MSNBC Source: 'The Goal Is To Move Away From Left-wing TV'

[babylonsister]

http://crooksandliars.com/2015/02/msnbc-source-goal-move-away-left-wing-tv

MSNBC Source: 'The Goal Is To Move Away From Left-wing TV'

By Susie Madrak

Since facts do indeed have a liberal bias, the programming solution was never to prop up a bunch of liberal figureheads. I would have settled for actual news coverage that didn't embrace "the view from nowhere," as media critic Jay Rosen so famously put it. Both sides don't do it, and false equivalence is not journalism. Take a side! Just allow it to be dictated by actual facts, not some hack from a right-wing think tank. Disclose potential conflicts, don't let your news anchors collect fat checks for speaking to groups they're supposes to cover.

It's really not as complicated as you think -- unless, of course, the real goal is to push the ownership's corporate agenda:

As its afternoon shows hosted by Ronan Farrow and Joy Reid are canceled due to poor ratings, MSNBC is reportedly planning to replace Chris Hayes with Rachel Maddow.

It was hardly a surprise Thursday when ratings-challenged MSNBC announced the cancellation of the poor-performing afternoon programs hosted by Ronan Farrow and Joy Reid after less than a year, with veteran news anchor Thomas Roberts stepping in to preside over the two-hour block from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m.

Until a permanent replacement is named for Roberts’s 5:30 a.m. program Way Too Early, the 6 a.m. Morning Joe hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski will temporarily take up the slack by starting a half-hour earlier. But according to knowledgeable sources at the Comcast-owned cable network, Thursday’s moves were only the opening salvo in a wider programming shakeup.

In the relatively near term, two well-placed sources predicted to The Daily Beast, Chris Hayes will be relieved of his weak-performing 8 p.m. show All In, to be replaced by the current 9 p.m. host of The Rachel Maddow Show, while a talent search is currently underway to fill the prime-time slot to be vacated by Maddow. An MSNBC spokesperson—who tried put a happy face on the demotions with talk of prime-time specials and “multiplatform” national reporting for the still-employed Farrow and Reid--declined to comment on the Hayes-Maddow scenario.

In the longer term, these sources said, the Rev. Al Sharpton—a larger than life personality who attracts a 35 percent African-American audience but continues, after 3½ years of nightly practice, to wrestle with his Teleprompter--could eventually be moved from his weeknight 6 p.m. slot to a weekend time period, as MNSBC President Phil Griffin attempts to reverse significant viewership slides by accentuating straight news over left-leaning opinion.

“Everybody in the food chain from top to bottom understands that the Olbermann era is over,” said an MSNBC source, referring to the glory days during George W. Bush’s administration when incendiary liberal Keith Olbermann regularly attracted a million viewers—many of them seeking refuge from White House and Republican talking points.The MSNBC source said, “Going left was a brilliant strategy while it lasted and made hundreds of millions of dollars for Comcast, but now it doesn’t work any more...The goal is to move away from left-wing TV.”

[randys1]

1. Hire Randi Rhodes...So the tiny teensie bit of actual truth to be found on the TV is going to be cut

again, I see

[Enrique]

2. they're cancelling the Noam Chomsky Show?

[annabanana]

34. really . . . . .

"left wing" my ass

[ananda]

42. Exactly!

When has MSNBC ever moved towards leftwing tv?

[InAbLuEsTaTe]

57. Been moving away for years. Only a few shows left that are watchable.

[MohRokTah]

3. The only way to fight the truth is to silence the truth.

I saw this coming miles away.

[obxhead]

4. Here's a novel idea....

Stop picking sides and just report the news.

[KamaAina]

5. "while a talent search is currently underway to fill the prime-time slot to be vacated by Maddow"

I hear Jon Stewart will soon be available. Remember, they offered him Press the Meat but he turned them down.

[obxhead]

8. Stewart has done his duty.

I hope he retires in style, only doing fun things for the rest of his life. I think the day to day grind of supporting the corporate overlords of MSNBC would put a stink on hbim that could never be washed off.

