "someone asking you questions you may not want to answer," what is it?) Clearly this is already a strategy to justify keeping Palin from the press. Will it fly?

* Having lived in New York for both his terms, I had no idea until now how much Rudy Giuliani had against big cosmopolitan cities.

* I suspect this morning that the McCain camp is slightly warmer to the concept of political celebrities.

Bravo Photo: Barbara Nitke

Spoilers for last night's Project Runway coming up after the jump:

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Watching Sarah Palin's speech, for a while you might have thought that Trig Palin was John McCain's running mate. The governor of Alaska, of course, was the one being introduced to a curious nation, whose quips, attacks and asides would be parsed by the pundits, but before the speech began, and as it continued, the camera followed Palin's four-month-old baby, handed off to Cindy McCain, then husband Todd, then her daughter Piper, who at one point, winningly, licked her hand and used it to smooth down her baby brother's hair.

Analysts will talk about the speech, the tone, Palin's confidence in her first big national appearance, or the fact that she repeated her claim to have "said no thank you" to the Bridge to Nowhere when in fact she campaigned on supporting the project. At the watercoolers today, though, people will be talking about Trig too.

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