Say What? The NBC wanker edition
November 15, 2005News & Politics
Wright was responding to a question from Tucker Carlson, whose own show -- on, ah yes, MSNBC-- enjoys an audience that is many things but sadly not sizeable. [LINK via Gawker]
UPDATE: FAIR jumps in the fray:
It is ironic that Wright would say this to Carlson; if there's one thing many viewers don't seem to want to watch, it is Tucker Carlson's MSNBC show. In its first weeks on the air, Carlson's show was averaging about 200,000 viewers (Washington Post, 7/30/05). Even with the addition of a tabloid-oriented show hosted by Rita Cosby, the channel's prime-time audience in August was about 325,000 viewers (New York Times, 8/29/05). So if ratings are really what matter, one could argue that MSNBC's strategy of veering right--with shows hosted by Carlson and former Republican congressmember Joe Scarborough--has clearly been a failure.
But recent history suggests that MSNBC makes programming decisions based more on politics than audience share. That was why Phil Donahue's MSNBC show was cancelled, even though it was the channel's highest-rated program at the time, averaging over 400,000 viewers when it was cancelled (New York Times, 2/26/03).
Internal MSNBC memos revealed that network management was worried that Donahue would be a "difficult public face for NBC in a time of war," because Donahue "seems to delight in presenting guests who are anti-war, anti-Bush and skeptical of the administration's motives" (FAIR Action Alert, 3/7/03).
The relative success of the Donahue show would seem to disprove Wright's claim that liberals don't watch TV, or that viewers aren't interested in hearing left-of-center views. It appears that it's NBC's corporate managers, and not viewers, who aren't interested in such perspectives.
NBC Universal President Bob Wright lets us know just why a liberal news channel would be a terrible waste of money:
Going after a lefty audience would be futile, Wright said. "For some strange, probably genetic, reasons" � we’re pretty sure that was a joke � "they don't listen to a lot of radio and they don't watch a lot of television."Translation: those commie bastards are too damn busy reading the New Yorker. A good thing then TV execs can rely on conservative news junkies except ...
Wright was responding to a question from Tucker Carlson, whose own show -- on, ah yes, MSNBC-- enjoys an audience that is many things but sadly not sizeable. [LINK via Gawker]
UPDATE: FAIR jumps in the fray:
It is ironic that Wright would say this to Carlson; if there's one thing many viewers don't seem to want to watch, it is Tucker Carlson's MSNBC show. In its first weeks on the air, Carlson's show was averaging about 200,000 viewers (Washington Post, 7/30/05). Even with the addition of a tabloid-oriented show hosted by Rita Cosby, the channel's prime-time audience in August was about 325,000 viewers (New York Times, 8/29/05). So if ratings are really what matter, one could argue that MSNBC's strategy of veering right--with shows hosted by Carlson and former Republican congressmember Joe Scarborough--has clearly been a failure.
But recent history suggests that MSNBC makes programming decisions based more on politics than audience share. That was why Phil Donahue's MSNBC show was cancelled, even though it was the channel's highest-rated program at the time, averaging over 400,000 viewers when it was cancelled (New York Times, 2/26/03).
Internal MSNBC memos revealed that network management was worried that Donahue would be a "difficult public face for NBC in a time of war," because Donahue "seems to delight in presenting guests who are anti-war, anti-Bush and skeptical of the administration's motives" (FAIR Action Alert, 3/7/03).
The relative success of the Donahue show would seem to disprove Wright's claim that liberals don't watch TV, or that viewers aren't interested in hearing left-of-center views. It appears that it's NBC's corporate managers, and not viewers, who aren't interested in such perspectives.