[KamaAina]

11. Well, then, I'm available

[House of Roberts]

6. They're never going to beat Fox for the right wing viewers.

When breaking news happens, CNN's ratings go up but nobody extra tunes in to watch MSNBC.

They had a niche catering to the left, and every move away from that has cost them viewers. Pretty soon, they'll be competing with Headline News and Nancy Grace, and be getting their ass kicked.

[hollysmom]

7. I don't believe for a minute liberal news is over - they are just

gearing up for lying in the election.

[liberal from boston]

67. MSNBC

I agree--IMO, in the presidential 2012 campaign MSNBC was a major factor in President Obama's re-election. Lawrence & Rachel's ratings were beating Fox News. The corporate media wants a Republican President & wants to eliminate MSNBC liberal reporting to obtain their corrupt goal. Comcast has now removed MSNBC from basic cable which means you have to pay more. Liberal voices will not be allowed on corporate owned media.

[aint_no_life_nowhere]

9. My goal is to move away from MSNBC

Their political insight is great but their news coverage is mediocre compared to channels like CNN. If their political commentary moves away from leaning to their left, there's no reason to turn them on for me.

[TheNutcracker]

10. Cut your cords!!! Get a Roku, Amazon, or Apple box and watch Free Speech TV and many others.

they are the pundits that MSNBC has on their shows......stop paying for propaganda, that is going to get worse for the people.

[freebrew]

12. Left-Wing???

There was never anything remotely similar to anything 'Left-wing' on MSNBC, unless you count the partial 'truths' told by very few of the hosts.

It's like Rahm calling liberals the 'professional left'. Idiocy abounds.

[m-lekktor]

20. yeah that gave me a chuckle as well.nt

[brooklynite]

13. UNREC

the real goal is to push the ownership's corporate agenda:

There is nothing in this story that suggests that MSNBC's ownership wants to push a corporate agenda. In fact the answer seems to be rather simple: cash.

Going left was a brilliant strategy while it lasted and made hundreds of millions of dollars for Comcast, but now it doesn’t work any more

[arcane1]

53. Isn't that the corporate agenda? Not news and information, but profit?

[fredamae]

14. MSNBC is Feeding Me Bull Shit

“Everybody in the food chain from top to bottom understands that the Olbermann era is over,” said an MSNBC source, referring to the glory days during George W. Bush’s administration when incendiary liberal Keith Olbermann regularly attracted a million viewers"

It was Olbermann speaking Truth to Power that drew a Million viewers- Idiots! If MSNBC put Olbermann back on air? I suspect that hour would Still Attract a million viewers..Today!

I'm guessing MSNBC Knew they were in Ratings trouble, imo-After they Fired him! I suspect his Firing had More to do with the CorpoOwners becoming concerned over the Attraction To his message.

IMO-This is all bull shit to try and hide the fact "our" voices are being shut down by the Reactionary's.

[spanone]

15. sounds like they're going for the fox crowd. just make it the scarborough channel & be done with it.

[Paladin]

16. If MSNBC loses Rachel Maddow on weeknights, they lose me.

But if MSNBC wants to move Chris Matthews and his spittle-flecked war pimping to weekends, along with Al Sharpton, it wouldn't upset me in the least.

[Exhibit A]

21. +1, n/t

[Adrahil]

51. It could free her up to do the Daily Show.... n/t

[summerschild]

17. I'll gladly go to Aljazeera. Or stick to on-line sources.

I will not consume right wing crap.

[herding cats]

18. A news channel which just reports the news without spin would be a refreshing change.

Imagine it, real fact based news and hard hitting investigative journalism without any conflicting personalities or politically biased commentary. What a wonderful world this would be.

It's a crying shame that's not considered a marketable concept.

[renate]

35. like summerschild above in this thread, I recommend Al Jazeera America

I'm sorry to read this about MSNBC, but Al Jazeera is great. If they'd change their name, they'd really have a shot at becoming what CNN used to be. We on DU can't be the only group of people who miss real news.

