woodward & bernstein, 2015 pic.twitter.com/DggdZgeOKz
— Jason Gay (@jasonWSJ) March 17, 2015
Special for our faithful morning correspondent Raven, Alex Pareene asks Gawker, “Why Isn’t Morning Joe In Trouble For its Terrible Ratings?“:
MSNBC recently canceled shows hosted by Ronan Farrow and Joy Reid, reportedly because the channel is tacking away from liberal programming and because the ratings were bad. But MSNBC’s supposed abandonment of liberalism can’t extend that far: Rachel Maddow isn’t going anywhere. So if the problem is mainly ratings, that raises an interesting (to me, at least) question. Why haven’t there been any rumors about MSNBC canceling Morning Joe, a show with ratings that are just as bad as—and often much worse than—MSNBC’s primetime programming?…
Morning Joe isn’t even remotely competitive with Fox’s morning show, “The Idiot Smile-time Revue,” but none of MSNBC’s programming is remotely competitive with Fox’s programming, so that doesn’t really count against them. What should count against Joe Scarborough is that his show now routinely loses to CNN’s New Day and HLN’s Morning Express…
Of course, MSNBC’s owners would prefer that MSNBC got spectacular ratings and earned a lot more money. But if MSNBC wanted to make a pure ratings play, instead of wanting to reorient the political tone of their network, there’s a lot they could do. It is likely true that MSNBC could replace All In With Chris Hayes with a different sort of show, and get better ratings. A reality show about a pawn shop or a competitive cooking show or a campy Shonda Rhimes soap would all probably out-perform Hayes in the demo. But a cheery, dumb morning show hosted by attractive half-wits talking about heroic animals, extreme weather, and inspiring tales of survival would almost certainly out-perform Morning Joe. It may be in the best interest of people who work on Morning Joe, to suggest otherwise, but MSNBC’s problem isn’t “liberal programming,” it’s “political programming.”
CNN’s Jeff Zucker knows this, which is why he’s developing lots of general-interest entertainment programming. I suspect MSNBC executives know this, too, but thus far they have not suggested that they are considering abandoning politics. Joe Scarborough can take solace in the fact that certain types of political programming have a non-monetary value to media companies. Having shows that “drive the conversation” makes cable executives feel important and powerful. The question, then, is which direction Comcast and MSNBC executives wish the conversation to be driven…
***********
Everything seems particularly depressing right now, at least partially because I’m coming down with the rhinovirus the Spousal Unit brought back as a souvenir from his business trip to Florida. Apart from that, what’s on the agenda for the day?
Baud
Why is it so hard for them to create programming that caters to liberals like us. Is the problem them or us?
Schlemazel
The new I (used to) pay for was no better, a once proud and valuable newspaper became a font of ‘common knowledge’ political reporting and a stenographer for the GOP. Shallow and vapid did not increase its circulation. Joe & company should join that (former) intern he was having an affair with.
Wish I could blame a rhinovirus
OzarkHillbilly
@Baud: Us.
raven
Joe isn’t on today! What is really funny is on Friday when Rachel signs off with “PRISON!!!!”.
Mustang Bobby
@raven: Did he and Aaron Schock head off to Pensacola for spring break?
raven
I like this even though it will piss ya’ll off:
Sherparick
@Baud: I think most of us are listening to the radio (NPR) or, if watching TV, watching “Today” or “Good Morning America” since life is not just politics. I am somewhat gobsmacked the quotes (although except for donations to public radio and TV and few web sites such as this I depend on the indirect advertisement business model to pay for my news) since how do they expect people gathering the news to pay the rent. Of course, people now expect free music from their musicians. Perhaps news, political blogs, and musicians will have to study the Grateful Dead’s business model of building a community that likes to buy t-shirts and calendars and other mathoms.
Splitting Image
@Baud:
TV news audiences skew older than normal. Generally you can count on TV networks to step on each other pandering to the coveted 18-49 demographic, which would make the news shows more liberal if they did that. However, CNN and MSNBC are more interested in the 50+ audience. Fox News is closer to 65+. Part of the problem is that so few young people actually sit and watch TV as TV anymore. For fiction, people buy complete seasons on DVD or download them on Netflix. For the news shows, people watch clips on the internet. Aside from my parents (74 and 77), I’m not sure I know anyone anymore who regularly sits down and watches “the news”. Demographic groups that skew liberal just aren’t as interested in cable TV.
