MSNBC=Management's Skulls iN Butt Cracks
I just viewed former MSNBC Live host Cenk Uygur's video from The Young Turks explaining why he left MSNBC and the events which led up to it. Uygur cited ratings which showed MSNBC Live beat the Fox News show which aired against it. Uygur said network officials told him people in Washington, DC "didn't like his tone" when he criticized politicians.
NBC in general has a long track record of hiring people for being different, then ordering them to stop being different (Howard Stern, the casts of Saturday Night Live, Conan O'Brien and Keith Olbermann.) This trend increased when General Electric bought RCA (NBC's former parent company,) and again when Comcast bought 51% of NBC/Universal. The excuse usually given is "People outside of California and New York won't get it," as if they picture the other 48 states as one giant corn field.
With the U.S. economy in the condition it's in, and with politicians trying to hold services and funding hostage to secure a budget deal, it's the job of news commentators to speak out against anything that negatively affects their viewers, whether the management/advertisers/politicians like it or not. This is why I'm glad the Internet offers alternative viewpoints from all sides. Some of them don't have the viewer numbers of the big networks, but they also don't have a group of suits telling them what to say and think.
EDIT: About that last sentence: Whenever someone hates a show (particularly a political news/talk show,) the weakest excuse anyone can give is "They only have, like, 3 viewers"or "Their ratings are sinking." Quantity and quality are not always mutual. TV shows like Arrested Development got poor ratings, but most of the people who did watch it over its three-season run (including myself) enjoyed it. Internet streams, public access cable TV shows and community radio stations are doing what larger media companies hardly ever do anymore: giving a voice to people whose views are either not heard or are drowned out by the opposition. If I like a show or agree with a certain viewpoint, why should it matter how many or how few people share that view? I'd love to start my own stream, but I know I wouldn't have enough fresh material to fill even a half-hour per day.
NBC in general has a long track record of hiring people for being different, then ordering them to stop being different (Howard Stern, the casts of Saturday Night Live, Conan O'Brien and Keith Olbermann.) This trend increased when General Electric bought RCA (NBC's former parent company,) and again when Comcast bought 51% of NBC/Universal. The excuse usually given is "People outside of California and New York won't get it," as if they picture the other 48 states as one giant corn field.
With the U.S. economy in the condition it's in, and with politicians trying to hold services and funding hostage to secure a budget deal, it's the job of news commentators to speak out against anything that negatively affects their viewers, whether the management/advertisers/politicians like it or not. This is why I'm glad the Internet offers alternative viewpoints from all sides. Some of them don't have the viewer numbers of the big networks, but they also don't have a group of suits telling them what to say and think.
EDIT: About that last sentence: Whenever someone hates a show (particularly a political news/talk show,) the weakest excuse anyone can give is "They only have, like, 3 viewers"or "Their ratings are sinking." Quantity and quality are not always mutual. TV shows like Arrested Development got poor ratings, but most of the people who did watch it over its three-season run (including myself) enjoyed it. Internet streams, public access cable TV shows and community radio stations are doing what larger media companies hardly ever do anymore: giving a voice to people whose views are either not heard or are drowned out by the opposition. If I like a show or agree with a certain viewpoint, why should it matter how many or how few people share that view? I'd love to start my own stream, but I know I wouldn't have enough fresh material to fill even a half-hour per day.