The roiling of the daytime waters at MSNBC has the hard left all upset at the mini-peacock turning back to a newsier format. In an article on The Wrap, Jordan Chariton warned this would lead to a “permanent third-place finish” behind Fox and CNN. The headline on the roster changes was "When One Lean Forward Becomes Two Steps Backward."
Chariton’s lead witness was disgruntled lefty host Cenk Uygur, barely tried in the late afternoon before his unwillingness to avoid attacking Obama from the Left caused him to end up on Current TV (briefly). “Being progressive isn’t the problem, it’s the solution,” said Cenk. Tell that to Current TV.
Chariton began:
In the fall of 2011, MSNBC was riding high.
Occupy Wall Street had ignited a sleeping giant, bringing disenchanted Americans of all ages to Zucotti Park and cities across the country to rail against corporate greed and capitalism gone wild. The movement, mixed with the buildup to a pivotal presidential election, led to record ratings for MSNBC, which had firmly become the media megaphone for progressiveness.
I would know–I was there.
As a booking producer from 2011-2012, I saw firsthand the excitement swirling around the newsroom as anchors hosted from the protest scene; the energy behind an election with very high stakes.
Three years later, MSNBC took a chainsaw to its daytime lineup, canceling three opinion programs last Thursday–and will soon tinker with its primetime lineup–evolving itself to become more of an NBC News-lite.
A decision that will likely doom the network to a permanent third place finish.
“Being progressive isn’t the problem, it’s the solution,” former MSNBC anchor and host of The Young Turks Cenk Uygur told TheWrap about the “Lean Forward” network. “You shouldn’t lean in any direction, you should go boldly in one direction or another. And you certainly should have an idea which direction you’re going.”
A rebuttal came from the media blog Inside Cable News, which reminded the Wrap pundits of "selective memory" and ratings reality:
Here’s where it didn’t work…extending progressive POV analysis all over dayside. It didn’t work with Martin Bashir. It didn’t work with Dylan Ratigan who was more populist than progressive. It didn’t work with Alex Wagner. It didn’t work well enough with Ed Schultz. It sure as hell didn’t work with Ronan Farrow, Joy Reid, or The Cycle. It might have worked with Cenk Uygur had that relationship been given a chance to really blossom (we’ll never know for sure).
The point, which both Uygur and (to a lesser extent) Chariton fail to acknowledge, is that the record throughout MSNBC’s history has been consistently clear. Despite three POV analysis attempts launched by MSNBC since 2007, Primetime was always the driving force behind MSNBC’s ratings success. It’s never been dayside.
Uygur's painting of how MSNBC looked in the Bush era is as distorted as a Picasso:
In the 2000’s, MSNBC had no real identity.
“They had Scarborough, a conservative pushing Republican talking points, in the morning for three hours,” Uygur continued. “They had Chris Matthews who shifts in the wind – thought George Bush belonged on Mount Rushmore and then had a thrill up his leg with Barack Obama.”
In what world does that make sense? Scarborough is sometimes pro-Republican, but often is not. He famously suggested George W. Bush was a moron. Anyone who insists Matthews thought Bush was a great president in the 2000s is simply claiming the opposite of reality. It’s like Uygur thinks Keith Olbermann showed up in 2008, and not in 2003. But he wasn't done.
“They didn’t know if their mandate was to be progressive, to be objective anchors or to be just pro-Democrats,” Uygur said. “Now they are going to have a conservative on for three hours in the morning, then be a second rate CNN in the daytime and then have some progressives at night. What in the world is that brand?”
Let’s go back to Inside Cable News for the rebuttal:
Well actually Cenk, MSNBC is going to have the format that it had when it knocked off CNN for second place. Because that’s what MSNBC looked like from 2007-2011, excluding the two short lived dayside forays into POV analysis.
Does that mean MSNBC is headed back up now? Absolutely not. It’s not a given. I’m highly skeptical. My skepticism is based on the fact that Primetime is still a problem. And without Primetime to lead the way MSNBC as a whole is going to be stuck. As long as [Chris] Hayes is there as the anti lead-in to Maddow, MSNBC is going to be in trouble in primetime.
ICN says the problem is sameness, that everyone’s a Maddow now: “Chris Hayes? Clone. Farrow and Reid? Clone. Harris-Perry? Clone. Even Kornacki falls more in the Maddow mold than the Olbermann one.”
