Posted on 06/29/2006 7:45:44 PM PDT by LdSentinal
Rita Cosby is losing her year-old MSNBC show and will get her own specials unit for the cable channel effective July 10.
The shuffle, which MSNBC announced Thursday, is the first big move of Dan Abrams' three-week tenure as MSNBC's general manager.
"Rita Cosby: Live and Direct," which has been telecast at 10 p.m. (ET) weeknights and repeated at 1 a.m. (ET) since late spring, will be replaced by taped documentary programming, under the familiar label of "MSNBC Investigates." Ms. Cosby will serve as the primary anchor of "Investigates," which has been led by various rotating anchors over years. "Investigates" also will run at 11 p.m.
Joe Scarborough's "Scarborough Country" will remain at 9 p.m. weeknights.
"The Situation With Tucker Carlson" will move into the 4 p.m. and 6 p.m. timeslots that have been the home of "The Abrams Report," the legal-issues and crime show that Mr. Abrams hosted prior to his promotion.
Ms. Cosby left Fox News Channel last year to host her weeknight show. In June, "Rita Cosby" averaged 233,000 viewers, 93,000 of them in the core news demo of 25 to 54, according to data from Nielsen Media Research. That's down from her first month on the air, August 2005, when she averaged 398,000 viewers, 146,000 of them in the demo.
In addition to being down since last year, "Rita Cosby" has been losing lead-in from "Scarborough Country," which averaged 319,000 viewers, 109,000 of them in the demo, in June
Who's next? Taking predictions here.
Tucker.
All these years on TV, and no one's ever told her to take some freaking Sudafed.
I just got home from a meeting and flipped to Rita as Greta was interviewing a lawyer for one of the Gitmo inmates and I have had about as much of that subject that I could take for the day. I have not seen Rita since she went to MSNBC but her voice has gotten worse and the topic this evening? Star Jones! Her guests were going on and on about how brilliant Star is and how she is now a victim and she needs to play that up. I about got ill and understand why Rita is getting the "boot".
What a shock. When are they going to whack Olbermann?? His show has stunk up the cable landscape for years.
30lbs in 30 Days The Rita Cosby Thigh Master Challenge
I bet her viewer is disappointed.
I always have a sore throat after watching Rita Cosby.
Joe's gotta go. I got issues
Olbermann is a complete clown. As you probably know, Olbermann is the one who sent the nasty e-mails re Rita (husky voice) Cosby. Hope he's next, he's far worse than Rita.
All I can say is WGAF. Same when she was on Fox. Waste of air time if you ask me. Oh well.
that olbermann show is terrible.
Tuned into Chris Matthews Show tonight and the name of the show was Hardbrawl. There was a cast of characters eating french fries. What the Heck. Anyone see this crazyiness?
Fox still kills them in every demo, but MSNBC is trying to make much of the "trend". I suppose they have to do something to excuse their performance. Abrams does have the main qualification to be in charge of MSNBC in that he was dumb enough to take the job.
One of the few who can manage to also have a "fat" voice.
I saw that crap, it was one of the dumbest things I've seen on that show since yesterday.
Sounds like she smokes ten packs a day.
Olberman must have photos of Abrams with his cocker spaniel.
But... but... what on earth will Rita's ever so special "sources" do now?
Goodnight Rita:
Never watched you; never could stomach your swarmy, puke voice:
Goodby, good luck!
No comment...
5.56mm
It is not hard to figure at all. It was around 1990, my eldest daughter and I were trying to figure out what to do with our Am Station. We did not have Rush. So what could we do?
My Daughter thought it might be worth while to find out how big a potential audience would be for a left leaning poltical talk show. She went to the board of elections and got the voter registration lists. She got the same lists used in exit polls. They were bellwether precincts.
We called Democrats, Republicans and independents to see how interested they were in news talk. If they were interested in news talk what kind of news did they prefer to hear about.
The results were amazing. A lot fewer Democrats were interested in news talk than were Republicans. Not many independents were interested in news talk either. And Dmocrats and independents who were interested in news talk wanted to hear about rapes, murders, robberies, and sensational stories. If it bleeds it leads and Democrats will watch it.
On the other hand most Republicans wanted issues like taxes, foreign policy, legislation before congress and what the economy as doing discussed and commented on.
MSNBC is foolish. They are puting a very pronounced Democrat slant on issue coverage that mostly attracts Republicans.
Yes there are a few Demorats who are into political issues.... About 250 thousand of them for every 2.5 million Republicans. THat is why Fox News Channel is beating the crap out of them.
Correting MSNBC would be pretty simple. First do enough research (polling) to find out who and of what political persuasion the potential audience belongs too. Then find out what they want to watch with what slant and give it to them.
How do you select hosts? The same way Hollywood found stars. You audition good looking hosts and have them do demo shows before their potential audiences.
Sort of like a hollywood screen test. When you find good looking people whose views and performance match the potential audiences desires .. put them on the air.
You could have a bigger audience than FOX and CNN together in six months.
That really surprised me. I thought Rita Crosby was a dead raccoon.
No. Abrams has announced that MSNBC is pleased with an alleged recent ratings bounce that Olberman has had and that both Olberman and Mathews's shows are going to be MSNBC's leaders.
LOL!
Can anyone tell me what has happened to Imus. Hardball is running in his slot at 5 AM followed by scarbrough then tucker. These all three of them are running at least 3 to 4 times a day now. What is going on. Is Imus on vacation are are these clowns getting ready for the upcoming elections.. ?????help?????
LOL! The first time I heard Rita Crosby's voice, I thought she was doing a Humphrey Bogart imitation.
5.56mm
Rita made a mistake.
Paula Zahn made a huge mistake, but I wasn't sorry to see her go. (She followed H&C, for Pete's sake. Her move was as dumb as Pitino to the Celtics.)
What happened to Linda Vester?
Imus is off this week so they are runing the nighttime programing in hopes of getting some of the morning audience to watch at night.
I think they just hurt Imus' ratings. Imus will likely have a lot fewer viewers when he comes back and none of the morning audience will watch at night. They just lost it.
Then again, Hillary Clinton has the same effect.
Linda Vester is awesome! I read somewhere that she was on an extended maternity leave for a year. Seems like she's been gone longer than that huh? Maybe she decided motherhood needed her full attention.
Tucker ain't too bad.
LOL........
I agree - Rita and Paula made a mistake leaving Fox. They had viewers on FNC. Linda Vester is on her 5 year (it seems) maternity leave.
I think they took Tucker's salt petre and started feeding it to George Will over at ABC.
I didn't know she was from Cincy. So is Tony Snow. (so am I. :>)
Test pattern.
I'd be glad to be her viewer if I even knew what station she was on.
I'd look at her all day if I could.
I never knew Bill liked white chicks, then I saw Rita. You learn something new every day, huh?
do you have a link?
Poor Rita. She sometimes reminds me of Rodney Dangerfield's best line, "I don't get no respect."
Rita was one of the people chosen to witness the Tookie Williams execution in San Quentin. After the execution, Rita was in the pool of witnesses that was interviewed live by the other reporters.
Rita gave her name and FOX affiliation. One of the reporters didn't recognize her (or maybe pretended not to recognize her), and asked her to repeat her name. You could tell that Rita was offended by this, and repeated, "Rita Cosby, FOX news ANCHOR."
I think it hurt her feelings. I bet she was thinking, "This never happens to Geraldo..."
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