Posted on 10/13/2002 4:42:56 PM PDT by Timesink
NEW YORK (Variety) - MSNBC has canceled "Ashleigh Banfield: On Location," in which the Canadian newshound traveled to the world's hot spots for the cable news network.
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After starting off with a respectable average of 427,000 viewers during its premiere week of July 15, "On Location" quickly lost steam, plunging to a low of 164,000 viewers for the week of Aug. 26, when she was undertaking a five-week cross-country bus tour to chat with ordinary Americans.
For the most recent month, the Banfield show averaged 218,000 viewers during its 10 p.m. slot compared to Fox News' 866,000 for "On the Record With Greta Van Susteren" and CNN's 704,000 for "News Night With Aaron Brown."
It will be replaced on Monday by "MSNBC Investigates," a taped magazine hour hosted by John Siegenthaler, which has run in various time periods each weekend. Banfield will serve as alternating anchor on "Investigates."
As MSNBC continues to experiment with its underperforming primetime schedule, the network has imported Marc Rosenwasser, executive editor of "Dateline NBC," to take over, temporarily, as supervisor of MSNBC from 7-11 p.m., Monday through Sunday.
Maybe not so coincidentally, Jeffrey Immelt, the chairman of General Electric, co-parent (with Microsoft) of MSNBC, expressed concern over the cable channel in a Friday interview on Fox News' "Your World With Neil Cavuto."
"MSNBC's ratings are not where we'd like them to be, and we're gonna take some actions to try and get 'em up there," Immelt said. "The standard right now is Fox, and I want to be as interesting and edgy" as the Fox News Channel."
Banfield, 34, got her big break covering the Sept. 11 attacks, and she earned rave reviews in Vogue and Cosmopolitan. But media analysts were not as kind. The Wall Street Journal described her as "unprepared, verbose and incapable of complex analysis."
Reuters/Variety
I know -- put Donahue and Connie Chung TOGETHER on a show!
Will he be an albatross around MSNBC's neck? Or will they have the sense to cut him loose?
By the way, replacing "Location" with the 43rd daily airing of their standard crappy, sleazy crime docudramas is not going to make them competitive with Fox or CNN. It's going to make them look like they've thrown in the towel.
| MSNBC bumps Banfield |
Allison Romano Broadcasting & Cable 10/12/2002 4:00:00 PM |
| Post-Sept. 11 media darling Ashleigh Banfield is losing her prime time show.
MSNBC finally canned Ashleigh Banfield on Location Friday, replacing it with long-form series MSNBC Investigates. Banfield's show had been plagued by anemic ratings, and her anchor and reporting style has been widely panned. She will host some new episodes of MSNBC Investigates and go back in the field as a correspondent. In another move to try to salvage its prime time slate, MSNBC is borrowing NBC executive Marc Rossenwasser. The Dateline executive will supervise MSNBC's programming from 7 p.m. to 11 p.m., including Phil Donahue's and Chris Matthews' shows. |
Albore's bong buddy?
This is wonderful news. In one fell swoop, MSNBC has reduced the number of America-hating Canadian newsdogs by 50%.
I'm with you. I hope they cancel her altogether. She thinks so's so superior and her distain for America disgusts me. If she and Jennings hate America so much, they should stay north of the border to spew it.
It will be replaced on Monday by "MSNBC Investigates,"
I hear they're looking for something to do. Might suit PMSNBCs Demos.
How many people working in the news media does this describe equally well? Not only reporters on TV, but in the newspapers and magazines? Frank Church, Anthony Lewis, and Maureen Dowd immediately come to mind. Or can you really say that Eric Alterman is intellectually capable of complex analysis when he says the same thing every week?
MSNBC likely guaranteed Donahue six months, which would end January 14, 2003.
Donahue has ceded victory to O'Reilly, tackling such heady and controversial guests as Christopher Reeve and Hugh Hefner of late.
Donahue is trying to Oprahize his show in one last, desperate effort to save it.
It won't work.
MSNBC would do better just going to straight news. They couldn't possibly do any worse.
Frank Church has been dead for over twenty years.
Of course, Rich is a theatre critic, and his columns reflect it.
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