I’ve been meaning to get to this but hadn’t had the time. A couple of weeks ago The Hollywood Reporter’s Marissa Guthrie interviewed Pat Fili-Krushel who weighed in on something Phil Griffin said a few months ago…
Do MSNBC’s ratings dips during slow political news cycles worry you?
[MSNBC president] Phil Griffin and I have talked a lot about how it’s a balancing act: Viewers are coming for MSNBC’s personalities, and CNN definitely gets the bump during breaking news. But we have to play in both spaces. When Phil was quoted as saying we don’t do breaking news, I know if he could have [taken it back], he would have.
No, as bad as it looked optically to Fili-Krushel Phil Griffin was absolutely right and I commend him for his intellectual honesty in this matter. When you go all in on progressive political themed TV for the vast majority of your programming, there is absolutely no way you can straddle both the world you created (progressive political themed TV) and breaking news and expect it to work. At least given the way MSNBC’s programming is currently structured.
The viewers have become acclimated to MSNBC’s progressive political TV branding. They don’t tune in to see breaking news on MSNBC and they don’t necessarily believe the network can credibly pull it off when it’s stocked to the rafters with progressive talent lacking objective hard journalism bonafides. There’s a huge news credibility gap at play here and the viewers so far have refused to cross it. They go elsewhere. They go to CNN. They go to FNC. They don’t tune in to MSNBC for breaking news. The ratings are reflecting this over and over this year.
That doesn’t mean it’s still not possible to make it work but it would call for a course correction I don’t see Griffin making. The model here would be along the lines of FNC which has a news division that’s separate from its stronger ideological personalities and the viewers know the difference. MSNBC would have to re-establish something it spent the past few years deconstructing (with NBC’s blessing apparently)…a news presence. One hour here, one hour there…doesn’t cut it. You need a solid block of news spanning many hours of the day and you need to be consistently aggressive in your news coverage. You have to be willing to sacrifice your big prorgressive stars for straight news anchors when called for. That’s how CNN does it. That’s how FNC does it. And it’s worked well for them. That’s the only way MSNBC has any chance of re-establishing itself as a cable news channel with a progressive wing and not the current model of a progressive channel with a smattering of news people.
I just can’t see Griffin doing that. So expect MSNBC to continue to flounder in the ratings when big breaking non-political news stories hit the fan and its competitors ratings skyrocket.
Oh, and there’s this too…
He also recently hired Ronan Farrow, who doesn’t have a lot of TV experience.
In television, you create your own stars. We’re not going to throw him right up on his own show — it will be gradual. But it’s no surprise that news skews a little older. Part of it is trying to appeal to a broader swath of people. Ronan can go from Syria to Kim Kardashian and be credible, and he’s got a huge social following. He’s great for MSNBC, and I think there are places where we can use him on NBC News as well.
“Ronan can go from Syria to Kim Kardashain and be credible”
Oh, really? Given he’s almost completely unproven as a TV news asset I find that statement highly questionable based on the (lack of) evidence at hand…
Filed under: MSNBC
