MSNBC Is Where News Comes to Die, Says... MSNBC Head Phil Griffin

They're a "news channel" whose brand isn't the news.

At a time of intensely high interest in news, MSNBC’s ratings declined from the same period a year ago by about 20 percent. The explanation, in the network’s own analysis, comes down to this: breaking news is not really what MSNBC does.

“We’re not the place for that,” said Phil Griffin, the channel’s president, in reference to covering breaking events as CNN does. “Our brand is not that.”…

MSNBC’s viewers may have especially grown tired of politics because the news has been mostly negative recently toward President Obama, whom MSNBC’s hosts have championed. As another senior producer for news programs at multiple networks put it, “People will watch MSG when the Knicks are hot, and not watch when they aren’t.”…

Call this vindication for Mediaite's Noah Rothman, who suggested the reason for MSNBC's fall is its partisan determination to tell its liberal viewers that there is no news -- no news of scandals -- when there manifestly is news.

I had observed:

Because of the Full Partisan Tilt of MSNBC, the alleged "news" network must tell its customers, night after night, that there stockrooms are bare, and they have nothing at all to vend.

I remember this happening with Keith Olbermann on, I think, MSNBC. I think that was his first time he got fired from the network, but don't hold me to that; I can never keep his firings straight. For that matter, neither can he.

Point is, he was a hardcore liberal partisan (of course), and his show debuted during or just before the Clinton Impeachment story.

And night after night... Keith Olbermann basically told people there was no story.

Same story, every night, that there was no story at all.

That didn't exactly light up the ratings.

However, the message has come down from MSNBC's real director -- Obama flack David Plouffe -- that there is now State-Approved News to report, to wit, Darryl Issa's 41-year-old erroneous arrest and suspicions about a 20 year old fire in which no charges were ever brought.

Rhetorical Question: If MSNBC's stock-in-trade is not news, what is it, then?

posted by Ace at 11:37 AM

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