Posted on 08/19/2002 9:15:00 PM PDT by kattracks
With his ratings in a crash dive, critics are speculating on how long it will take the top men at MSNBC to wave bye bye to their widely ballyhooed retread, Phil Donahue.
According to the New York Times, Donahue's show has lost 40 percent of his viewers in the mere four weeks since the cable network hauled the aging ultra-liberal out of retirement and promoted his comeback with a massive publicity campaign one MSNBC executive told the Times was "the most promotion the channel has ever devoted to any program."
Nagging MSNBC is the embarrassing fact that CNN's Connie Chung's ratings put her in second place in the 8:00 EDT time spot far behind Fox's Bill O'Reilly but now about an average 300,000 viewers ahead of Donahue.
For MSNBC, which pinned their hopes on Donahue to energize their new nightly 8:00 P.M. to 11:00 P.M. lineup featuring Jerry Nachman and Ashley Banfield, this is a disaster.
Donahue's dismal statistics tell the mournful story. According to the Times, in his opening week Donahue had a daily average of about 660,000 viewers, but in the next three weeks that figure faded away. In week two, he dropped to an average of 579,000 viewers, in week three he dropped to 439,000 and in week four he was down to a pitiful average 393,000.
Pursing their lips to whistle in the graveyard, MSNBC executives deny that the onetime liberal idol faces a speedy return to retirement. While denying that his network harbors thoughts of dumping Donahue, Neal Shapiro, the president of NBC News, told Carter that Donahue will start to take advantage of more news developments this fall and everything will be just dandy.
Obviously, there are no news developments like the possibility of an attack on Iraq taking place now. New developments appear to be taking a summer vacation but they'll be back in the fall, just in time to rescue Phil Donahue.
"We'll have an election to cover and a war in Iraq," Mr. Sorenson told the Times. "The channel is counting on Mr. Donahue to handle that kind of subject matter better than Ms. Chung. "Connie has never played in this format," Mr. Shapiro said, adding that he's also pinning his hopes on playing the celebrities-on-parade strategy to resurrect the dying Donahue show.
"He's going to have Oprah on and Harrison Ford and George Clooney," Mr. Sorenson told the Times. "I don't honestly expect to have an answer on this until November."
Wow. The return of news developments and Oprah.
Ominously for Donahue, Shapiro acknowledged that the fall may be the make-or-break time for MSNBC. "We have to keep these shows moving forward," he told Carter, adding that future investment and promotion budgets for the channel may be riding on it.
The whole thing is just another example of the inability of MSNBC executives to read public attitudes that are increasingly conservative, parading out shopworn liberals like Donahue in the hope that he'll somehow be able to compete with the likes of Bill O'Reilly when he can't even compete with Connie Chung.
Sending him home to resume his retirement would be an act of mercy.
I'm sure MSNBC execs looked into that a long time ago, Bill is probably holding out for 2 million an episode.
I agree, and we need to shake their hand and ask how else we might help. That is all we need to do and in my humble opinion, we have not done it for fear of being accused of pandering.
The Posner/Donahue gig ran on CNBC, roughly from around 1993 to the end of 1997.
LOL! Way longer than I thought. But, Clinton was president and that other idiot/actor/moron (I forget his name) had a show that was getting some audience as well. Grodin or somebody.
Count me in for that party! ;-D
"the most promotion the channel has ever devoted to any program."
Gues this only works when the entire liberal media bands together, ala Clinton impeachment.
I spent a total of 15 minutes watching this simpleton interview Ann Coulter last month. What a buffoon! He literally couldn't hold a thought without referring to his notes. Annie sliced and diced him like an entree for Beni Hana's. It was brutal and he was absolutely pitiful. I'm only surprised that he has lasted this long. Guess thay had to hang on long enough to "save face' vis the enormous marketing budget/campaign. The libs need to learn that their message just doesn't sell!!! HaHaHaHaHaHaHaha!
LOL. That's a good one. Phil must change his position on Iraq and start urging the president to arrack. A new twist on wag the dog.
I've got some other adjectives to describe that guy!
They definately would get the post pulled!
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/701860.stm
http://www.nandotimes.com/world/story/420893p-3356912c.html
Another 150 million there.
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