Phil Griffin

Bernie Sanders may be winning the Democratic presidential race right now, but he’s very unhappy with MSNBC, especially after Chris Matthews compared his victory in the Nevada caucuses to the Nazis overtaking France in World War II. Vanity Fair reports MSNBC boss Phil Griffin is hard at work to give Bernie more rally air time and more "smart, pro-Sanders voices" on the network, to "make our…

Even though MSNBC isn’t in severe ratings trouble like CNN, executives at that liberal channel are nevertheless considering making big changes to their weekday and weekend schedules. Among the shifts being considered are hiring former Fox News Channel anchor Shepard Smith and sending Chuck Todd’s “lackluster” MTP Daily program to the 9 a.m. slot on weekdays.

During Friday’s edition of Morning Joe on MSNBC, frequent panelist Donnie Deutsch expressed his displeasure with Stormy Daniels' lawyer Michael Avenatti appearing so often on cable news shows. “He feels like he’s ‘jumping the shark’ a little bit,” Deutsch stated. “You almost get the feeling he’s already auditioning” for CNN President Jeff Zucker and MSNBC boss Phil Griffin to set up “his next TV…

New York magazine writer Gabriel Sherman has been the liberal media’s leading investigator/prosecutor of former Fox News boss Roger Ailes and the network’s settlement with Gretchen Carlson on sexual harassment claims. Now Evan Gahr in the New York Observer reports that Sherman didn’t exactly come clean with readers about lengthy negotiations to get hired by MSNBC:

According to CNN Money’s Tom Kludt late Tuesday night, NBC News confirmed that the disgraced former NBC Nightly News anchor’s six-month suspension has ended and will be returning sometime next month. Kludt reported that “NBC told CNNMoney on Tuesday that Williams will assume his new role as a breaking news anchor for MSNBC in mid-September, but no date has been set.”

MSNBC boss Phil Griffin has sent around a memo to staff admitting the obvious: that 2014 was a very difficult year for MSNBC. But he blames technological change -- not the rejection of the MSNBC agenda at the polls. America is "leaning backward" at the moment.  “It’s no secret that 2014 was a difficult year for the entire cable news industry and especially for MSNBC,” Griffin wrote. “Technology…

USA Today media columnist Michael Wolff let MSNBC have it with both barrels in a column headlined "MSNBC Loses Election." Wolff asked “Is a vote against a political party also a vote against the network that supports it?” He suggested the sinking fortunes of the Democrats “have been pretty accurately charted in the declining ratings at MSNBC,” which unsurprisingly fell 22 percent from their 2010…

Okay, I can understand that MSNBC President Phil Griffin would feel terribly embarrassed by a dopey Cinco De Mayo studio stunt in which a pale yanqui dressed in a sombrero staggered across the set while taking swigs of tequila (video after the jump). However what is really bizarre about Griffin's contrition is that it also takes the form of declaring that he now gets nervous while walking by…

While a guest on the 92Y American Conversation program on Sunday, TIME magazine political analyst Joe Klein vented to host Jeff Greenfield of the Public Broadcasting System: “I miss being able to turn on a straight newscast” after returning home at 6 o'clock on weekdays. He added that the only place he can find such a program in that format and at that time is the Fox News series Special…

In a lengthy item "as told to Joe Hagan" at NYMag.com's The Vulture, actor, commercial pitchman, and brief MSNBC host Alec Baldwin makes it very clear that he is fed up with a lot of things. There is plenty of material for discussion in his writeup. I want to focus on what he sees as his mistreatment at the hands of MSNBC and the self-described "progressive" community. Unfortunately, after…

During an interview with Joy Reid, whose new MSNBC weekday show -- The Reid Report -- begins airing at 2 p.m. on Monday, February 24, the perennial network guest stated she is taking a radically different approach than most of her counterparts on the “Lean Forward” network. “I’m not on there to do an hour of why Republicans suck,” the African-American woman said. “I don’t think I have to do…

The notion that MSNBC is now the most controversial gaffe-a-minute cable news network has been ratified by the Associated Press. AP media reporter David Bauder wrote a story headlined “Loose lips give ammunition to MSNBC foes.” “Since MSNBC is in the political ring, its opponents are always on the lookout for things to attack,” Bauder wrote. “Lately, NBC's left-leaning cable news sister has…

When anyone can be described as left of MSNBC, they are heading into fringe territory. Or as Bill Press thinks of it, home sweet home. In yet another futile attempt to remain relevant, Press on his radio show lashed out at MSNBC for apologizing for a Twitter post last week claiming that conservatives might "hate" a new Cheerios commercial featuring a biracial family. (Audio after the jump).

On Thursday, MSNBC President Phil Griffin apologized for a Twitter post suggesting conservatives (“the rightwing”) are racists who would “hate” a cute new Cheerios ad because it featured a biracial family: “The tweet last night was outrageous and unacceptable. We immediately acknowledged that it was offensive and wrong, apologized, and deleted it. We have dismissed the person responsible for…