MSNBC WTF

[madamesilverspurs]

In an effort to improve ratings MSNBC is throwing itself down the toilet by replacing Ed Schultz with Chuck Todd.

The good news is that MSNBC's decision-makers aren't medical practitioners.

[Gidney N Cloyd]

1. I'd describe their schedule decisions over the last several years as flailingly clueless.

Their decisions don't irritate me so much as they amaze and confuse me. It's like a chimp throwing darts at the wall.

[tularetom]

2. Or in this case, flinging poo at the wall

[davekriss]

7. Not clueless at all, it's political

Are we surprised that, after a conservative company buys MSNBC from NBC, that the executives at MSNBC are trying to walk the line between moving broadcasts to the right and maintaining reasonable financial performance?

This is why consolidation of major media has been so dangerously toxic for the 99%. Voices at variance from the needs of the 1% are increasingly not heard.

[Gidney N Cloyd]

11. I'm staying with clueless. I also think they'll be doing it all over yet again in about a year.

[Nevernose]

28. Moving to the right is just plain dumb

They'll never be able to out-faux Faux News, nor will they be able to get the brainwashed to give up their source of brainwashing.

If they really wanted to try something different from the other channels, maybe they should try "news," both reporting it and investigating it. And when it comes to politics, they could try education instead of opinion. Those things would mean someone in a corporate hierarchy had guts, though, and by definition no one with courage lasts long in corporate leadership.

[kentuck]

3. That probably means that Brian Williams is taking over MTP?

Hardly the stature of NBC Evening News but close.

[Gidney N Cloyd]

10. Todd will still be doing MTP in addition to his new MSNBC show.

[Lurks Often]

4. MSNBC isn't interested in what the viewers want

They are interested in ratings, which leads to them getting more money for commercials.

If they can't get the ratings they want from the Left/Progressive demographic, they'll find the ratings somewhere else. MSNBC (and any other media outlet) would turn itself into the White Supremacist Channel if they thought it would bring in a lot more viewers, ratings and money.

[davekriss]

9. I don't completely agree

The parent company chooses executives that do not stray far from their values and beliefs, the executives hire producers and editors that don't stray, the producers and editors hire on-air personnel that espouse comfortable positions and viewpoints.

It's systematic, not conspiratorial, but with less competition the boardrooms have less tolerance for alternative voices. Where is the audience going to go? The owning class (the 0.1%) do not want to hear the media they own expressing ideas that are contrary to their interests, so increasingly they don't.

[PufPuf23]

22. Ratings are conventional wisdom, reality is that the purchasers iof advertisements are

purchasing a propaganda and brainwashing service more than product commercials.

There is no way that MSM media will hire journalists and personalities that would maximize viewership because corporate neoliberal will not pay for competitive thought.

MSM is at the point that the viewership will need to be re-brainwashed to accept broadcasts that are factual and in the best interests or the viewer.

[ericson00]

5. Why not Steve Kornacki?

todd is just an anti-Clinton blowhard.

[themaguffin]

8. they're not done yet making changes.

[themaguffin]

6. This isn't surprising. The network is struggling during the day which

Should mostly be news focused, not opinion focused.

[Erose999]

12. Because Chuck "not my job" Todd is so good for ratings.

[aint_no_life_nowhere]

13. Why not put Upchuck in on the week-ends in place of the endless re-runs of lock-up?

[Fawke Em]

14. Congrats, MSNBC.

Take one of your least-liked pundits and put him in front of the viewers more.

Dumbasses.


?v=1

[Rex]

15. I don't know how anyone can watch the M$M and still have a non-broken TV.

Best thing I ever did was give up cable TV.

[NCTraveler]

16. When I dumped cable I thought there was going to be a void in my life.

Ends up, cable itself was the void in my life.

[Rex]

17. Mine too!

I look back at all the years that I vegetated in front of the TV yelling at CNN to do stuff like drop Glenn Beck! What a waste of time for me, I would have been better off hammering nails into the sidewalk.

[Warpy]

30. If TCM doesn't get a better program director, I'm dumping mine

There is very little besides the old movies that I'm particularly interested in and they've been showing the type of movie that seems to have been picked by a younger Boomer male reliving his childhood. Ugh. Now the other channels are starting to show old "reality" TV shows. Cable is no longer worth it for people with brains. We might as well tune out and listen to good music.

Of course, I dumped broadcast news in 2004 and can't watch cable, I tried when I was in the hospital in April and bored out of my gourd. I just can't do it, all that breathy hysteria over the slightest little thing and I'm not talking about Pox News.

[nadinbrzezinski]

19. I can't afford to pay for the AP wire, YET

so they are my replacement for it. The down side. once they go into a story, like everybody else, they go on it for days, as a dog with a cool bone... so other news suffers.

[Rex]

20. I like their AP media center.

http://www.ap.org/media-center/overview

Lots to read and without the bias of a Foxnews or CNN.

[nadinbrzezinski]

21. Yes

but when writing I just have any of these blathering in the background

Over the course of the day I will check both Reuters and AP a few times

Like I check the CHP Traffic for fires.

[Rex]

23. Those are my two go-to sources. Reuters and AP and if I am at a friends house

we watch News Hour. Even though I am on the outs with NPR, I will listen to it in the car.

[nadinbrzezinski]

24. I add to my diet

a few Mexican papers, we are on the borders after all. Also BBC and Der Spiegel, especially for European issues.

[nadinbrzezinski]

18. It's a business

news has not been about actual reporting for a while That said, if they actually go there and start doing hard news, it is because CNN gave up on that one a while. There is an opening.

[Oilwellian]

25. I stopped watching cable news years ago

The only time I hear about it now is on DU. I wish everyone would break that bad, useless habit and stop adding to their ratings.

[TheNutcracker]

26. OMG!! I love ED!!! Chuck Toad????? He's a lightweight! This is a conservative ploy.

If you don't get this....they are all owned by the corporations. CUT YOUR CORD.

you won't miss the cable!

Get a ROKU!!!!!

[Liberal_in_LA]

27. ugh. did Todd lose his day job?

[MADem]

29. Next question--will they slide Todd out of the MTP slot? He's AWFUL.

http://variety.com/2015/tv/news/chuck-todd-msnbc-meet-the-press-1201546853/

That Olbermann rumor is making the rounds. Variety has that, too:

http://variety.com/2015/tv/columns/keith-olbermann-msnbc-leaves-espn-1201536388/

Olbermann is obviously a polarizing figure, but he’s too marketable a talent to stay on the sidelines for long, unless he chooses to do so. The real question is where he can find another platform that provides him the elbow room he needs to operate and that’s desperate enough to absorb the headaches historically associated with hiring him.

Of course, when you think about it that way, it’s hard to imagine a more logical home for Olbermann than (gulp) MSNBC, which has never fully recovered from losing him. Granted, such a reunion would certainly establish the host and his former network as a sort-of TV version of Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor. Yet while those two might not have been a match made in heaven, for all the histrionics and fireworks, when all was said and done, they just sort of belonged together.

Put another way, a bit of wisdom from the late agent and producer Pat Faulstich comes to mind — one that pointed out we often don’t appreciate a job until after we’ve left it. In Hollywood, he once said, “The best job you’ll ever have is the one that precedes the one you always wanted.”