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I talked about this in my very last blog post, November 5’s “The End of the Trail.”
Inside MSNBC’s Impending Shakeup: Cancellations, Reboots and Chief Phil Griffin
Jordan Chariton / The WrapAmid the cable news network’s declining ratings, insiders tell TheWrap changes are coming soon and “everything is on the table” — When President Obama was reelected in 2012, MSNBC was “leaning forward” …
Yes. After the obligatory and unnecessary sneer*, the media hipster lays out the sad (and predicted) facts:
… the network has fallen backwards. January ratings revealed double-digit declines compared with January, 2014 in all ratings measurements. During the day, MSNBC was down 20 percent in viewers and 37 percent in the advertising-coveted 25-54 demo. In primetime, it fell 23 percent in viewers and 39 percent in demo.
Network President Phil Griffin knows MSNBC needs to turn those numbers around quickly, and multiple insiders tell TheWrap Griffin is in the process of deciding what potential changes to make, including tinkering with primetime.
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[* QUOTE “he’s married to the idea of younger, wonky hosts in primetime over the traditionally older, bombastic anchors who’ve occupied the day part on Fox News and MSNBC, like Bill O’Reilly, Sean Hannity, Keith Olbermann, and Ed Schultz.” Slur much?]
The essence of it comes down to pathetic ratings. Not counting We Who Are Not of Interest to Advertisers, last Wednesday. Ronan Farrow was pulling 26,000 viewers “in the demo.” (As in “demographics” and not “democrats.”)
Facing the lowest ratings in 7 years, MSNBC President Phil Griffin will have to pull out the long knives. Which I predicted before the election (since I wrote “The End of the Trail” before that fateful and highly questionable election. Check out the exit polling in North Carolina — if you can find it. )
I will say nothing of the “Night of the Long Knives” firing of Keith Olbermann — who single-handedly saved a network without a rudder or a purpose from the deserved obscurity that it now enjoys — mostly because I already said it.
Then again, I can’t feel very sorry for a news network that thinks 24/7 news coverage of the 2016 presidential dog and pony show is “news” that ought to lead any serious broadcast. NBC has a news division which, for all its cuts, is still relevant, and with affiliate local news outlets all over the USA, but chose NOT to include much hard news on their news channel.
MSNBC was dumbed down and made irrelevant by its own political wankery and endless wasting of time on non-stories about the future. If I wanted to know the future, I’d pull my Magic 8-Ball off of the top shelf in the hall closet, where it’s sat since I got it for a present long ago.
WHY they kept that neoconservative blockhead Joe Scarborough is beyond me. It’s a monumentally bizarre strangeness akin to Joseph Goebbels starting an All-Nazi TV channel in 1936, but opening for three hours every morning with “The Jew News,” coming from a local Berlin Schul. Scarborough has as much business on MSNBC as a goldfish has on a bicycle.
I always presumed it was because he knew where the bodies were buried.
Either way, Don Imus, in forced servitude to his satanic redeemer Rupert Murdoch is generally MORE liberal than morning Joe, while Fox and Friends are at least HONESTLY right wing propagandists. Even if they CAN’T spell “fiends.”
I first heard Rachel Maddow when she was morning news reader on the late Air America radio network, before being discovered and championed by that awful Olbermann fellow. C’est la vie.
And here’s what I said on November 5, 2014:
… as MSNBC is probably doomed right now.*
[* The COMCAST exec put in charge was a baby Bush bundler and now, with the bad ratings, etc. can claim with justification that MSNBC isn’t commercially viable and circular file it in the dust bin of history. Note the almost complete turnover of broadcast personnel, with Joe Scarborough — no progressive — the only real survivor. As the Ayatollah signaled the arms deal he’d made with the treasonous Reagan campaign by releasing the hostages just as Reagan was inaugurated, so too Keith Olbermann (who built the brand, almost single-handed) was let go on the day of the announcement that COMCAST was taking over day-to-day management of NBC/Universal including MSNBC. Capisce? If so, you just did better than every journalist in America, who stared at the deal and the firing like dogs watching television. Didn’t understand it, but it entranced them.]
Not much else to add. his vorpal sword was always “tomorrow’s news today.” That doesn’t seem to have changed.
I come not to praise MSNBC, but to bury it. Friends, Romans, Countrymen, lend me your tears.
Courage.
A writer, published author, novelist, literary critic and political observer for a quarter of a quarter-century more than a quarter-century, Hart Williams has lived in the American West for his entire life. Having grown up in Wyoming, Kansas and New Mexico, a survivor of Texas and a veteran of Hollywood, Mr. Williams currently lives in Oregon, along with an astonishing amount of pollen. He has a lively blog, His Vorpal Sword (no spaces) dot com.