The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

MSNBC: How Long Until Phil Griffin Offers Keith Olbermann Fellatio?

Posted on | February 5, 2015 | 71 Comments

As much as we hated the King of Bombastic Liberal Self-Righteousness, it cannot be denied that MSNBC’s rating have spiraled downward since the network let Keith Olbermann walk out in 2011.

Hate him as much as you want — and I certainly do hate him — Olbermann was a franchise personality, and none of MSNBC’s moves since his departure have compensated for the loss of that evil bastard. Now we learn that a bloodbath is looming:

When President Obama was reelected in 2012, MSNBC was “leaning forward” and smiling wide as Obama 2.0 propelled it to record ratings and a firm grasp on the No. 2 spot in cable news.
Over two years later, the network has fallen backwards. January ratings revealed double-digit declines compared with January, 2014 in all ratings measurements. During the day, MSNBC was down 20 percent in viewers and 37 percent in the advertising-coveted 25-54 demo. In primetime, it fell 23 percent in viewers and 39 percent in demo. . . .
In January, [Chris Hayes] finished third behind Fox News’ “The O’Reilly Factor” and CNN’s “Anderson Cooper 360? in both total viewers and the demo. Among MSNBC shows, he finished third, behind Rachel Maddow and Chris Matthews. But Hayes’ struggles haven’t only impacted the 8 p.m. timeslot. Maddow’s 9 p.m. program has also slumped partly due to its weaker lead-in. In January, “The Rachel Maddow Show” was down 50 percent in the demo year over year. . . .
Ronan [Farrow] and Joy [Reid] — something has to change there,” another insider told TheWrap, adding that many within MSNBC believe one of the two — Farrow at 1 p.m. Reid at 2 p.m. — will see their shows canceled soon. The duo, who debuted on Feb. 24, 2014, have been major contributors to MSNBC’s daytime woes.
Last week, Farrow, 27, attracted just 26,000 viewers in the demo on Wednesday — finishing fourth behind HLN, CNN and Fox News. Reid’s program . . . has also struggled, partly because of the Farrow lead-in. On Thursday, it attracted just 36,000 demo viewers.

John Nolte at Breitbart comments:

Griffin is hoping to stop the bleeding when the dying patient is really MSNBC itself. The format of left-wing talk radio with pictures mixed with confirmation bias is tired and boring.
Morning Joe is in big ratings trouble. Ed Schultz is imploding. Since losing Chuck Todd to “Meet The Press” and replacing him with Jose Diaz-Balart, the impact of the “The Daily Rundown” on the day’s news cycle has vanished completely.
MSNBC is also dealing with CNN president Jeff Zucker’s decision to steal MSNBC viewers by turning his failing network even further to the political left than MSNBC.

Actually, I disagree with Nolte’s analysis of CNN. Most days recently, I’ve had my home office TV tuned to CNN and what they’re doing — very clever, actually — is picking one story (usually non-political) and hyping it hour after hour. Although wall-to-wall coverage of plane crashes and murders may seem dull to us political junkies, it has a wider appeal than the kind of fanatical partisanship that passes for “news” on MSNBC.

Grant that CNN is still a liberal operation, but they’re beating MSNBC with news, not politics. Or, to put it another way, MSNBC is losing with politics, not news. MSNBC has never been a news network. It’s a politics network and, six years into the Obama Age, the appetite for angry progressivism has been sufficiently sated that shuffling around personnel in the talking-head lineup isn’t going to fix what’s wrong.

What can Phil Griffin do, short of offering oral sex to Keith Olbermann in a desperate bid to bring back the old MSNBC magic?