You can also look at it this way: the news channels have the same problem that A&E, the History Channel, and Discovery have dealt with over the years. Reality has a liberal bias, but half-baked woo drives the ratings. So while the History Channel could air programs discussing real historical issues, they will invariably get more people to tune in by focusing on Ancient Aliens. Rupert Murdoch understands this, and there is a lot of overlap between the people who think space aliens built the great pyramids and the people who believe Barack Obama is a Muslim-Atheist Anti-Christ.
Chris T.
@raven: That’s definitely part of it. Olbermann’s old show was more entertaining (and less fact-based) than Maddow’s and might have kept filling that particular ecological niche (the “rah rah our side is great theirs is awful” one, i.e., the tribalism slot).
And yet … tribalism appeals to all humans, yes, but clearly it has more hold on conservatives, who tend to think “tried and true” is automatically good and best, than on anyone who’s inclined to start with the idea that maybe—just maybe—we don’t live in the best of all possible worlds, so that some changes might actually make things better. (Imagine: progress!*) There’s only one status quo but there are many, perhaps even infinite, possibilities. You can’t Rally The Entire Tribe around Proposal A when there are competing proposals B through Z available.
(True, conservatives do sometimes want some sort of change … but so often, it takes the form: “Aiee! X has changed to Y, change it back to X! Now now now!” and the main argument is over how fast to change back.)
(*Also, remember the old analogy: PRO is to CON as PROGRESS is to ________)
Baud
@raven:
It doesn’t make me angry, but I don’t agree with it. I don’t want news to be like blogs. But I do want questioning of “my side” to be based on facts and not memes or hollow talking points.
Baud
@Sherparick: I admit to not paying for news, but I also don’t feel like any news source is really trying to market to me.
OzarkHillbilly
Face it people, we suck.
Baud
@OzarkHillbilly:
…and blow.
OzarkHillbilly
Mickey Kaus:
Kaus told Politico that a reverence for Fox News has become an issue for all conservative media.
“It’s a larger problem on the right: Everybody is scared of Fox,” he said. “Fox is their route to a high-profile public image and in some cases stardom. Just to be on a Fox show is a big deal. And I think that’s a problem on the right, Fox’s monopoly on star-making power.”
Do we really want something like that on the Left?
Baud
@OzarkHillbilly: Is that even remotely a concern?
Germy Shoemangler
Watching in horror and amusement as Tom Degan’s blog has been completely taken over by a troll whose main name is “Sore Loser” (he has about seven or eight aliases that he uses to agree with himself). He posts all day and night, tells them “I’ll be back” and cuts and pastes every crackpot thing that was discredited years ago.
I never comment there; I feel like I’d need to shower after. He’s insulting the other commenters’ mothers, insulting Tom Degan. It’s insane! Tom’s latest essay is on Selma, and so “Sore Loser” is cutting and pasting racist stuff.
Like watching a slow-motion car wreck.
Baud
@Germy Shoemangler: Can’t he be banned?
OzarkHillbilly
@Baud: Yes… and No. My point is that the very thing that makes FOX successful (pandering to their audience) is the very thing we want… and yet are repulsed by. As you said at the start, “Why is it so hard for them to create programming that caters to liberals like us. Is the problem them or us?”
Germy Shoemangler
@Baud: Good question. If it were my blog, I’d block his I.P.
It used to be a blog full of great comments (like here). Sometime around Obama’s election (surprise!) he started appearing as “anonymous” and then from there started stealing other commenters’ names. It’s like if you came on here and found someone had posted an anti-obama rant under the name “Baud”.
After a while, the other commenters left. Now it’s just Sore Loser, his aliases, and two or three progressives who try convince him he’s wrong.
He threw a tantrum a few months ago and said he was leaving. It lasted one day. In that time, there were no posts from him or any of the “other” conservative commenters.
He’s obviously mentally ill. He says he can see everyone’s location with a “blogger location tracking” website.
I’ve been lurking there a few months. It’s like watching disaster footage.
Shalimar
You can’t cancel Joe, or he might have your interns killed.
raven
@Baud: It’s not me it’s the first comment on the linked article.
