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January 06, 2014
NRO: Rachel Maddow Now More or Less Calling the Shots at MSNBC
"Rachel's Show," Eliana Johnson's article is called.
Sources say it is Maddow rather than Phil Griffin who provides MSNBC’s editorial direction, and that she also holds considerable sway over personnel decisions....
Behind her back, colleagues call her “the queen,” a not so subtle suggestion that Maddow gets what Maddow wants. And what she wants is a network filled with young wonks such as Chris Hayes, Ezra Klein, Alex Wagner, and Harris-Perry, whose highbrow intellectualism can, she hopes, push the Democratic party, and the country, to the left.
...
Griffin, who came of age as a sports producer at CNN and then as a booker on the Today show, is, according to a former colleague, “utterly non-ideological.” “He makes decisions,” says the former colleague, “based on 30-day trailing numbers” and lacks a strategic vision. Maddow, who came aboard in 2008, has filled the ideological void. “Alec Baldwin and Martin were outliers; they weren’t part of her inner circle,” says a television insider. “Bashir’s contract was up, he was twisting in the wind when this happened, and he was out of sync with Rachel’s ideology.”
As Maddow’s foes have suffered, her acolytes have prospered — chief among them, 34-year-old Brown University graduate Chris Hayes, who last April replaced Ed Schultz, the warrior progressive from the Plains.
While Phil Griffin is "non-ideological," Maddow is not:
“If you debate for a living, you’re going to lose sometimes. Sometimes your preconceptions are wrong — that has never happened to her one time,” says a former colleague. “She is actually not that interested in reality; she is the most ideological person I’ve ever met. That is not somebody you want in charge of your programming, because she might put on a great show, but she cannot make rational decisions — her agenda is changing America. . . . She really thinks she is changing America for the better. You can’t have somebody like that in charge of your programming.”
The article notes that Maddow's Goons, particularly Chris Hayes, are garnering poor ratings and this is even hurting Maddow's numbers, due to a weak lead-in.