Friday, August 30, 2013

MSNBC Ratings Fall as Hosts Go Emoprog ~ Updated with Olbermann Tweets!

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Previous Post:
Chris Hayes Totally Overthinks the Word "Hero"

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"The Rachel Maddow Show" posted all-time ratings lows in August, in a month that continued a ratings plunge that has prevailed throughout much of the year.
The show was down 43% in total viewers and 47% in the key 25-54 age demographic, respectively, from August 2012.
~ Business Insider

For his part, (Chris) Hayes was blunt—"obviously, the numbers are bad right now"—but he cautioned against making any drastic changes based on what worked on any given evening.
Looking at ratings data "tickles the worst instincts human beings have on causal inference," he said, in a Hayesian answer if ever there was one.
~ New Yorker via Huffington Post

The decisions that Maddow makes go a long way toward defining what MSNBC is, too. Phil Griffin, the president, calls Maddow “our quarterback,” the person who sets the tone for the network. A few years ago, MSNBC had a different quarterback: Keith Olbermann, a former ESPN anchor who rose to fame during the Bush years, delivering urbane, fuguelike denunciations of a President who was sometimes known, on his show, as “you, sir.” Olbermann and MSNBC agreed to a no-fault divorce in early 2011, and Griffin has spent the past two and a half years reinventing the network in Maddow’s image.
~ The New Yorker

Switch O'Donnell and Hayes and 8PM slot is fixed. Hayes had a good show in terms of content, but presentation needs a little more work. Personality transplant would be perfect.
~ trollsbwild on Huff Post

I stopped watching Rachel because she says everything three times, and her voice gets shrill.
~ Tammany on Huff Post



From "An Open Letter to Chris Hayes" by Desert Crone NM
. . . Pay attention carefully to this. You and your buddies have always misidentified President Obama's base. We ordinary common folk are his base, not the the likes of Hamsher, Greenwald, Moore, Adam Green, and Sirota. They and you have never spoken for the base. Guess who MSNBC's audience is? President Obama's base. That's right, the Obamabots and Obamatrons who mindlessly follow dear leader. Obamabots are just like I am although I happen to be an old white woman. Even though Obamabots cut across all spectrums of American life, young, old, black, white, Latino, Asian-American, Native American, we share many similarities. We are educated, and we are activists. We are politically astute and knowledgeable.
We also recognize bullshit when we see or hear it.  The mistaken notion is that we never have any differences with President Obama, which is just absurd. Of course we would have differences with President Obama. What we object to is unfair and unfounded criticism of the President. What we object to are the vitriolic tempered tantrums thrown by so many of the professional left and libertarians. We object to unreasonable expectations. We object to half-truths and lies. We don't object to fair criticism contrary to what you and your fellows may think.

From Politicus USA
The decision that started their decline was the departure of Keith Olbermann from the network. MSNBC head Phil Griffin thought that he could replace Olbermann with Lawrence O’Donnell. That decision spectacularly failed, but his next choice for the timeslot would prove to be more of a winner. Ed Schulz was the perfect fit for MSNBC’s 8 PM. His program had a bit of the sort of emotion and tone that Olbermann’s did. MSNBC rose to second in the cable news ratings. Occasionally, they even beat ratings leader Fox News.
However, earlier this year Phil Griffin made his second bad decision. Griffin decided that Schultz’s old school liberalism didn’t fit with the primetime lineup that he wanted to build. Griffin wanted a clone army of Maddow wonk nerds in primetime, and the blustery blue collar Schultz didn’t fit the bill. This resulted in Ed being shuffled off to the weekends to make room for Griffin’s third bad decision.
In his quest for hipper and younger viewers, Griffin installed Chris Hayes as the new 8 PM host. The Hayes that was smooth on his weekend morning show was quickly replaced by a host that has been at times painful to watch. Chris Hayes is the round peg that MSNBC keeps trying to fit into the square hole. It isn’t working. Nearly 30% of the viewers who tuned in for Ed have tuned out Chris Hayes. The flood of new young viewers hasn’t materialized, and Hayes is looking more and more like the television equivalent of a death row inmate.

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What Would Keith Olbermann Do - or Say?







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Handwriting on the Walls of MSNBC
Prophetic Tweets from Earlier This Year:









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That Click You Hear is the Obamabot Army
Turning off and Tuning Out MSNBC



































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