[sabrina 1]

39. Al Jazeera was always even better than what CNN used to be, so are many other News outlets

AJ though, lost some of its former Global reputation after it was allowed on US media lineups. It is not nearly as good as the original, which was banned here though it made no difference, most of us watched it online AND subscribed to it to demonstrate that we will not be influenced by PROPAGANDA.

There is nothing on the Corporate Media worth watching in terms of actual news or political discussion.

They are the least trusted around the world.

Most young people get their news online.

The audience for the Corporate media is tiny compared to the global audience that gets its news from many sources..

MSNBC did the same thing when the Iraq War was imminent. It got rid of all its 'left' wing shows in preparation for the propaganda we were supposed to be watching.

It was at that point that many people found news organizations like Al Jazeera and ignored the propaganda we get here.

[Vinca]

19. Why do I smell another media outlet opting to join the cottage industry of hate?

Faux and right-wing radio make mountains of money off the dim witted . . . what a shame MSNBC seems to want to head in that direction. MSNBC's biggest problems are Joe Scarborough and prison shows. And Mrs. Greenspan doesn't help.

[louis-t]

22. The problem is each of these shows reports the same stories.

You can go from Sharpton to O'Donnell and it will mostly be the same stories. I'm getting used to O'Donnell's odd speech patterns and the halting way he italicizes a point he's trying to make, but Rachel is still my favorite. Never cared for Chris Hayes.

[HappyMe]

23. Left wing?

Okay.


It's crappy that Chris Hayes will be gone. He and Rachel are my favorites. I'll just tune in for Rachel, the hell with the rest of it.

[deutsey]

24. No surprise there

Anyone who remembers how MSNBC sacked Phil Donahue before the Iraq War because he gave airtime to anti-war perspectives should've known where MSNBC's sympathies are.

When it was profitable (and safe) to go after the liberal demographic, that became their business plan. I like Olbermann and Maddow and some of the others, but I always suspected that's what was the owners' actual agenda.

And I have an issue with the reference "left-wing TV." MSNBC's programming was definitely a mix of liberalism and centrism that "leaned forward" toward the left, but it was hardly left-wing TV. As someone who regularly listens to and supports left-wing radio (Pacifica radio station KPFA), there's no comparison in the perspectives and analyses between the two.

Some examples demonstrating this dichotomy that come to mind is: KPFA often interviewed Yanis Varoufakis, the new leftist finance minister in Greece, long before Syriza won the recent election; I heard a hard-hitting interview with labor activist Jane McAlevey yesterday (http://janemcalevey.com/); Marxian economist Richard Wolff has a weekly program.

These are examples of the left-wing perspectives regularly featured on KPFA. Very rarely (and I'm hard-pressed to think of any example) would you find people like this on MSNBC programs (at least not when I watch them). They screwed up and had Russell Brand on Morning Joe (I think it was Morning Joe) and he made the hosts look like fools. But if any show regularly had left-wing guests or even hosts who tried to offer a comprehensive left-wing critique of the economy, politics, foreign policy, social issues, etc., they would've found themselves tumbling down the memory hole behind Phil Donahue, imo.

[MFM008]

25. Then I will be moving AWAY from MSNBC

get that corporate ass hats?

[Agnosticsherbet]

26. They did this before the Keith Era, moved right. Moved left during the Keith era.

Now, seeking better ratings that will get them more profits, they are moving away.

MSNBC, and all other modern media, has never been about right or left. It is about money.

[sabrina 1]

40. There must be a war coming. They move RIGHT, when they know they have to 'catapult the propaganda'..

That's when they did it last time, got rid of their top rated shows, Phil Donohue at the time.

Who still watches the Corporate media anyhow? Certainly not for news as most people now get their news online.

[Agnosticsherbet]

50. Not a war. It is about revenue from advertisements. They want to be able to charge more

so they can make more for the investors and owners.

It is about business, not information.

[sabrina 1]

56. You mean 'defense contractors' ... yes, they usually dispense with their best rated shows

when the war drums are beating and they do not want to have Left hosts questioning the 'propaganda'.

Lots of money in the business of war.