Iowa Old Lady
@Germy Shoemangler: How awful for the blog owner, who’s apparently still trying to say thoughtful things.
Germy Shoemangler
@Iowa Old Lady: Very true. Reading “Sore Losers” comments reinforced my belief that most of these fox news online trolls are motivated by severe personality disorders.
His claim that he can track the other commenters’ locations is laughable bullshit. Apparently he keeps guessing wrong. They mock him, and he keeps coming back. Tom Degan writes good essays, though.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
Meh. Cable TV navel gazing.
I’ve never watched Morning Joe. Olbermann was entertaining, but his rants got tiresome. MSNBC showed its true colors when they fired him over his (what was it $2000?) contribution to some political outfit.
Chris Hayes spent 30 min (or more – I eventually turned the channel) on the rich old mass murderer guy last night. That’s important “news”, yessir.
Rachel’s show should be cut to 30 min, or she should triple the time she spends on interviews. She takes far too long for her to get to the point in her opening segments….
For TV news, I watch the BBC. They have far fewer commercials, they actually tell us what’s new that happened in the world, and they have different hosts, so if you don’t like Katty Kay (who strikes me as someone who loves Republicans), you don’t have to watch her.
I used to watch the PBS NewsHour regularly, but my schedule doesn’t permit it now. It’s not a major loss, though. One can get the news, for “free” even, if one looks beyond US cable TV.
I don’t think The Republic will crumble if cable “news” goes away. There are many, many options.
FWIW.
Cheers,
Scott.
Germy Shoemangler
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet: I used to watch the PBS NewsHour regularly
Last time I watched PBS NewsHour they were talking about how John Kerry said he was willing to negotiate with Assad. They cut to a clip of Obama saying it was time for Assad to step down. They left it at that. They made it look like Kerry and Obama were contradicting each other.
Then I turned to network news (CBS? I think it was) and they were explaining that Kerry wanted to negotiate with Assad about him stepping down. My wife and I looked at each other: “Oh, now i understand!”
If I had left it with PBS NewsHour I would have been left with the impression that Obama has some fucked up foreign policy incompetence. It took network news to correct that impression???
ms_canadada
How about Free Speech TV?
Thom Hartmann, Amy Goodman – Democracy Now, Stephanie Miller, Ring of Fire – Mike Papantonio/Robert Kennedy Jr./Sam Seder, Uprising with Somali, etc.
ThresherK
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet: My take: Rachel’s opening segments are longer because she has to background people.
Her work is the exact opposite of some idiot newsreader in East Nosepick saying (as if they’ve done the shoeleather work, as if they’re not just reading predigested bits on a TelePrompter), “Looks like Hillary Clinton’s in trouble again (implied yuk goes here)…” and the audience is prepared for whatever the Beltway Inbred on tape is saying.
Cervantes
@Baud:
Us, if we look to them for information.
Their job is not to inform us. Their job is to sell advertising, and they do it pretty well.
ET
I sometimes think the young ones are stupid. Common sense stupid. Who do they think makes it possible for this news to spread? Not just rumors or small picture first accounts but a story about what is going on in a reliable fashion that they have a hope of reading with the belief that it is trustworthy. People don’t do this for free indefinitely – unless they are independently wealthy and don’t need a paycheck to eat and have a place to live.
Baud
@ms_canadada:
I thought it was mixed. Some good reporting but also some ranty firebaggery crap. Like I said above, I don’t want my news to be a kos style blog.
Cervantes
@ms_canadada:
Amy Goodman works for me.
(If you see what I mean.)
Baud
@Cervantes:
They are apparently not selling us advertising very well.
NonyNony
@Baud:
I wouldn’t call it a problem, but the “liberal demographic” isn’t actually a demographic. The “conservative demographic” that Fox News caters to is actually an “over 60 with politics that skew from right to far right” demographic. That’s a real demographic that a) watches A LOT of TV b) is easy to write programming for and c) is easy to advertise to. The over 60 demographic is a goldmine for advertisers looking to sell reverse mortgages, pharmaceuticals, and lawsuits against pharmaceutical companies (as well as a prime market for grifters looking to make a buck off of various goldline type scams).
