“Fixing” MSNBC…

Mediaite’s Joe Concha offers up a plan to fix MSNBC’s ratings woes.

MSNBC has now finished in fourth place for two straight months.

Being in the Top 4 of most categories is usually a good thing. But when the horse race consists of, well…four horses…that may a problem.

Conservative media, of course, is reporting the news with the same glee anytime the letters I-R-S are mentioned in consecutive order.

After all, the Lean Forward network—now at a seven-year ratings low– is as loathed by the far right as much as Fox News is despised by the far left. As a result, it’s schadenfraude on steroids from Newsbusters to Breitbart to Drudge.

But to use this column to simply point out details around the obvious would be a tedious, repetitive exercise (See: MSNBC is struggling mightily, here are the numbers, film at 11). So instead, let’s use this space to explore how to fix the network’s programming issues via unsolicited (and humble) advice to Mr. Phil Griffin, MSNBC President.

Some of it has merit but too much of it is just plain silly. Here’s why…

First of all, any fix of MSNBC’s ratings problems has to be preceeded by accurate analysis of what is causing the underlying condition otherwise your solution thought exercise winds up being nothing more than throwing things up against the wall and seeing what sticks.

MSNBC is caught in the middle of a perfect storm of events right now. Breaking News has dominated politics the past two months which has worked against MSNBC’s brand, political headlines are depressing for the home team it is catering to, and there’s a new show host MSNBC is trying to break in at 8pm during all of this. Any one of these things could do temporary short term or more long term damage to MSNBC’s ratings by themselves. But combined together they have inflicted tremendous ratings damage. But here’s the quandary for Phil Griffin and MSNBC which I have no doubt they are currently wrestling with: which of these problems should be the ones they are addressing?

You can’t take them all on and you wouldn’t want to. That’s a panic move and that’s something that is anathema to Griffin. His entire presidency and MSNBC’s success has been based on an incremental approach building from the ground up. Plus, MSNBC’s problems are all intertwined and that just adds more confusion about what needs to be attacked.

Let’s take 8pm since that’s what Concha and just about everyone else is looking at. A lot of people weren’t sure Hayes was a good fit for 8pm. I wasn’t sure. I’m still not sure. The only thing I am sure of is it’s all but impossible to judge Hayes’ abilities at 8pm under current conditions. With news breaking constantly the past couple of months, that works against Hayes. With Obama scandals breaking out all over the place, that works against Hayes. I want to see Hayes have a chance to get in to a rhythm first before I draw any conclusions. That hasn’t happened. Hell, it hasn’t had the opportunity to happen. How could it given what’s been going on? Hayes may have to be moved ultimately, but the current situation is a poor barometer for making a decision.
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But even if Hayes had to be moved, moving Maddow and O’Donnell forward an hour, as Concha proposes, is a non-starter.

Chris Hayes…the 8:00 PM host who may ultimately be mentioned in the same breath as The Chevy Chase Show. As you may have heard, Hayes’ numbers have been abysmal (the lowest ratings MSNBC has seen at 8:00 PM since 2006; recently beaten by Bill O’Reilly by a 10-to-1 margin). Consequently, Maddow’s once-respectable ratings have taken a direct hit partially due to the small audiences Hayes is handing her.

If Hayes is the problem Concha makes him out to be, slotting Maddow in at 8 probably won’t make that much of a difference. Hayes and Maddow are two peas from the same pod. When Hayes used to substitute for Maddow it was all but impossible to notice much of a stylistic difference. If going from Ed Schultz to Chris Hayes was the equivalent of going from a hot rod to a sedan, going from Hayes to Maddow is the equivalent of going from one sedan to another sedan. If Hayes low key wonky delivery isn’t working at 8, what is to suggest that Maddow’s low key wonky delivery will work there?

No. If MSNBC has to make a move at 8, it needs to move to a firebrand. It had one there in Olbermann. It had another, albeit more unstable model, in Schultz. Both have done better than Hayes at that time (though I have questions whether either would be doing as well right now given current conditions).

