The microblogging tool Twitter now has its own television show, sort of.

CNN’s wired anchor guy Rick Sanchez is doing a daily newscast (3 p.m. Eastern time, noon Pacific) that features tidbits generated by his audience via Twitter and other social and mobile media. Steve Rubel at MicroPersuasion and Craig Stoltz at Web 2.Oh Really? have the details.

Personally, we’ve got a love/hate thing going with Twitter. By getting users to answer the question “What are you doing,” it pumps more personal grunts and groans into the ever-raging mudslide of mundane musings on the Web. And yet, we’ve found it can be a handy way of glimpsing the activities of family, friends, and colleagues. (Michael’s feed is at http://twitter.com/mgoldsf. Susan’s is dormant at the moment.)

Perhaps more intriguing, people keep trying to use Twitter to commit actual journalism and online marketing, something that all publishers should be exploring. We did a tiny experiment in team Twitter coverage of Stanford’s magazine and book publishing course in June; we’ll try it again more seriously for the upcoming workshop on Web publishing.

Checking Sanchez’s Twitter feed just now we see he has more than 15,000 “followers” and is tracking 13,000 feeds. Say what you will about the quality of his show. It looks like he claimed a big-time presence for CNN in the “Twittersphere” and found a promising new conduit to the audience.