**UPDATED**
MSNBC is faltering without Keith Olbermann. I, for one, am not surprised.
All Current TV needs now is more access to more viewers. From Bill Carter, who reports that Lawrence O’Donnell’s “falloff” is now also impacting Rachel Maddow.
MSNBC Is Close to Falling to Third Place in Cable News Ratings
How badly has MSNBC been hurt by the loss of Keith Olbermann? Enough, apparently, to be on the verge of falling back into third place among the cable news networks.
[...] On MSNBC, meanwhile, Lawrence O’Donnell has lost 100,000 viewers from the numbers Mr. Olbermann posted last September, with 185,000 viewers in the 25-to-54 age group, a drop of 35 percent. (Bill O’Reilly on Fox, as always, dwarfs his competitors with about three times as many viewers, 611,000.)
More ominously, the falloff for Mr. O’Donnell seems to be affecting MSNBC’s biggest name, Rachel Maddow. Her audience dropped 15 percent this year, to 245,000 from 289,000. She still beats Piers Morgan on CNN in the 9 p.m. hour, but his show has improved 18 percent over Larry King’s ratings last year, with 193,000 viewers to Mr. King’s 164,000.
Lawrence O’Donnell is at his best in this video highlighting police brutality during the Wall Street protests. He’s one of the sharpest minds on cable and no one knows political theater better than O’Donnell. But these numbers are troubling for him.
[update] Unlike O’Donnell, Keith Olbermann had Kelly Heresy, one of the Occupy Wall Street protesters (video) on his show, who explained why they were there. It’s important.
“We are not against the cops — the cops are part of the 99 percent — the cops, we would like to believe, are on our side. Because we understand that they have families, they have children, and with budget cuts they could be losing their jobs and pensions as well.” – Kelly Heresy
Olbermann is a very seasoned broadcaster, with a side of wise ass that incites enemies, which is always good for ratings. Olbermann v. O’Reilly was a classic ego smackdown, something that wouldn’t be quite as entertaining with Lawrence O’Donnell.
As for MSNBC’s “Lean Forward” campaign, they leaned so far forward into Barack Obama’s direction they have tied their trajectory to him. This plan caused Cenk Uygur, who’s joining Keith at Current, to be replaced with Al Sharpton, whose ability as a TV host is sorely lacking.
Whether it’s FOX, who got burned by Glenn Beck, or MSNBC, any news network sucking up to political powers or personalities deserves what they get.
With independents growing as more people become politically homeless, a term being used more and more for the disaffected (it was used today on “Morning Joe”), MSNBC has proven to be well behind this curve.
Maybe the ” politically homeless ” should try starting a new party. Now there’s an idea. This new party could start by not sucking up to cops. Cops are quickly becoming what they were in the sixties, PIGS!
A “third party” has been talked about forever. It won’t work.
What we need is for people to have access to the ballot outside the two party establishment system.
In the end a “third party” needs a standard bearer.
There is also no way to address a third party if an election gets thrown into Congress.
First step is to abolish the Electoral College.
It s been tough, switching back and forth between MSNBC and Current during the 8-9 o’clock slot. It’ll be easier to just stay with Current when Cenk starts with a 7 o’clock show. O’Donnell can be terrific, but I think he has been embarrassing himself with the recent Obama adoration segments. A real shame.
O’Donnell’s mind is fierce, but I have stopped watching him.
I watched or taped Keith and Maddow every night on MSNBC. Then I moved to Current with Keith and taped LO & Maddow. Then I stopped taping LO and simply switched to Rachel after Keith . . . from time to time.
Now I just watch Keith and don’t even bother with MSNBC. So I was not at all surprised by today’s article when I read it.
The reason I moved away though was because IMO, MSNBC had become overly protective and solicitous of Obama and constantly making excuses for him.
As a matter of fact I believe that as his fortunes continue to fade, MSNBC’s numbers will also decline in tandem.
To some extent, Fox saw that happening as W’s popularity (and the GOP’s generally) faded. It is a hazard of that kind of reporting.
Employing genuine skepticism, as opposed to the sort of bias Fox and MSNBC both display, would make that sort of correlation less pronounced.
“Whether it’s FOX, who got burned by Glenn Beck, or MSNBC, any news network sucking up to political powers or personalities deserves what they get.”
It would be lovely if things worked that way everywhere in the journalism business. Maybe it is, in a way. Old-style print news seems to be going away. Some of that has to do with the inherent advantages of publishing online, but I think it also has to do with newspapers having largely given up the practice of treating what politicians say and do with the skepticism those actions deserve.
By the way, there is all this talk now about Fox moderating itself and dropping the Tea-Party. Yeah Right? It may or may not be true. I sensed something like this would happen, but not because of the unpopularity of the Tea-Party or Glen Beck, but because of HACKING.
That is their course correction.
MSNBC = insufferable.
I increasingly find MSNBC unwatachable. I still like to catch Dylan when I can. I don’t think I have Current and I don’t have a cable choice.
Taylor we have to agree to disagree on Lawrence O’Donnell. I agree that he is very sharp minded but he lapses into lectures that treat the listeners as if they were dumb and uninformed.
Why watch when you know they all are carrying Obama’s water, no original thinking?
Good news about Cenk’s show. We watch Keith now and then switch to Rachel, who is still my favorite. Good to have something on at 7 as Chris is just unbearable. O’Donnell is too much into the show biz aspect of things, as one might expect from his resume.
Anyhow, I am fed up with the non-stop coverage of the Republican primary circus. Wish there were more substantial news stories on other issues besides pure politics, as Keith is doing by spotlighting the Wall St. protests.
Maybe because a) it isn’t really election time and b) people are sick of listening to half turths – whether it be performed by the clowns at FOX or Maddow’s “I’m smarter than you” attitude (which is ironic, since, while she is very educated, pulls the same BS that Bill O’Reilly does and then acts superior about it.)
Maybe it’s better for the mind to calm it with watching reruns of Law & Order and Bones rather than watching the blowhards on cable “news”.