The problem is MSNBC has cleared the deck of all its firebrands. The guy who should have gotten the job was Cenk Uygur but that ship has sailed, run against the rocks, and sunk. Who else is out there that could make a dent? More importantly, is there anyone out there Phil Griffin would take a flyer on? Remember, Griffin preaches incremental-ism. He brings prospective talents on as other shows’ guests and sees how they do. Then if he likes what he saw he gives them a shot as a guest host. Then he evaluates whether to give them a show. That’s essentially how it worked for Maddow, O’Donnell, Hayes, Kornacki, Wagner, and Harris-Perry. I can’t see him circumventing that process to get in a firebrand quick.

Concha then moves from the world of the non-starter to the world of the ridiculous…

So what to do with 10:00 PM?

Two options…

The first is to simply go the Shawshank route. Lockup, MSNBC’s prison documentary series, currently gets better numbers for MSNBC on weekend nights than the aforementioned weekday primetime lineup. And since it’s simply a matter of finding a tape in a vault and hitting a play button, it’s a cheap and easy alternative.

Or better yet…

Put together a compelling Best of MSNBC Today 60-minute highlight program to run at 10:00 PM.

What were the top sound bites, confrontations, analysis, and features from Morning Joe to The Cycle to Hardball to Maddow to O’Donnell? Here it is…all in one neat package. And with some creative editing and a steady host to steer the ship, this would be a great way for MSNBC viewers to catch whatever they missed that day (and for pennies to produce).

Host: Contessa Brewer, still a member of the NBC family via a local New York affiliate.

Both of these solutions are equally horrible for different reasons. Going back to crime tape would be too huge a public defeat for Griffin to admit. Whatever positive press MSNBC still had would end instantly.

A wrap up show is also silly. The one person who could have pulled it off is now working on NBC at 9am. Brewer? As much as I thought she got a raw deal there’s no way Griffin takes a Mulligan on her. He already took one with Chris Jansing. He won’t take another. Besides, a tape wrap up show goes completely against MSNBC’s primetime brand (so does crime for that matter). If Griffin attempted either he might as well admit that his branding idea of “smart political POV analysis = ratings” is unworkable. It may yet come to that but Griffin isn’t going to make it easily come to that.

Where Concha and I are more in line is in regards to Hardball…

Still, giving Matthews two hours of programming per day (a live 5:00PM show and a repeat at 7:00 PM) is the definition of insanity (doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result). For example, in the key 25-54 demo, Matthews recently hasn’t even drawn 100,000 viewers in either his 5:00 or 7:00 PM slot. To put that number into context, Fox’s The Five breaks 300,000 in the same demo regularly at 5:00 PM. And to make matters worse, May wasn’t exactly a quiet news month: there was still plenty of political meat to chew on (albeit, Obama-unfriendly meat) via big controversies surrounding the IRS, AP/James Rosen/Eric Holder and Benghazi.

But Matthews struggling to attract a big audience is nothing new, which begs the question: Why does Griffin continue to repeat a show that doesn’t perform?

This is a sore point for me. For years I have railed about double slotting Matthews with a repeat show at 7pm. But why single out Matthews for “struggling to attract a big audience”? What about Bashir? Wagner? Mitchell? The rest of dayside? Everyone is down.

The reason Griffin keeps Matthews on twice is because the second show usually outperforms the first considerably but the first show is the live show. Moving Matthews to 7pm only means Matthews working late every night because 7pm would now be live, something I guess he doesn’t like doing. Moving Hayes to 5pm might be a solution though it does mean Hayes will get pummeled by The Five. Matthews can take the pummeling; he’s nearer the end of his career than the beginnning. Hayes can’t. Or, rather, Hayes can’t afford to…not after having been shown to be ineffective at a key time period (which is what moving him off 8pm will do). Realistically, Hayes…if he is to be moved…needs to go somewhere where there isn’t a 10 ton gorilla in the same timeslot so he can start over and build again.

None of this is what I would preach. I would preach patience. Things need to settle down on the breaking news front in order to see what’s going on with Hayes’ show. That still leaves Obama’s scandals to vex MSNBC but those at least can be spun by the hosts (how successfully is another question). You can’t spin breaking news. And breaking news is of no benefit to your political POV analysis brand.

