For the second consecutive month MSNBC got hammered in the ratings by straight news events. As TVNewser noted in a ratings post that’s full of “Where’d that come from?” off the grid ratings details, MSNBC’s primetime cratered to a six year low in May and many of MSNBC’s dayside programs hit all time lows.
Regardless of the validity of such an examination, you just know there’s going to be short attention span pieces coming focusing on MSNBC’s recent free fall and the possible reasons for it. The reasons aren’t that difficult to come up with:
1) Real news dominating the cycles. Phil Griffin bet MSNBC’s ratings fortunes on political POV analysis. This works as long as the news doesn’t dominate politics. When it does, MSNBC’s brand works against it. Griffin can squawk all day long about how smart the analysis is but it’s still political analysis and that brand just falls apart when news dominates politics. It’s highly unusual for this many news events to break in rapid succession so Griffin is no doubt hoping that politics will once again take the fore. It’s probably a safe bet that it will eventually. It’s a less safe bet that the damage done the past two months will not have long lasting repercussions that can only be corrected when there is a corresponding huge political news story. And even then that may not be enough because the type of political news may matter more than we may realize. Which leads me to…
2) Scandals, scandals everywhere. Benghazi, the IRS, the DOJ/AP and DOJ/Rosen investigations…these are not necessarily the type of political stories that work in the favor of a progressively focused cable news network. They tend to be demoralizing for the true believers; the viewers MSNBC counts on most…especially when the scandals come in rapid fire succession as these have. It would not at all surprise me if some percentage of MSNBC’s primetime viewing audience is demoralized with all the scandals that have broken out in the Obama administration and that in turn could lead to some viewership suppression…though to what degree is not known.
CNN is probably doing everything to argue that this development in MSNBC’s ratings decline is a sign that people are tired of MSNBC’s shtick and that CNN’s success will continue. I’m not convinced. And my reason for being not convinced is because of an upcoming news event which isn’t quite what it appears: the George Zimmerman trial.
On its face Zimmerman is a court case and a news event. But if you really think about it, it’s a lot more than that. It’s a court case with massive political and ideological overtones. While this will no doubt benefit HLN and CNN to some extent, it has the potential to really give MSNBC a shot in the arm. Zimmerman had already gone racial and political and those are subjects that, ideally, are right in MSNBC’s wheel house in ways that Jodi Arias’s trial could never be.
The open question is whether the possible gains I could foresee MSNBC getting as a result of a messy prolonged Zimmerman trial actually materialize. We shall see. In the meantime, MSNBC will ride out this ratings storm and hope for some political news it can take advantage of…
Filed under: MSNBC
