That explains this clown.
Posted on 12/08/2002 9:23:22 PM PST by gcruse
When his new, prime-time talk show made its debut last summer, Phil Donahue was billed as the savior of the lagging MSNBC cable news network. By mid-November, with his program sinking in the ratings, he was on the wrong end of a "Saturday Night Live" sketch on NBC.
The mock Mr. Donahue was incoherent in his leftist dogma. His program was listed as one of the three lowest-rated programs in all of cable, between "Eye Surgery with Dr. Elliot Nadel" and "Black Israelites Hour." The studio audience consisted of two homeless people.
At least some people at NBC can laugh about MSNBC.
This is clearly not what Jeffrey R. Immelt, the chief executive of General Electric, NBC's parent company, meant when he told NBC executives last winter that he wanted MSNBC to draw as much attention as the Fox News Channel was getting — even, he said for emphasis, if it meant featuring "clowns jumping out of airplanes," people who attended the tense meeting said.
MSNBC's latest, failed effort to reinvigorate itself — the latest of many — is serious business at NBC, and at General Electric, which expects its businesses to be first or second in their categories. General Electric's partner in MSNBC, Microsoft, is not pleased with the network's third-place status either.
The reconstruction job falls to Neal Shapiro, the NBC News president, who must wrestle with how to succeed in the new cable news universe created by the rollicking success of Fox News, whose brassy, opinionated style has reshaped cable news into a form that leaves at least some at NBC News uncomfortable.
Mr. Immelt has again ordered NBC to fix MSNBC fast, with the tacit understanding that jobs are on the line. So despite overseeing the most profitable and popular division in broadcast news, Mr. Shapiro suddenly has one of the toughest jobs in television. It includes trying to protect NBC News's No. 1 status on broadcast television while navigating the complicated corporate politics of NBC, which has been riven by tension between its president, Andrew Lack, and its chairman, Bob Wright.
Mr. Shapiro is the central figure in a debate over whether the network should pursue a Fox-style programming strategy or one that resembles the more staid CNN. Executives said in interviews that the best option would be for MSNBC to go its own way and come up with a new twist on the genre. But the problem with that option, they acknowledged, is that new ideas are hard to come by in news.
Mr. Shapiro, the MSNBC president Erik Sorenson and NBC's research department have been hard at work figuring out what people want from cable news.
There is a growing sense that NBC's standing as the top-rated broadcast news outlet has put it at a disadvantage in cable. Its research is showing that the cable news audience wants something that is anathema to its old-line news organization, namely: attitude, a strong point of view and a good dose of Hollywood-style showmanship.
Bill O'Reilly, the top-rated talk show host in all of cable news, is considered to be successful not because of whom he interviews, but because of how he gleefully berates and lectures them while winking at the camera.
On the "Fox and Friends" morning program, the hosts frequently crack irreverent jokes. Last week, for instance, Erich Muller, a radio disc jockey and a regular contributor to the program who goes by a radio monicker of Mancow, jokingly referred to Hillary Clinton as "a lesbian."
CNN, meanwhile, has injected more entertainment features between serious news reports, like those on Iraq or the White House. One recent afternoon its news anchors, Daryn Kagan and Leon Harris, interviewed Kermit the Frog about the Muppet's recent television movie.
"Viewers come first for information," Mr. Sorenson, the MSNBC president, said, "but in trying to decide between the different sources, it's often the entertainment aspect of the programming that drives their choice."
Though a lot has been made recently of Fox's political skew, which some critics call pro-Republican, Mr. Sorenson said, "The primary reason for their success is that their programming is perceived as compelling and provocative."
MSNBC is seeking a personality that can help galvanize the network, as Mr. O`Reilly has done for Fox News. At one point this year, NBC executives approached the topical late-night comic Bill Maher to be the star of his own program, a representative of Mr. Maher said. Mr. Maher was already in talks to produce a new HBO program and was not available.
Mr. Shapiro and Mr. Sorenson are now pinning their hopes on Jesse Ventura, the Minnesota governor and former wrestler. Though Mr. Sorenson said a deal with Mr. Ventura had not been completed, another NBC executive said Mr. Ventura had been screen-testing with MSNBC to determine possible program formats.
Mr. Ventura embodies cable news in its current incarnation. He is an opinionated, maverick politician with all the hyperbole of the former professional wrestler he is.
Then again, Mr. Donahue also seemed to be a perfect cable news star, a possible liberal counterbalance to the conservative commentators of Fox News.
But critics found him to be rusty and his program flat. As of November, his audience of 379,000 at 8 p.m. was one-sixth that of Mr. O`Reilly, with 2.4 million, and about half that of Connie Chung on CNN, with 739,000 people.
