Mediaite’s Tommy Christopher pens his obligatory “What’s wrong with MSNBC and how do you fix it article”. Everyone has to do at least one, and this was Tommy’s turn. Yes, that was a joke…but at the same time it kind of does feel like it doesn’t it?
One thing Christopher touches on is something Alex Pareene touched on a few days earlier, Morning Joe…
Part of the problem is with the network’s agenda-setting Morning Joe, which Pareene identifies as a too-political ratings drain, but which makes up for its poor ratings by wielding outsize influence with DC politicians and media figures. While host Joe Scarborough has been great on the issue of guns in the past, his conservative sensibility has led him to focus on political intrigue that hasn’t resonated with audiences, which sets the tone for MSNBC’s entire dayside lineup. There needs to be a little more editorial diversity on that program, and perhaps a reliably liberal presence on the show’s panel of regulars to go with the ostensible agnostics who currently populate it.
Pareene’s article apparently got under Joe Scarborough’s skin because Scarborough took to Twitter to rebut Pareene by pointing out Morning Joe’s ratings for May.
Congratulations to the Morning Joe team! More people watched Morning Joe in May than CNN, Headline News, CNBC and Fox Business. Way to go!!
Scarborough has a point. Morning Joe is the show that forced numerous talent shuffles on CNN’s American Morning and eventually drove the show off the air. It’s the show that killed American Morning’s successor, Early Start. It’s the show that CBS wanted to put on the air instead of what it has put on the air. Yes, it does wield outsize influence in the Beltway. It can get guests on its air that the rest of MSNBC would kill for the chance to have a crack at, save Mitchell Reports and Daily Rundown who carry their own D.C. cachet that they have little trouble getting guests.
But does Morning Joe set the agenda for the rest of MSNBC as Christopher argues? That’s debatable. Morning Joe’s agenda, whatever it is, differs markedly with what you get on 90% of MSNBC’s programming the rest of the day. So I’m not certain how you can have Morning Joe set an agenda if the majority of rest of your programming follows its own agenda? Given where MSNBC is at right now, I would actually argue that Now is the program that sets the agenda for (most of) the rest of MSNBC’s programming for the day. It’s MSNBC’s first show of the day that lurches hard left and makes no apologies for doing so (I suppose Noah Rothman might say I’m one hour late and that Thomas Roberts’ hour is the one where it all starts and there is something to that but Roberts’ hour is nowhere near as consistent about it as Now is).
I already said plenty yesterday about Chris Hayes show and how we can’t be making judgements yet, though plenty of people are. But Christopher does address the subject of 8pm from a different angle…
Even in a perfect world, without any external pressure from the news cycle, this would seem to be a risky maneuver with a dubious payoff. Ordinarily, you would want to give a brand-new show a strong lead-in, not rely on that brand-new show to lead off your entire primetime lineup. The knives have come out for Chris Hayes, which, like Pareene, baffles me, because there is no cable news personality who bends over backwards to give the opposing viewpoint air the way Hayes does. Maybe it’s the glasses. The show has delivered on its promise, substantively, but it has always seemed, to me, to be a better match for 10 pm, a space that would have also provided All In with a handy lead-in.
Lawrence O’Donnell‘s show, an established ratings brand like The Ed Show, would have seemed a more natural match for eight o’clock. The host’s pugnacious style and the show’s emphasis on news cycle sizzle make it a better fit for the time period. You’d have to change the name of the show, and tweak the format, but O’Donnell was better positioned to plug into that crucial slot than a completely untested property.
No he wasn’t and history shows he wasn’t. People forget that O’Donnell was the one who was tapped to fill 8pm after Olbermmann severed ties with MSNBC (and vise versa). O’Donnell couldn’t hold his numbers and began to undermine Maddow’s numbers…something Hayes’ show is being accused of now.
More ominously, the falloff for Mr. O’Donnell seems to be affecting MSNBC’s biggest name, Rachel Maddow. Her audience dropped 15 percent this year, to 245,000 from 289,000. She still beats Piers Morgan on CNN in the 9 p.m. hour, but his show has improved 18 percent over Larry King’s ratings last year, with 193,000 viewers to Mr. King’s 164,000.
MSNBC moved O’Donnell out at 8 and put Ed Schultz in. So I do not see why MSNBC would tempt repeating history by putting O’Donnell back at 8.
It all comes back to 8pm. Regardless of what’s happening with the rest of dayside. Regardless of how many breaking news stories or court cases there are. Regardless of whether Morning Joe really impacts the rest of MSNBC’s day or not. It all comes back to 8pm. And by “8pm”, I mean it all comes back to Keith Olbermann.
That’s what this is really all about when you think about it; MSNBC’s inability to replace Olbermann with someone who can be as big a star and pull in as big numbers as he did is not only what is keeping MSNBC from fulfilling Phil Griffin’s dream of taking on FNC but is also giving Jeff Zucker reason to hope when by rights he should have none. MSNBC has had two and a half years and they still can’t do it. Lawrence O’Donnell couldn’t do it. Ed Schultz couldn’t do it. Chris Hayes so far hasn’t done it.
Rachel Maddow is the biggest star on MSNBC. She is the brand in primetime. But, if I were to use an astronomy based analogy here, she would be Neptune to Olbermann’s Jupiter. Both are gas giant planets but one is just so much bigger than the other. If she were to be plugged in at 8 she too wouldn’t get his numbers. Olbermann was the ultimate lead off hitter for MSNBC, as O’Reilly is for FNC. The people that have come since just haven’t been able to do what he did in the ratings. And they haven’t come close either.
You can make adjustments on dayside. You can cover more news. You can turn your former news anchors back into news anchors (though some will have a harder time shedding their non-news anchor images than others). What you can’t do is create a superstar just by plugging them into a timeslot. Olbermann created himself. Maddow created herself. That why when you get a superstar you hold on to them for dear life. MSNBC didn’t want to hold on to Olbermann anymore and Olbermann, frankly, didn’t want to be held on to. It has been paying for that ever since. It will continue to pay for it until it can get someone who can deliver numbers like Olbermann could. If it can…
Filed under: MSNBC