The number of liberals in this country is smaller than the number of conservatives to start with, and when you look at it it isn’t a demographic at all. It’s a loose political affiliation of people with a variety of political interests who have banded together for a common set of political purposes based on a shared set of underlying ideals. That’s great, but it isn’t the kind of group you can sell things to. What is an advertiser going to sell to a group like that? Mostly politicians – which is why every 4 years that demographic gets chased after by political ads and MSNBC thinks they can make a go of “liberal” programming. But outside of that there isn’t a demographic there – liberals are too diverse a group to be a marketing demographic. Add to that the bias that exists because of the natural conservatism of the ruling elite and the fact that the networks are owned by those ruling elites and you end up with a formula that just makes liberal networks unworkable (though the fractured nature of the Internet means that there’s a chance to at least overcome that second one, I don’t see any cure for the first).
Baud
@NonyNony: That makes sense to me.
Cervantes
@Baud:
Perhaps not, but that’s not precisely their goal.
Bobby B.
@ms_canadada: I’ll stick with Democracy Now. Rachel Maddow just spins plates with teasers between lonnnng commerical breaks. Those big news shows are wrecked by professional pundits who start every sentence with “I think…” and talk about “cycles” and “conversations” and “narratives”.
All pundits should be tossed into a Roman arena to fight lions,and I’m not just saying that because I want to see Chuck Todd torn apart by wild animals. “We need to have a national conversation about brain-rot.”
Cervantes
@NonyNony:
That “shared set of underlying ideals” seems important.
If, for example, the Sierra Club wanted to sponsor a TV program that your band of viewers would find useful, what could it sell (or expect in return)?
Hal
Fox News still doesn’t bring in anywhere near the viewers of main stream news and morning shows on the big three. The Fox demographic is old white people who end up being massively misinformed and Wed to their down with big gubmint (except my Medicare and social security) ideology. Probably amazingly easy to cater to as a group.
Cervantes
@Bobby B.:
I could not agree more — except to add that, sometimes, Maddow is more, well, economical with the truth than I want her to be.
Other people here have defended her inaccuracies, even if they are conscious ones, as being a useful part of a campaign against The Enemy.
Kay
@ThresherK:
She explains too much. I know anyone who speaks publicly is told to repeat things three times, but that shouldn’t be taken literally.
I feel like two things are going on: she wants to SHOW the work she’s putting into this and she doesn’t trust her audience to figure anything out. It almost makes me disengage because I have no role in this, at all- she’s telling me where to look and what to see. It feels “leading”, like she doesn’t trust us to go off her carefully chosen track of inquiry and draw our own conclusions about why something or other happened.
rikyrah
@raven:
People don’t watch MSNBC because they don’t support the President and his policies.
When you see Chris Hayes let any right winger blather on and on without true challenge…..that’ll get old real quick.
Kay
@ThresherK:
This is more of a general beef, but Maddow does it too, so she’s included.
They have to stop talking about their work. The constant references to the details of reporting or the hand-off where they say “thanks to some excellent reporting from so and so…” is just insular and excluding. The listener will decide if it’s “excellent reporting” and very few people talk about how they do their job WHILE they’re doing their job, because that’s bizarre.
NonyNony
@Cervantes:
Nope – not for selling stuff other than political messages. It’s important for political activism, but it isn’t the kind of thing that is going to get people to buy a Big Mac.
My point exactly. What could the Sierra Club sell that was going to appeal to everyone who considers themselves a political liberal? Or did you think there was something they could be selling that would appeal to the diverse group of folks who all call themselves “liberal” in the USA?
(Also if you’re relying on non-profits to drive your advertising you already do not have enough money to run a modern cable TV network. You might have enough to run a website.)
CaseyL
One of my favorite scifi novels had this to say about televised news: “An indoctrination channel for children.”
I hardly ever watch TV news, network or cable. Maybe for huge breaking stories, though even there Twitter is often more useful.
I like NPR’s non-political reporting, esp. their international reporting, because the stories go into depth, giving background and context. The political reporting drives me nuts, because then it’s Nice Polite Republican time.
Otherwise, I go on-line: BBC, Sky News, and blogs. Also newspapers, paper and on-line versions.
I’m a one-person aggregator.
