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| MSNBC is rising in ratings. The network's president thinks it could take down Fox News in ratings. Rachel Maddow is matching rating key demo. The liberal agitator goes against Sean Hannity, the conservative agitator on Fox News. |
Fox News, the nation's most watched cable network was hoping for the first 100 days of a Mitt Romney administration.
Alas, it was tossed out the window, just like every other issue the Fox News Channel devoted its time and coverage to. The conservative-leaning network was hoping that President Barack Obama would fail.
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| Chris Hayes. |
Leading the way was the ever so annoying Sean Hannity. The guy who would spent all day and night rambling on about the president. He always would create a manufactured controversy straight out of his boss Roger Ailes' playbook.
Then you got the woman who would devote a whole show to covering not only that idiot Sarah Palin, but the numerous hot White chicks gone missing. That Greta Van Susteren, the "
LIBERAL" agitator is a fixture there. She frequently puts on Republicans and conservative agitators to bash the president.
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| Chris Matthews. |
Then the spin doctor himself, Bill O'Reilly. Always thinking about how the LEFT would ruin traditional values in America. Picking fights with rappers, celebrities and lawmakers, O'Reilly would got upset over the "domestic" War on Christmas and now Easter. He would write a book on what he would do if he killed Abraham Lincoln and John F. Kennedy.
These three are the primetime fixtures on the conservative network.
Phil Griffin, the chief over at MSNBC is seeing the cracks and it's going to punch a hole through it.
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| Lawrence O'Donnell. |
Griffin declared that Fox News days are numbered.
He stated that MSNBC will overtake Fox News in the ratings and the threat is serious. He's lined up Chris Matthews, Rachel Maddow, Joe Scarborough, Al Shaprton, Ed Schultz, Lawrence O'Donnell and Chris Hayes as his hard hitters for the network.
The primetime line up will begin with Al Sharpton, Chris Matthews, Chris Hayes, Rachel Maddow, and Lawrence O'Donnell on weeknights. On weekends there will be live programs from Melissa Harris-Perry Ed Schultz,and David Gregory.
Griffin is lining MSNBC to be the voice of the liberals. The Pew Research has the network leading the way in opinionated program. Although, I don't believe the poll about MSNBC being to opinionated, it's commentators are pretty liberal and are known agitators.
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| Al Sharpton. |
Griffin took a shot at Fox News by calling the network "Loserville" because of it blatant declaration of President Barack Obama being defeated in a "landslide".
The New Republic caught up with Phil Griffin and asked him about the success of his network.
Portion of the article included: The network managed to hang on for a couple more years before accidentally hitting upon an identity that worked. Right after Hurricane Katrina, in the summer of 2005, Keith Olbermann delivered a “Special Comment” at the end of his show about the Bush administration’s incompetence. Even though it was an instant sensation, picking up millions of hits online, Griffin demanded that Olbermann stop. Having his temperamental star fulminate against the White House for nine uninterrupted minutes at 8:50 p.m. wasn’t his idea of a perfect lead-in to Rita Cosby.
But Olbermann, being Olbermann, persisted, eventually earning himself the designation of “truth teller of the year” in Rolling Stone.
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| Ed Schultz. |
This is how MSNBC as we know it developed: haphazardly, and often over Griffin’s initial skepticism. In 2005, Tucker Carlson’s team brought Rachel Maddow into the network based on a tape her agent sent them. Maddow wasn’t Griffin’s style—she didn’t look like a Fox blonde—but Carlson insisted that she stay on, and Maddow quickly proved herself to be erudite and winning on-air. When she was hired as a regular contributor, MSNBC gave her the keys to Connie Chung’s old dressing room, an enthusiastic makeup artist, and a closet full of high-end clothing. Hint hint.
“Morning Joe” has a similar creation story. In 2007, as part of an effort to persuade Griffin to give him a morning show, Joe Scarborough stayed up late one night to Photoshop a poster for his imagined program. He pasted pictures of his dream co-hosts, including Willie Geist, and bullet points of what the show would do.
Finally, Griffin gave in. Scarborough then managed to hire Mika Brzezinski as his co-host, again over Griffin’s objections. Before their first show, Griffin gave them a piece of advice, “Pretend to have an audience of one: Tim Russert.”
“It took me about eight years to figure him out,” Scarborough says. “I sit, and I look at a problem, and I make a decision. Phil sits back and he lets things hit the wall and he waits to see what sticks.” He calls this Griffin’s “free-market, laissez-faire approach” to management, and it has been phenomenally successful over the last five years.
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| Melissa Harris-Perry. |
The 2008 campaign showed that there was a big audience for left-wing punditry, and Griffin, who took charge of the network that July, moved to capitalize. Liberals like Olbermann and Maddow were anchoring prime time shows, while reporters like Andrea Mitchell were pushed into the daytime hours. In time, Bill Clinton was able to call MSNBC “our version of Fox News.”
“Phil is the perfect distillation of the television mentality,” says one former MSNBC employee, “which is: whatever the audience wants.” And, actually, no one at the network knows much about his politics; he’s probably a Democrat, but it’s just not something he cares much about or discusses with ease. “[Fox News President] Roger Ailes is a lifelong TV guy,” says Chris Hayes, MSNBC’s new 8 p.m. anchor, “but he’s also a political consigliere. Phil is not. Whatever his politics are, they are not woven into the DNA of what we’re doing.” Put another way: Fox News is a TV network that succeeds because of its ideological slant. MSNBC is a TV network that has an ideological slant because that’s what happened to succeed.
And MSNBC is more successful now than it has ever been. At the end of this presidential election, it drew an average of 1.5 million viewers to its weekday prime time lineup. (The numbers have fallen since.) Fox still gets more than two million a night, but Griffin, optimistically, believes he can beat Fox by 2014. It’s a cockiness that has funneled down. In a recent staff meeting, one of Griffin’s producers coined a new term for Fox News: “Loserville.”
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| Joe Scarborough, Mike Brzezinski, Willie Geist and MSNBC president Phil Griffin. |
But even if MSNBC doesn’t surpass its main rival in the next year or the next five, Phil Griffin has managed an unprecedented feat. He has created a thriving and lucrative liberal TV business, the long-sought answer to Fox News and conservative talk radio. Above all a businessman, though, Griffin understands that people’s tastes change, so even now, at the height of MSNBC’s power, he’s talking about “evolving” the network. He wants it to become more of a lifestyle brand than a political hub. Which means that the biggest threat to MSNBC’s position as a liberal oasis may not be a newly invigorated CNN or Fox News; it may be the man who shaped the network into what it is today.
The New Republic interview riled up the social networks. Of course, the supporters of Fox News were the usual word vomits of denial and saying MSNBC is the butt kissers of the president. The network's supporters now have a new word for the people over at Fox News.
"LOSERVILLE" is going to stick around more than Keith Olbermann.