[Agnosticsherbet]

58. No it is about making money for their investors and owners.

MSNBC is not a defense industry.
They don't give a shit if defense industries make money.

[sabrina 1]

60. No, it's not. If it were about that, they would not cancel their highest rated shows. It was obvious

that no host who questioned the war propaganda, the lies, the deceptions had to go. Ashley Banfield was taken off the air also when she revealed that what we were seeing on TV re the 'battlefield' was not what she, an embedded reporter and very popular at the time, actually saw. And that she was not allowed to report on that. That was the end of her career also.

We were there, we watched it happen, I don't think most people who observed it all have any doubts at all that the Corporate Media is getting ready, AGAIN, to 'catapult the propaganda' as one of our lesser leaders once told us was HIS job also.

[Skidmore]

27. Getting ready for the next admnistration which they are assuming will be an R one.

[Dawson Leery]

28. If they change their evening line up,

I will not be watching.

If they dump Maddow, there will always be the internet and Al-Jazeera.

[CincyDem]

29. Unfortunately, diversity does not drive ratings.

Unlike our friends on the right, I have a hypothesis that those of us who "lean left" get our news from a wide diversity of sources. For the right, FOX can be a singular megaphone and get great ratings because it's where the horde go. On the left, there's some MSNBC, some Al-J, some web, some blog, possibly even some print. But, because we often look at the broader picture, no one source gets 100% of our attention.

I can not tell you how many people I know that ONLY watch FOX - all day every day. It's like they put "audio-crack" in the background of their bullchit.

Anyhooo - just an observation. As long as the right buys their information in lockstep like they're told while the left considers a wide range of diverse opinions, the left will lose ratings wars.

Too bad. The country used to depend on a free press. Haven't seen any real indication of it since the mid-80's and everyone shifting to "newsertainment" where fact and opinion live on equal footing.

[Jamaal510]

65. +1

[Tarheel_Dem]

30. I'm not opposed to more news over opinion politics, but I'll certainly miss some of the hosts.

[PragmaticLiberal]

31. Whatever. This isn't about being too left or too right.

Its just ratings. Pure and simple.


I'm going to miss Chris Hayes but it is what it is.

[sabrina 1]

41. If the ratings are low, it's because most on the Left no longer get their news from the Corporate

Media. Ratings wasn't the reason they took Phil Donohue off the air, he had the highest ratings at the time. Propaganda was the reason, he was anti-the-Iraq War and the US Corporate Media is geared to war mongering.

[PragmaticLiberal]

43. Agree with you about Donahue...but in this case, I think its just ratings.

I mean its not like they suddenly woke up and realized that Rachel,Joy,Chris etc were liberal.

[sabrina 1]

45. The entire Corporate Media is struggling for ratings. Mainly due to their corporate programming.

I eg, no longer even tune in to the MSM, since Keith Olbermann, another whose show carried the ratings for MSNBC and dragged them back from the lowest ratings they had AFTER deciding to fire the Left from their programming.

Despite Olbermann's high ratings, he too was treated abominably by them.

So no, it is not ratings, it is simpler than that.

The Left tends to question more than they are supposed to. When an 'enemy' is declared, everyone is supposed to jump on board and HATE until the decision is made to go 'get that enemy'.

When people ask questions before jumping on the latest 'enemy' bandwagon, it interferes with the message the Corporate Media is delivering.

Since those questions come mostly from the Left, we don't get many from the Left anywhere on the Corporate media.

Which is why most of the Left tuned them out a long time ago. So now all they have are Fox viewers they will try to win over for ratings.

TV 'news' is a thing of the past. So people go elsewhere for that.

I doubt the ratings bother them as we saw with Donohue and Olbermann, it's the 'message' that matters and they have enough Corporate income to cover any losses in order to deliver that message. The problem is, who is listening? Fewer and fewer it appears.

[Blue_In_AK]

32. They will lose this viewer.

Of course, I only watch Chris Hayes and Rachel Maddow, so they probably won't even notice I'm gone.