Cervantes
@NonyNony:
Wasn’t it you who argued that these people are committed to a “shared set of underlying ideals”? Obviously you were not thinking of Big Macs.
I wasn’t suggesting reliance on non-profits only. As stated, I mentioned the Sierra Club just as an example. There are other kinds of (potential) advertisers.
RSA
@Sherparick:
One of my friends is an independent software developer who’s quite famous in his area and yet has had trouble getting jobs, in part because of the expectations of so many people that software should be free. And if you can find free software that does 80% of what you need, isn’t that better than pay for software that does 100%? Not always…
Violet
@CaseyL:
Sky News? The Murdoch Sky News? That one? Sure, they’re trustworthy and unbiased.
NonyNony
@Cervantes:
YES EXACTLY! This is exactly my point. You cannot sell shit to a group of people whose only link is a common set of ideals OTHER THAN MESSAGES BASED ON THOSE IDEALS. Which is only works in election seasons. Try to come up with an example of something that would appeal to liberals in this country based only on their shared liberalism that isn’t political in nature – I suggest you cannot. Which makes them NOT a demographic for anything other than political messages.
Contrast that with selling things to white men over the age of 50 – there’s a whole bunch of shit that those guys have in common that has nothing to do with their politics. And that makes it easy to sell them on not just Big Macs and new pickup trucks, but also sexual dysfunction drugs, drugs to help with their liver problems, class action lawsuits against pharmaceutical companies who sold them dangerous drugs to help with their liver problems, reverse mortgages and other items designed to appeal to an over 50 demographic.
The mistake is to view Fox News as a conservative news network instead of as a channel catering to white people over the age of 50. This is how the advertisers view it and why it has been so successful in making money that other news networks try to copy it.
bcinaz
Fun fact about MSNBC: they are no longer granting free online and ipod access; you have to have a cable/satellite connection to get the full hour of Rachel, Chris Hayes, Steve Kornacki et al.
It looks like the business model is less about news and more about driving subscriptions.
I, for one, don’t think there’s anything on TV worth $100.00 a month.
grandpa john
@rikyrah: This is why I quit them years ago, and the main one was Matthews. He is an unabashed idiot.
Matt McIrvin
@Germy Shoemangler: Sounds kind of like the pest who briefly posted as “Rocket” something over on Slacktivist. After some initial activity under that name, they started just posting (without an account) under the names of various regular posters making outrageous racist and otherwise bigoted statements, and even responding to protests by the actual person with “no, I’m the real [name], and [bigotry slander bigotry]”.
I think there was an eventual IP ban followed by some end run around that, but they’ve been out of sight for a little while.
Matt McIrvin
Personally, I’ve been trained off of watching any sort of TV news, except in clips regurgitated by The Daily Show and similar things. The format itself has become irritating to me. So a liberal TV news channel is probably not going to be something I find interesting.
brantl
You get what you pay for.
Renie
@NonyNony: That’s very interesting. I never thought of it that way and it helps explain why Fox News is still around. Thanks!
pattonbt
Its simple, really. Policy doesn’t sell, but fear and anger do. The left works off policy. The right works off fear and anger. People have limited time in their personal lives (those of working age) and they pretty much do not want to send their time digesting policy. They want the synopsis and to know “whats getting done!” and then watch Two and a Half Men. There will always be small bastions of “hard” left news, but not big money makers or ratings winners, it just isn’t a money making formula.
That said, where the left has a monumental advantage is in humor and satire. The only successful “mass” left wing media is going to be in the Stewart / Colbert / Oliver mould – because it’s clever and true. And this only gets further reinforced in day to day pop culture (TV. movies, music, etc.). The right wing has no play in that space because it’s angry, mean and bigoted and shows the true face of the movement.
So the right gets the fear which keeps / draws in the olds and bigots, but the left gets the young and educated. It’s an edge that I like the left having because it keeps liberalism alive in a way people can understand and consume in large quantities. It’s not perfect, but it puts the onus on the right to re-convert the electorate as they age instead of vice-versa.
Hence why, over the long term, society gets better and better and better for all (I’m not saying utopia better or anything like that, just slow, solid progress). Even the young who go right in their older age still are less right than their predecessors. You may get one step back then 1.5 forward, but the overall trend is forward.