  • Give Rachel Maddow the 8 p.m. ET slot. I profoundly despise Maddow, yet my abiding hatred for her doesn’t prevent me from recognizing her unique market value as The Second-Most Famous Lesbian on TV (obviously, Ellen Degeneres is first). Make her the “face” of MSNBC the way Olbermann was back in the day. This would be a high-risk move, but when your ratings are as bad as MSNBC’s, risk is necessary.
  • Make better use of NBC’s reporting assets. Instead of having your anchors do issues analysis and commentary with a bunch a pundits, start tapping into the local news-gathering mechanisms of NBC affiliates across the country. Look for stories out there in “flyover country” — Albuquerque, Akron, Allentown — that you can “nationalize” and rely on news reporting by NBC affiliates as a cheap and ready resource. Instead of having your anchors interviewing writers for Mother Jones or the Nation, have them doing live exchanges with an on-the-scene reporter in Wherever, USA, about an actual news story. Of course, your audience would prefer stories with a political angle, but the market for pure politics is finite.
  • Expand your travel budget. Wherever else you have to cut corners to do it, you’ve got to start sending your marquee talent out on the road more often. Not just for the quadrennial political conventions and other “event” situations, but also to interact with your audience where they live. Find an excuse, a pretext, to have Maddow spend a week broadcasting from San Francisco or Seattle or Miami. Send Chris Matthews to Boston, Chicago, Philadelphia. Employ online social media to gather live audiences for these broadcasts, and make autograph-signing sessions part of the schedule before and after the broadcasts. A small network can benefit by these exercises in building ‘brand loyalty” among core viewers.
  • Fire Ed Schultz. The World’s Angriest White Man has never been a real asset to MSNBC. He is a turn-off for your core audience of vegetarian bisexual anarchists with purple hair.

That’s my advice, Mr. Griffin. You’re welcome. Good luck.

The only alternative is to do whatever it takes to bring back Keith Olbermann, and I’m pretty sure that would involve you serving him breakfast in bed after he’s had his way with you.

“Affirmative consent,” the feminists call it.

 

Category: CNN, Media Bias, MSNBC

Comments

71 Responses to “MSNBC: How Long Until Phil Griffin Offers Keith Olbermann Fellatio?”

  1. DeadMessenger
    February 6th, 2015 @ 12:50 am

    I have no tact whatsoever, so I’m good with the sploady MSHindenburg approach.

  2. Daniel Freeman
    February 6th, 2015 @ 1:27 am

    Him: “I was a doctor in the war. When was your last breast exam? I can get that updated after the interview.”

    Her: “Oh excellent! So was I, and you look about ready for your next prostate exam.”

  3. Adjoran
    February 6th, 2015 @ 1:43 am

    Well, they would once the truck blew up.

  4. Adjoran
    February 6th, 2015 @ 1:46 am

    Haven’t read his contract. They can probably find a clause to make him leave without a buyout, maybe pay off the current year, if they want to. But NBC isn’t concerned about the truth or they would have fired him when he first started lying about the incident.

    The decision will be how much he is hurting them. If the pain is mild and fleeting, he stays. Now people are looking on his phony reporting from the scene in New Orleans after Katrina, so my guess is he doesn’t survive.

  5. Adjoran
    February 6th, 2015 @ 1:52 am

    It’s your dirty mind at work, that’s all. More likely they remember this”
    http://youtu.be/fi1S_r4AY9c

  6. Daniel Freeman
    February 6th, 2015 @ 1:53 am

    Alas and alack! I have been found out!

  7. Daniel Freeman
    February 6th, 2015 @ 2:09 am

    Well. That is unknowable, but I’m pretty sure that you would like the alternate reality anthology Other Worlds Than These, if not for its answers then at least for its questions. Which reminds me that I need to reserve it again through the library, so that I can try to finish it. Or maybe I should just buy it…

  8. Daniel Freeman
    February 6th, 2015 @ 2:30 am

    *facepalm* Well, there goes my attempt to make a Hindenburg joke with a Zeppelin. They’re very touchy about that subject, you know. I was trying to get the subject over with, so we wouldn’t have to dance around it all the time! Sheeze Louise. #acting

  9. DeadMessenger
    February 6th, 2015 @ 3:03 am

    You know, I don’t know where you stand spiritually. But I know where I stand. I used to be all sciencey, and Einstein-y, and Spinoza-y, on account of being an unspiritual “show me the controlled experiment” rationalist. But then God grabbed me by the neck and started showing and teaching me all sorts of supernatural and spiritual stuff, and now here I am. I’ve seen stuff that it’s not proper for me to talk about specifically, but things that God will teach each of us Himself if we humbly ask Him to. He teaches things abstractly…at least to me…then I have to interpret those things through the lens of my personal knowledge and experiences. In other words, just as a math major needs to have a foundation in algebra and trig to learn calculus, we all have to have a spiritual foundation to understand the spiritual things God teaches us individually.

