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.
Tuesday, August 24, 1999
Bill Gates speaks to an eventhosted by his foundation. Aug. 24, 1999 -- Microsoft CEO Bill Gates and his wife this week unveiled the biggest charitable gift in history, an equity enhancement for their foundation valued at $6 billion. The donation brings the worth of the William and Melinda Gates Foundation to $17.1 billion, easily making it the largest foundation in the United States.
The Gates donation is the most dramatic bequest to come out of Silicon Valley's culture of philanthropic giving that has been fostered by soaring new wealth. The nation's second-largest foundation, with assets of $13 billion, was also created by a technology pioneer, the late David Packard, co-founder of Hewlett-Packard. And, like Gates and Packard, many new donors would rather give money by creating their own foundations rather than giving to established organizations; the number of American grant-making foundations has doubled to over 40,000 since 1980.
In dollar terms, charitable giving has grown dramatically in recent years, topping $170 billion last year. In 1997, individuals gave a record $109 billion to charity, only to smash that record by giving $138 billion last year. Giving through the United Way campaigns for health and human services alone reached nearly $3.6 billion this year, a more than 5-percent increase from last year's record take.
The boom in individual giving can largely be attributed to the economic upsurge of the 1990s. The percentage of households giving to charity has remained essentially the same over the last decade, with about 70 percent of households making some sort of charitable contribution each year. Households are still contributing the same percentage of their total household income, but as they have earned more, they have written bigger checks as well. The average amount contributed per household now tops $1,000 per year, an increase of over 10 percent from the early 1990s.
However, there are sharp differences between the giving patterns of the wealthiest Americans and national trends. Compared with the average contribution of 2 percent of household income, the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans gave away an average of 8 percent of their after-tax income in 1997, up from 5 percent in 1993, according to a survey by U.S. Trust.
Most recent big-money donations have targeted health, human services and education. In 1998, media mogul Ted Turner announced that he would donate $1 billion of his $6 billion fortune over 10 years to the United Nations. Armenian-American billionaire financier Kirk Kerkorian pledged $200 million in aid to help Armenia recover from earthquake damage. Gates and his wife have targeted their donations to wiring schools and developing vaccines, while businessmen Ted Forstmann and John Walton formed a $100-million fund to subsidize the cost of private schools for inner-city children.
In contrast, small donors are far more likely to give to religious causes and give more generously. Those reporting a religious affiliation on average donated twice as much as their non-religious counterparts. Nearly 44 percent of all contributions in the U.S. were given to religious causes, with only 14 percent for education, and less than 10 percent each for health and human services.
The future looks even brighter for charities, with new tax deductions for charitable giving likely to be included in legislation slated to pass Congress this year. In addition, Internet giving technologies have made giving easier than ever, and presidential candidates from both major parties have been talking up ways to assist the poor through philanthropy rather than government intervention.
It is important to me that the republican party counter the lack of media on these changes in the electorate. We have a serious problem with pro-choice ladies as well. They fear us and will vote the other way even if they disagree with the policy or platform. This is another or my concerns.
I am sure millions will tune in to watch Donahue cheer for American casualties and hope for the safety of his hero Saddam.
Just what is landPhil's expertise on the matter?
Phil Donahue is like a leisure suit for a lot of people; they find in the back of the closet and cannot believe they ever wore such a thing. Then, they realize that it was the fashion at that time. They have a chuckle and then throw it out.
FACTUALLY inaccurate reporting...Donahue is a LIBERAL -an UBERliberal...remember, they rely on what FEELS right - the emotions - not facts or statistics - you know, that pesky thing called PROOF or TRUTH - doesn't bother them....
Pray for GW and the Truth
Things have gone downhill for Donahue ever since that night he was so rude to Anne Coulter. He is no gentleman. It's really pathetic watching him desperately trying to get his left-wing agenda across.
Where are his brilliant ideas that he spoke of the first day MSNBC went on air? Oh yes...I remember that day well. Where he said MSNBC will be just as popular as CNN in 2004 and maybe even more connected.
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