Posted on 02/20/2015 9:31:49 AM PST by E. Pluribus Unum
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.
↓ Story continues below ↓“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.”
“Rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic” comes to mind.
At long last, Comcast, have you NO shame? MSNBC is an affront to decency.
The problem in a nutshell in their first sentence. There is no way they will ever fix their propaganda programming.
How ironic that this network can’t find an audience promoting the exact same leftwing bullsh*t that Washington is currently running the country by.
So hard core foaming at the mouth leftardism isn’t bringing in the viewers?
Imagine that.
How sad is it, when your network’s *talent pool* only offers Rachel Madcow as an *improvement* to a time slot?
Coming from the left and MSM.
All MSNBC needs is a lit match.
Don't forget a big jug of gasoline!
Funny what a complete lack of credibility will do to a business.
to be replaced by the current 9 p.m. host of The Rachel Maddow Show
Isn't Maddow left wing TV?
Thanks. That will speed up the process.
Because broadcasting left wing TV has gotten them hundreds of viewers around the country.
James O'Keefe outed Jay Rosen for the hard left jerkoff he really is... Rosen's bad. He makes Johathan Gruber look like an open-minded nice person.
After watching a couple hundred commercials depicting white Americans as stupid, toothless, wimpy morons, we’d had enough.
Our fat screen POS is off and cold about 98 percent of the time...And has been for about 10 years now.
Anyone else remember Air America Radio?
MSNBC has deeper pockets, so it is taking longer to go bankrupt.
MSNBC is media giant NBCUniversal. They’ll never run out of money for MSNBC. It just comes from their designated donations to the DNC.
You could read this as anticipation of a conservative regime in 2016.
Choosing Obama in 2008 was evil, but good for business.
This clears the deck for Brian Williams to return as a “firebrand no-holds-barred commentator willing to expose the lies of the hard-right.”
Mr. Rosen certainly seems full of himself.
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