    I really hope that you go to God and ask Him to teach you, and He does, because your mind will surely be well and truly blown. I’ve seen things that most people never see (because they don’t want to). And the awesome thing is, I know that you know that I’m not crazy. So I’m hoping that makes a curious guy like you even more curious. =)

  10. Daniel Freeman
    February 6th, 2015 @ 4:46 am

    That is true. I know that you’re not crazy, and you have made me more curious.

  11. Adobe_Walls
    February 6th, 2015 @ 12:35 pm

    Truth is only hard if one seeks it in order to validate a lie.

  12. Daniel Freeman
    February 6th, 2015 @ 4:01 pm

    Truth is only hard if one seeks it in order to validate a lie.

    But it doesn’t take any effort at all to miss the truth. All you have to do to be wrong is not seek it. Avoid the mental pain of rooting out the self-contradictions of your beliefs, and their contradictions with the evidence. Falsehood is easy.

  13. Adobe_Walls
    February 6th, 2015 @ 5:27 pm

    But that doesn’t make it hard to know, all one need do is see.

  14. theoldsargesays
    February 6th, 2015 @ 7:01 pm

    Oh yes.
    When Obama leaves office there’s going to be a lot of on air talent faces leaving MSNBC in order to ” move on to new and exciting endeavors”.
    I see only Chris Matthews remaining because he is the only true journalist working there. Hate the guy if you want to, but I think he’s a pretty fair guy. No doubt he leans to the left but I think the guy has principles and tells it like he sees it.
    The rest of their loser’s lineup are straight up shills for the Democratic Party and the progressive left. They’re all bought and paid for and have only managed their minute bit of fame because a black fellow is in the White House.
    I’ll admit that I’ll miss the Reverend All most of all. Sure he’s a POS, and if I was ever standing next to him at a bus stop I’d be fighting the urge to push him of the curb as the bus pulled up, but I find him entertaining. While watching him I have a second show running in my head the one where everything is the fault of the Joos, the Pigs and Crackers.
    Now you may say “But Sarge, that’s what he does now.”, but not really. I’m talking about the real Al Sharpton, the ” “if the Jews want to get it on, tell them to pin their yarmulkes back and come over to my house.”, Al Sharpton.

  15. theoldsargesays
    February 6th, 2015 @ 7:03 pm

    Reporters? MSNBC has reporters?
    I thought they were all just nerdy character assassins.

  16. K-Bob
    February 7th, 2015 @ 3:35 am

    You have a much higher tolerance for pain than me. Probably a requirement for that third stripe.

  17. theoldsargesays
    February 7th, 2015 @ 5:35 pm

    Pain? To paraphrase the late Peter O’Toole from Lawrence of Arabia ” Of course there’s pain, the thing is not minding the pain”.

    I watch MSNBC because…”know your enemy “…and make no mistake about it those people, the entire organization, are the enemy.

    I watch so as to keep up with the extent of their lies and then be able to point out the fraud and deception that they and those they represent will engage in in order to promote their failed ideology.

    Since every one of the MSNBC on air personalities, except Chris Matthews, are boldfaced liars whether by intent or by reason of insanity, I wish nothing but doom on the whole outfit and those who follow their mad ravings.

  18. Daniel Freeman
    February 8th, 2015 @ 7:14 am

    Maybe it seems clear to you, but I’ve been all over the map, back and forth. I have a lot of empathy for people who need to go through the process of figuring it out, because I’m one.

  19. Adobe_Walls
    February 8th, 2015 @ 10:30 am

    Why must you insist that that which is simple is complicated and that that which is obvious is some obscure mystery?

  20. Meanwhile, Over at the Ministry of Truth | Ed Driscoll
    February 9th, 2015 @ 2:51 pm

    […] ratings abyss, Stacy McCain ponders just how far network president Phil Griffin is prepared to go to um, re-inflate things. And speaking of NBC’s crazy sister network, it’s always a fun exercise to scan […]

  21. Inevitable: Hitler Discovers Brian Williams is a Serial Liar | Ed Driscoll
    February 10th, 2015 @ 2:58 pm

    […] Triumph of the Williams? Actually, just the opposite, but the punchline is a riot. (And possibly spot-on.) […]