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On August 29, NBC will launch "NBC News on Stage" on iTunes, which will include the Today live summer concert footage of John Mayer performing three songs from some album I'm never going to purchase. If Mayer isn't your cup of tea, other programs to be added to the list include interviews with the Rolling Stones, Jerry Garcia, U2, Judy Garland, Johnny and June Carter Cash, Madonna, and Ray Charles. NBC is not offering this or any of its news programming on iTunes for free, which, to quote Mother Theresa, is a big stupid load of crap. The John Mayer segment, which will also feature interviews and behind-the-scenes stuff, will cost $3.99 and will only be available for a limited time.

If you didn't notice (which is fine, people shouldn't obsess over things like this like we do), MSNBC debuted a new news crawl and new on-screen graphics this morning. So far, it's a thumbs down.

While CNN and FOX News have cleaner, squared off graphics, MSNBC has gone with funky, pointy boxes on the right hand side that show the time and the MSNBC logo, while the left hand side shows the stock report. It's great that they separated the time and stocks, so now both can be on the screen at the same time, but the way they've done the boxing, it looks odd (and the text on the screen sometimes overlaps the new graphics, which isn't good). The crawl is odd too, because it doesn't crawl across the entire screen, only half of it (the stocks block the rest of the screen), and since only so many words can stay on the screen at once, it takes several seconds to even figure out what the story is about (but maybe that's on purpose, to make you stick around longer).

The new MSNBC logo is good though. It keeps the colorful peacock but it's now a lot thinner. Too bad they didn't put good boxes and a better setup around it. And I think it's time to get rid of the "MS" part. Why not just make it NBC News Channel now?