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It seems the new president of NBC knows less about TV than a retarted peacock... Which noting the channel, he may very well be.

Like all mass communications a TV channel has to appeal to the audience. The first step is to determine who is a potential audience for a station. If MsNBC is going to be news talk, then the first step is to determine who the potential audience is. Then determine by focus groups who appeals to that audience. Then put that progamming on the air. If a programmer can't find or develop programs that are more appealing to the audience than the other channels, then one musst find a segment they are not serving and server that segment. MSNBC is doing none of that.

It seems to me that MSNBC and CNBC don't have a clue about who the potential audience is. Fox is doing well. CNN is on the left politically and not doing well. I think Keyes was an attempt to go to the right of Fox. Donahue is an attempt to go to the left of CNN. Neither programming move is the result of actually determining what the audience wants. It is just stupid guessing by very unobservant people.

The audience research I did nearly a decade ago showed that most of the people that vote left don't watch political TV or tune in to political or news radio. Go to the board of elections. Get the Registerd Democats names and the Registered Republican names. Poll them for who watches or listens to news programs. You will find Democrats don't watch or listen. It ain't hard. Five pollsters can determine that beyond a shadow of a doubt in an afternoon.

But if absolute proof is not your cup of tea, let me ask how many leftists have tried doing shows on talk radio? How many have failed? How many from the right have tried talk radio shows? How many have succeeded? When CNN was the only game they were a success. They were really leftists, but they were the only game in town. When Fox came along and played it down the middle they killed CNN. There is zero evidence that a leftist talk show can make it on Radio. Almost all have failed. None have made it nationally.

The simple reason is that most voters who vote left do not watch or listen to news or news talk. The oolls showed it and rating show it. They watch MTV or WWF or CMT.. They only watch news for a 911, a Kosovo Bombing or a Gulf war. When it is over they go away. They are the reason newschannel viewing swells for big events. But a channel can't survive on their veiwing.

But even on the right, to get a politcial audience one has to be entertaining. People have to enjoy watching the show. Keyes is a disaster because his show is incredibly booring. Keyes doen't know any more about doing well on TV or Radio than he knows about getting votes. Even a pretty dumb programmer should have been able to determine that. Focus groups would have told them "Ain't nobody gonna watch Alan Keyes!" Keyes, and now Donahue tells you the people running MSNBC don't know what they are doing.

Donahue knows how to make people like him. He does know how to be entertaining. But does he know how to attract a political audience? If he is going to be his leftist self, the answer is flat out he won't get an audience.

There is no leftist audience big enough to let a show survive. There is a smaller center audience that can almost support a show. The audience is on the right.

As Fox has shown, you have to interest and entertain the potential audience to get them to watch.

There are just two questions. Who is our potential audience and how do we attract them. NO one at MSNBC is supplying the answers to those very fundamental questions.

If someone did a fox like channel but clearly beamed at the right they would eat Fox for lunch. MSNBC would have next to zero viewers. CNN would be where MSNBC is today and Fox would be where CNN is now

Until they get smart enough to ask who is our potential audience and how do we get them, MSNBC is doomed to fail.

Make "retarted peacock" "retarded peacock."

Excellent, Common Tator. That is just what my instincts have been telling me for years. Liberals don't watch the news. They don't know, they don't care, and they don't WANT to care. They want to be sheep, and not be bothered by the serious questions of life. My brother (liberal)is always telling me to stop watching the news and get a life. (He watches sports instead - MUCH more important!)

I thought it very interesting when I read that CNN's audience is different than Fox's - it spikes when a big story hits - very high and then drops right back down. Well, that's classic. Liberals only watch the news when a building falls down with people in it or a bomb blows up somewhere that scares them. And politics is only to be watched if a politician has a honey on the side.

Putting Donahue on is in line with a simple marketing concept called "the rule of two". Basicly, it says that any marketing niche eventually works out to having two major competitors, and a bunch of also rans. The two major competitors end up being the dominant product, and another product that defines itself as the anti-dominant product.

Coke, Pespsi (the anti-coke), and everything else. IBM compatible PCs, Apple computers (the anti-IBM PC), and everything else.

O'Riely is the dominant player in this time slot. Donahue will be seen as the anti-O'Riely and will get most of the viewers in that time slot that don't like O'Riely. The question is if there are enough of those people out there.