A few days after "Saturday Night Live" weighed in on Mr. Donahue's program, Mr. Shapiro, who would not comment for this article, was said by people at NBC to have been within hours of canceling Mr. Donahue's program. It got a last-minute reprieve when Mr. Shapiro received ratings data showing modest improvements among younger viewers.
That seemed to be a pivotal moment in which the company realized that it must show a little more patience when it comes to MSNBC and its current management.
Executives at NBC said they had come to realize that the network was suffering greatly from too much change in too short a period of time — from the news network of Generation X, at its 1996 debut, to one that specialized in prime-time news magazine-style documentaries, and, most recently, to the more broadly focused "America's News Channel" with Mr. Donahue, the conservative-liberal duo of Patrick J. Buchanan and Bill Press, and a gruff former New York Post editor, Jerry Nachman.
As MSNBC continually metamorphosed, Fox News, which also started in 1996, stayed its course despite a slow start. NBC executives believe that consistency has been a great advantage.
There are hopes that recent improvements among younger viewers for Mr. Donahue at 8 p.m. and similar improvements for other programs at other times are the beginning of a turnaround.
The burning question at NBC News is how long Mr. Immelt will be patient. People at NBC said he was baffled that the network's problems drew so much media attention while the successes of NBC News — watched by many millions more people — generally went unnoticed. Though MSNBC's failings are but a blip on the parent company's vast balance sheet, Mr. Immelt, who declined to comment, is said by people at NBC to consider the state of MSNBC an embarrassing perception problem. (General Electric's financial news network, CNBC, is in just as bad shape in the ratings, but it is still a sizable cash generator that the company expects will rebound with the economy.)
Mr. Immelt knows the network's troubles are not of Mr. Shapiro's making, but he has put responsibility for them squarely on Mr. Shapiro's shoulders, people at NBC said.
It is the hardest task of Mr. Shapiro's career. He has relatively little managerial experience. He was the executive producer of the "Dateline" news magazine franchise for eight years before he was appointed to succeed Mr. Lack as the news division president in 2001. As such, he had a reputation as a gifted storyteller with a good sense of what appeals to general audiences and younger viewers alike. His unassuming and relaxed style contrasts with his predecessor's more intense and passionate personality.
Further complicating his job, he answers to both his predecessor and Mr. Wright, the NBC chairman. The two men are said to have different ideas about how the MSNBC problem should be solved and are intensely competitive with each other.
But NBC's top-level executives said the men were giving Mr. Shapiro all the latitude he needed to turn MSNBC around.
At an employee town meeting in October, Mr. Immelt pledged he would give Mr. Shapiro his full support "to get out and kick Fox's butt, which is what we have to do, and we'll pass CNN on the way."
He added: "I don't know a lot, necessarily, about the business or the industry, but I know how to kick butt. That's what I do."
Now if they pushed Phil the Clown out of an airplane, I would be glued to the set!
It probably would beat out National Geographic and their endless documentaries. Be a lot more interesting, too.
Can you spin falling clowns?
Lol....NBC News "uncomfortable" about opinionated style?
Stopped reading right there...I thought this was a serious article.
That explains this clown.
Anchored by Ashleigh Banfield and Nora O'Donnell
The news talk has to be center right oriented and has to have entertainment value.
Just look at the Matthews when he was trashing the Clinton administation he did well. When he is kissing Hillarys A$$ he is in the dumpster.
The people running MSNBC should ber prosecuted for impersontating broadcast management.
If I were doing MSNBC I would put on a 90 minute Tonight show type format except all the guests would be politcial. It would start with a 10 minute monologe of jokes.
What did James Carville the ragin Cajon contribute to Mary Landrieus victory... pause .. his absense. What does ti take for a Democat to win in the south... Bill Clinton to leave the country.
What is the differnce between tom daschle and a hound dog. A hound dogs bite is worse than his bark. What do you get if you breed Al Gore to he dumbest woman in the World? A son that is smarter than his father.
Then bring on a mix of guests ...some serious and some not serious. You could do tricks and skits based on current events. Put it on opposite O'Reilly and you would east his butt for breakfast.
But the MSNBC guys couldn't program their way out of a wooden box.
Question: If you don't know what you're doing in that business, how are you going to kick the competition's butt?
He might start by disregarding advice from his New York team who don't have a clue either.
Make you own substitutes.
The people want the truth, politically uncorrect and all the facts without censorship. For example, you did not hear the story about the Witchita murders from any of the lamesteam media. Two black guys raped, robbed and murdered four white people. One girl survived and ran across a field naked with a bullet in her head. CNN, CBS, NBC, ABC and MSNBC cover what a good liberal thinks that you need to know and stories like the Witchita murders are something they would rather keep quiet about.
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