[jwirr]

33. The mess with the nightly new shows and they have lost me to HGTV!!!!

[Bluenorthwest]

37. MSNBC does not have even one nightly news show, it's all commentary

That's the problem.

[jwirr]

47. Sure. But I find the commentary to be more truthful than the so called new programs on MSM.

[Logical]

55. FFS? They have some of the silliest shows on TV! Nt

[jwirr]

59. Not sillier than Morning Joe.

[randome]

36. Don't go by the soundbites or what 'these sources' said.

If by 'not left-wing' they mean simply reporting the news accurately, then we're in good shape because facts and truth have a built-in liberal bias.
[hr][font color="blue"][center]Precision and concision. That's the game.[/center][/font][hr]

[Greybnk48]

38. I have watched MSNBC religiously since Keith was there.

I even gave Hardball a second chance for a while. If they get rid of Rachel and Chris or Lawrence, I'm gone too. I'll watch netflix.

[blogslut]

44. Isn't that interesting?

If "wrestling with a teleprompter" is such a drawback then why isn't Andrea Mitchell in trouble?

[Jamaal510]

64. Andrea Mitchell, Joe Scarborough, Chuck Todd...

yeah something's up when those three can stay in their same spots despite bad ratings, but the other people either have to be demoted or moved around.

[Initech]

46. NO!!!!! We need more left wing TV!

We just lost John Stewart and Stephen Colbert... I'm not the biggest fan of MSNBC but we can't lose them too. Last thing we need is another Fox News.

[olddots]

48. Its the sponsors who run media

all media .

[Cha]

49. So I've read Joe Scar's ratings aren't doing so hot.. when does he get REPLACED?

[Jamaal510]

63. Great point!

I want to know that myself. All I can guess after seeing him stay while others (such as Joy Reid and Karen Finney) lose their shows is that he might be MSNBC's golden boy.

[Cha]

66. "golden boy" who continues to make them lose money.. I hope!

[tularetom]

52. I stopped watching MSNBC after the Olbermann fiasco

I briefly returned during the 2012 campaign, but I gave up when Chunk Turd and/or Puke Russert began to appear on every show.

I wouldn't miss it if it went away. Hell, I wouldn't even be aware it was gone.

[Jacoby365]

54. Comcast has already removed MSNBC from their Economy Tier programming.

I downgraded my cable to Economy Tier about a year ago, and at that tier, Comcast does not even offer their own MSNBC programming, but it does include Fox News and CNN. Go figure. For people that cannot afford anything more, they have to turn to Fox News or CNN for their news. With the constant lies on Fox News, it is no wonder so many people vote against their own best interests. It is frightening that media outlets like these can actually control public dialog.

[ND-Dem]

61. msnbc had left-wing tv? when was that? olbermann was left-wing? what kind of alternative

universe do these people live in?

olbermann was a democrat. Rachel maddow is a democrat. they're not 'left-wing'.

[Jamaal510]

62. WTF?

Joy's show is actually pretty good. It's not her fault that she has a bad time slot (as most people are at work during the day). Her show had higher Black viewership. First they got rid of Karen Finney's show, and now her too?
The higher-ups on MSNBC said themselves that they have had higher viewership with left-leaning shows like Olbermann. This wouldn't even be a smart business decision, especially when you look at their sub-par ratings prior to hiring all those left-wing hosts. I'm wondering if they want to start packing weekdays with LockUp shows, too, so they can avoid paying their hosts more money. They know that they won't get any extra RW viewership even after dumping their LW hosts; too many RWers see the network as FOX-left. I'd be OK with straight news, but if they're just going to put RW hosts or more LockUp/Caught on Camera on, I'll be tuning out.

[City Lights]

68. So they're moving toward propaganda teevee.

Swell. As if the airwaves weren't already loaded with junk news. Way to go, msnbc.

[Generic Brad]

69. So MSNBC no longer respects it's viewers?

If they can turn away from "left-wing" TV, viewers like me have no problem turning away from MSNBC. There are plenty of alternative news sites on the internet that do a far better job.

Since they gave Keith the boot, my interest in them has been lagging anyway.