I find all the Sunday shows impossible to watch, though I try sometimes. That said, Grandpa Schieffer’s show is marginally better than the other two, and Dancin’ Dave is the absolute worst. So this doesn’t surprise me (via):
The main problem: The great-granddaddy of Sunday-morning Beltway blabfests (“Meet the Press”) isn’t just not No. 1. It’s No. 3 and in the midst of a three-year slide. During the first three months of this year, the NBC program finished behind perennial rivals “Face the Nation” on CBS and “This Week With George Stephanopoulos” on ABC, despite being helped by two weeks of Winter Olympics hoopla. In the final quarter of last year, viewing among people ages 25 to 54, the preferred group for TV news advertisers, fell to its lowest level ever.
[…..]Last year, the network undertook an unusual assessment of the 43-year-old journalist, commissioning a psychological consultant to interview his friends and even his wife. The idea, according to a network spokeswoman, Meghan Pianta, was “to get perspective and insight from people who know him best.” But the research project struck some at NBC as odd, given that Gregory has been employed there for nearly 20 years.
I’ll give them an assessment: Gregory is not only a pro-establishment toadie, he’s also a shitty interviewer — he just doesn’t the chops for it. Say what you will about the tenets of Tim Russert, he was quick on his feet and he knew how to press people.
I like that the article ends with praise from one of Gregory’s study buddies, apparently the only person they could find who would say something positive about the MTP train wreck:
“Time is on David’s side,” says Bloomberg View columnist Jeffrey Goldberg, a semi-regular “MTP” panelist. “It’s semi-inevitable. He just has to keep doing what he’s doing, and continue to break new ground on the big stories of the week. In five to 10 years, we’ll be talking about him as the grand old man of Sunday morning.”