But Chris Hayes can’t be blamed for the rest of dayside being down and neither can Matthews. For that, take a look at what Olivia Nuzzi argues in The Huffington Post…

With the inclusion of Maddow, MSNBC’s primetime lineup consisted of “Countdown with Keith Olbermann,” followed by “The Rachel Maddow Show,” followed by a replay of “Countdown,” followed by a replay of “Maddow.” Expenses were low, and both shows could be counted on to beat CNN in their own live time slots and do the same or nearly with their reruns at no additional cost. The network boasted two successful progressive shows, but two successful programs does not necessarily a successful network make. And when management decided they had to have a third progressive program at 10pm, the cloth was suddenly cut three ways and it just kept getting smaller. With the implementation of “Now With Alex Wagner,” “PoliticsNation with Al Sharpton” and “Melissa Harris-Perry,” it was no longer necessary for viewers to watch the 8pm show or the 9pm show, because they could get the same thing if they watched on the weekend or during the afternoon or at 10pm. As a source told me, “the draw for them [MSNBC] was that people were tired of only seeing two things on TV: an all right-wing channel like Fox or something like CNN where they were afraid of being branded any one thing. The value of MSNBC was they were presenting something different. It’s not different anymore – it’s now repetitive, it’s formulaic, it’s now as ass-kissing as Fox is.”

We’ll ignore the snarky elbow at the end of the anonymous source’s quote. Everything else is spot on. Phil Griffin is great at spotting trends and running with them. POV analysis is what Griffin has put all over MSNBC (I documented how it went down in excruciating detail here). News has been gutted. So now not only do you have a network where POV analysis talks about the same things all day long from morning to primetime but the POV analysis brand has been drilled into viewers skulls to such an extent that they instinctively tune MSNBC out when breaking news breaks. Why watch Maddow on the streets of Boston when you have two veteran journalist newsmen in Shepard Smith or Anderson Cooper to turn to?

More Nuzzi…

As Countdown had sacrificed its guest host to create Maddow’s show, MSNBC repeated the move with its next guest host, Lawrence O’Donnell, so he could do his own show at 10. In the same time fram management also tried to expand not just later but earlier. Ed Schultz and then Cenk Uygur and finally Al Sharpton were brought in to do 6 PM shows. A variety of daytime hosts – ranging from Martin Bashir to Alex Wagner – were given hours and expected to take the same political line as the weeknight hosts. Weekend programming, long an afterthought, soon had liberal shows with Chris Hayes and Melissa Harris-Perry, and more recently Steve Kornacki.

It may have seemed a natural expansion, but it all may have spread MSNBC’s “products” too thin. The urgency of ‘having’ to watch the 8 or 9 PM weeknight shows was affected by the simple reality that they were no longer the only places to see any left-of-center products. And staffing them began to resemble the old premise of the network sitcom spin-off of the ’70s and ’80s. “Maude” was spun off from “All In The Family” and “Good Times” was spun off “Maude” and then “The Jeffersons” was spun off “All In The Family” and “Checking In” was spun off from the “Jeffersons” and then “Gloria” was spun off from “All In The Family” and nearly a quarter of a century later CBS was still trying it by spinning off a show called “704 Hauser” in which the only connection to Archie Bunker was that both shows were set in the same house.

I have felt kind of an “Entertainment division programming” aspect to what Griffin has been doing with MSNBC for a while now. As more and more POV analysis shows popped up at the expense of dayside news programming it felt an awful lot like the kind of series franchise expansion we get on broadcast TV where you get four CSIs, three Law and Orders, etc, etc…

MSNBC essentially lives and dies by political news relevance now. All the networks rely on politics to some extent to keep viewers but MSNBC has gone…All In…to coin a phrase and make a pun…on politics so it can’t adjust as easily as FNC and CNN can. 80% of the time that probably isn’t an issue for them. But we are currently in an extended section of the 20% of the time it is an issue for them.

MSNBC has been awfully quiet. Too quiet. I’m actually surprised I haven’t seen anyone try to get Griffin on the record about what he thinks is going on and why. Maybe they have but they’ve been rebuffed? Whatever the case, this has created a situation where speculation is allowed to run rampant without anyone from the network out there to try and at least blunt some of the commentary. Griffin allowing Hayes to twist in the wind like this is inexcusable. If Griffin really believes in Hayes and his show at 8pm he needs to get out there and push it and him, now more than ever. The silence is deafening and it portends nothing good.