I saw this on Yahoo last week and saved it for posting when I had time to actually add to the article since I don't like to just cut and paste then post since that is cheesy and intellectually dishonest. I knew that MSNBC are having problems due to the context of their lineup. When you have an unabashed race hustler named Al Sharpton on your political lineup for commentary. I believe that people are realizing the shameless pandering that MSNBC is doing and it turns it off. The other networks try to be objective and they are successful with varying degrees. MSNBC is 100 percent in the tank for the democrats and Obama. People realizes that after a while when the BS meter starts pegging all the time that the endless carrying of the water for the Obama administration when their reality sharply contrast with the hope and change being spouted by the talking heads on MSNBC
MSNBC is known for zealot parroting the party line..Jake Carney could get a job at MSNBC and not miss a beat as spokesman for the Obama White house and speaking at the podium at this network. I have heard people call MSNBC "The
Pravda of the Potomac" as the shameless shill of the modern progressive movement. The talking heads and the network spokespeople emit a liberal elitist attitude as they deride "flyover country" and deride the average American as a bumbling imbeciles unless they have drunk the kool-aid or breath the ratified air that the liberal progressives have since it has permeated their entire existence.
From Yahoo News:
MSNBC bills itself as the "place for politics," but if
you've been watching the network lately, it's been all of the Zimmerman
trial, all the time. Political director Chuck Todd grew so frustrated
with the coverage preempting his Daily Rundown show that he barely
concealed his exasperation on-air,
as evidenced by a video from the
Washington Free Beacon
that quickly went viral. Most of the network's flagship news shows,
from Hardball with Chris Matthews to Politics Nation with Al Sharpton,
seem to spend more time talking about Trayvon Martin than President
Obama.
It's nothing new for cable news these days – CNN,
FOX News and Headline News have all put the trial at the center of
their coverage. But the strategy is especially noticeable when it comes
to MSNBC because its numbers have been in sharp decline over the last
few months. The network that found success being the aggressively
liberal alternative to CNN during the 2012 presidential election is now
finding itself with a ratings headache on its hands. And it seems to be
abandoning its politics-first play for the easy ratings of nonstop
courtroom coverage – following CNN's tabloid turn, if you will.
Asked
if the amount of Zimmerman mania was causing any eye rolling at the
network, one MSNBC insider said: "It's less the amount of coverage
because everyone does that and especially after CNN covering [Jodi]
Arias [murder trial] did so well. And we have a large African-American
viewership that's interested. The issue is whether we cover it the right
way, as a legal issue, which we're mostly doing or does it get covered
like it's 2012, when there was no indictment, as a political fight. I
worry."
Balancing liberal politics and news, politics
and other subjects--it's all an issue for MSNBC this summer. Earlier
this month when the cable news ratings for the second quarter of 2013
came out, there was a head-jarring decline in MSNBC's numbers. After a
great 2012 in which the liberal-leaning network had bested CNN and, at
times, caught up to perennial leader Fox News Channel, MSNBC's was
losing the race. By a lot. It had just 576,000 primetime viewers, by one
metric, a figure that's down 16 percent from the heady days of 2012.
The
question as to why offers some insights into MSNBC's future and,
perhaps, the still-unresolved challenges facing a liberal network during
a Democratic administration.
"When you're too
predictably a mouthpiece for the administration and you cast your lot
with the president's performance, there's a risk," said David Shuster,
who left the network for Current TV when his contract expired in 2011.
He pointed to Fox's higher production values as one of the reasons for
the conservative network's ongoing ratings dominance lead and the
high-brow nature of MSNBC's prime time lineup as one of the reasons for
its most recent decline.
MSNBC declined to comment for this story,
but cable news veterans -- including former MSNBC alumni -- offered
their own theories of what ails the network. One common theory is that
MSNBC feels threatened by a resurgent CNN.
"MSNBC's
apparent success was owing to CNN's failure," says a former cable
executive. "CNN was run so poorly that it made MSNBC look fantastic by
comparison. "
That seems ready to change. Jeff Zucker,
the former head of NBC Universal and the guiding hand behind 16 years of
Today show victories, has buffed the look of CNN, bringing in network
stars like Chris Cuomo and Jake Tapper. But more importantly, his
expanding definition of breaking news to include the Zimmerman trial
gives CNN more room to run.
CNN has been the place for
breaking news and its audience reliably swells when there's a big event.
(MSNBC insiders deride that as "muscle memory" owing to CNN's 16-year
head start in the 24-hour news biz and say it will fade in time.) CNN's
newsy rep would seem to account for much of its gain over MSNBC in the
second quarter--a time span which included the Boston Marathon bombings,
the Cleveland kidnappings, and the Oklahoma tornadoes as well as the
Jodi Arias trial, which powered its Headline News channel ahead of
MSNBC. But in June at the end of the dismal second quarter, MSNBC's
ratings picked up. "All those viewers who tuned into CNN for their big
quarter haven't stuck around," says one cable executive.
Other insiders posited the theory of
progressive decline
-- liberals are less fired up now that we're in the second term of the
Obama administration. There's no easy way to measure that but it would
certainly seem like there's less interest in politics as well as liberal
commentary at least on TV. MSNBC rode waves of liberal enthusiasm and
election-related interest in 2012 and 2008. But with Obama down in the
polls and no election at hand, and Congress famously gridlocked, the
place for politics, as MSNBC bills itself, may not be the sexiest best
pitch. MSNBC continued to run its "The Place for Politics" chyron during
the Zimmerman trial on Tuesday morning which would be as incongruous as
boasting "The Place for Courtroom Trials" while airing a presidential
convention.
Critics also suggest that MSNBC no longer
has much diversity in the evenings. It's not that MSNBC needs a
conservative host. It's that the nighttime hours from 8:00 PM to 11:00
PM are too erudite, too sophisticated and too earnest to hook a wide
swath of viewers.
Some believe the network suffered from
moving blunt Ed Schultz to the weekend. The former football player and
liberal radio talk show host could be irascible and even buffoonish at
times--he called Laura Ingraham a "right wing slut...a talk slut" and
apologized for it--but his populist instincts contrasted with the
evening's urbane mien.
Indeed, Fox from 8:00 to 11:00
may operate in a conservative space but it has more diversity in its
style of host. Sean Hannity is different than Greta Van Susteren who is
different than Bill O'Reilly. Keith Olbermann, for all his bombast, was a
powerfully skilled broadcaster and while his departure for Current TV
in 2011 may have pleased MSNBC executives it left the network's lineup
with a big hole.
In a sign of how things have turned,
Olbermann recently signed a deal as the lead postseason baseball anchor
for TBS, while many of MSNBC's primetime stars are dealing with
speculation over their declining ratings. Olbermann, no stranger to
controversy, even waded in himself on Twitter, writing that the network
had "collapsed" since he left and that he hadn't heard from his protégé
Rachel Maddow since.
Others smell blood, too. Bill
O'Reilly took a shot at MSNBC last week as he often does after Chris
Matthews referred to Sen. Ted Cruz as looking a bit black Irish. "It's
all falling apart," O'Reilly said of MSNBC.
Collapse? Hardly. Vulnerable? For sure.