Buzfeed’s Dorsey Shaw is on a bit of a roll. Last week he was first to get tipped off about the leaked animations for The Kelly File. This week he’s the first to note that Morning Joe is no longer being sponsored by Starbucks.
An MSNBC spokesperson confirmed via email that the formal partnership ended several weeks ago, adding; “MSNBC and Starbucks had a successful partnership for more than four years and we’re looking forward to working on new projects together in the future.”
It may be nothing. It may be that the sponsorship ran its course. It got renewed once but four years is a long time for an umbrella sponsorship to last. So this may be nothing. But that theory is boring so let’s look at the exciting. What if there’s more to it than that? What if it’s a sign of something? What if it’s tied to the possibility that Joe and Mika won’t renew with MSNBC when their contracts are up? We haven’t heard any reports of them renewing and, though I don’t know when their contracts are up, you have to figure that end date is coming up given that the last contract deal was quite a while ago.
Do I think it’s a possibility? Well, I’ll put it this way…I think it’s less of a possibility than it was a year or two ago. The reason being that their TV options are not what they could have been a year or two ago. In the intervening time, CBS, which repeated rumors suggested wanted Joe and Mika bad but couldn’t get them away from MSNBC, built a morning show around Charlie Rose and Norah O’Donnell. And CNN, which was in dire need of a morning reboot, just did a morning reboot. Joe and Mika could still bolt MSNBC…but to where? I don’t see any good options.
So, though it’s certainly more enticing to entertain the idea that the Starbuck’s sponsorship end could possibly be tied to uncertainty over Morning Joe’s future, I’m afraid that the most likely explanation is the most boring; the deal had run its natural course.
Filed under: MSNBC
