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

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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.

 

71 comments

  3. Minneapolis would be a great place for them to do a roadshow from. The Radical Chic is quite big there.

    Also, these make sense, so expect rejection.

    A TV in one of the better places to eat in my student union has frequently been tuned to MSNBC. It makes soaps preferable.

  5. I actually tangled with Olbermann on Twitter once (he’s really terrible at comebacks) but I howled to bring him back when MSNBC fired him. He served as a reminder of why we didn’t become liberals when we grew up. “TURN YOUR KEY, SIR!”

    “(Maddow is the) Second-Most Famous Lesbian on TV”

    So who’s the most famous TV on TV?

  6. I suspect they’ll have to think way farther out of the box than some of your suggestions. For instance; on a random schedule bring a couple Ferguson protesters to throw rocks at Chris Hayes during his show.

  8. Keith Olberdouche, Ricky Madcow, Tingles Matthews and the Wrong Reverend Al walk into a bar…stop me if you’ve heard this one.
    I have to point out a textual error in your piece. You talk of sending MSLSD’s “marquee talent” on the road. What is this “marquee talent “of which you speak?

  9. What I’ll never quite grasp is why they simply don’t *try* this by ceding, say, the time slot Ronan Farrow is in to a righty and just seeing what happens–it isn’t as if ratings could get much worse.

    (And I don’t mean half-assed, moderate squish righty, I mean just to the left of Rush/Beck/Levin righty–if you’re going to do this, you have to DO IT(TM).)

    PS And yes, I know, I know: they won’t do it because they are true believers, but man, you’d think someone at the office, somewhere, might try to explain this in small words, slowly, to Griffin.)

  10. Oh, I don’t know… These talking heads must still live in the real world, so they really can’t be all that delusional and still function independently as human beings, can they?

  12. The difficulty with solving MSNBC’s problems is that they’ve tied their fate to that of the Democratic Party, and the D brand is sinking fast. It’ll take at least a few more years of miserableness on their part before they change that at all, I figure.

  13. Pass the Popcorn!

    Still, Brian Williams lies (repeatedly) but will undoubtably stay and get his 10 million a year. Olbermann will likely remain in sports. If MSNBC was smart they would clean house and hire some conservatives to go head to head with Fox.

  15. I haven’t watched it in over 10 years. There are time wasters that you feel good about, and those you don’t. Them that knows, knows.

  17. 1. It’s something like “Middle America”.

    2. Heronner da Mayor is going to be unveiling a plaque celebrating the first gay weddings their in August.

    3. I live about an hour and a half away.

  18. Well first one must define function.
    Where did you get the idea they live in the real world? I seriously doubt their concept of what is ”bias” is any less delusional than their reporting.

  20. I have netflix we watch a lot of really old stuff. I can’t remember the last time I saw a political ad or saw a commercial

  21. They’re just hanging on until the emperor finally leaves office , and no longer requires their complete self-sacrifice to defend him from his self-made ruin.

    Once a Republican takes office, they’ll experience a new lease on life as they assume the mantle of “journaist.”

  23. They don’t live in the real world: Rachel Maddow earns is paid $7 million a year, and has a net worth of $20 million. She has two homes, one in Massachusetts, and one in New York City.

    The lovely Miss Maddow has made it on personal intelligence and talent and hard work, the things that conservatives value, but somehow thinks that conservatism is wrong. She is so far out of the real world, in all of her experiences, that she has no conception of what the real world is; maybe she thinks it’s the MTV show.

  26. They might have thought that they were doing that with Joe Scarborough. Actually, though, the right person to try that with would be Mitt Romney, and try to carve out a new niche with moderate Republicans. Might not work, but it couldn’t hurt to try.

  27. Leaving aside any lingering resentment Romney may harbor against the Democrat Media, I can’t imagine what incentive Romney would have for doing this.

  28. That might work long term but first they have to get through the next two years. According to your theory, Hillary winning the election would be a disaster for them, now there’s a conundrum.

  32. If MSNBC wanted to really do well, it’s simple.
    Fire the reporters and producers. Keep the technical staff. Then hire new talent…and go to the RIGHT of Fox News. That’s not too terribly hard.
    Also, do real investigative reporting. FNC’s biggest weakness is that they feature rival talking heads. There are a lot of really interesting stories out there, especially if you don’t shackle yourself to the 5-minute rival sound bite format.
    Go right, go deep…or go out of business.

  33. Absolutely! The best thing for MSNBC’s ratings would be a GOP president, the more conservative the better.

  38. I’m hoping that MSNBC runs in the opposite direction Stacey laid out here. Implosion …. the sooner the better.

  40. Truth is hard. There is no contradiction in being sane and wrong — or even sane, smart and wrong. Reality can only correct our wrongness when we stumble against it, so if you carefully avoid ever putting your beliefs to the test…

    ETA: I highly recommend Influence by Robert Cialdini for a fascinating explanation of cognitive biases.

  41. I’ll add to that: the Democratic, liberal brand is particularly failing with just the people the network cannot afford to lose, more affluent white people. When “they” talk about the “advertising-coveted 25-54 demo(graphic),” they are really talking about “advertising-coveted 25-54 white demo(graphic),” because these are the people who have the disposable income to buy the advertised products.

    Of course, they can’t actually say that, because that’d be raaaaacist!

  42. 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.

    Just so. People who hated Bush might tune in to hear about why they should hate him even more, but with Barry in the Oval Office (God help us), they have been able to go back to listening to the voices in their heads.

    Clearly, what MSNBC needs is… for a Republican to win the White House.

  48. Awesome video! But I respectfully disagree with your conclusion. The brain is like muscles, that have different potentials and get stronger with exercise. I assert that the pursuit of truth might be simple, but if so it is in the same sense of weightlifting: simple, but hard.

  50. If I may, I’d like to offer another perspective.

    In the video, what if Klaven was right, and Whittle was wrong? It is true that Jesus said that He is “the” truth. He did not say that He is “a” truth. Spiritual truth is the truth. And moral truth is the practical application of spiritual truth, and is a subset of it. Both are absolutes.

    What we see, in our reality, as factual physical laws and truths are nothing more than probabilities. A God who can speak the universe into existence can speak it, or any subset of it, out of existence at any moment. So that when we say that anything is going to happen in the physical world, what we really mean is that, barring any known or unknown counter influence, a given thing will probably happen as predicted…as far as we know.

    I mean, we already know that the physical laws that apply to our macro universe do not apply to the quantum universe, and 100+ years ago, who saw that coming? Who knows what sort of additional weirdness is out there? We know that gravity is a characteristic of space-time, but it’s also a force, and it might be a particle, too.

    I guess what I’m saying is that maybe the physical world we live in is not true reality. Maybe it’s holographic, or something like a computer simulation, and the programmer is God. And the spiritual realm in which He lives is true reality.

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