MSNBC's Plight: Donahue Was Its Most-Watched Prime Time Show (MSNBC a museum piece?)

Media Research Center ^ | February 27, 2003 | Brent Baker

[Mr. Mulliner]

The numbers on MSNBC's Donahue versus Hardball. The February 26 CyberAlert noted how despite Donahue's abysmal ratings, the Washington Post's Lisa de Moraes reported that Donahue was "MSNBC's most watched prime time program."

I guess that's like arguing over which deck of the Titanic will fill with water first.

In a February 26 New York Times story, Bill Carter reported:

"In the 8pm slot, Mr. Donahue's show averaged 439,000 viewers over the past month, far short of his competitors, Connie Chung on CNN, who had 970,000 viewers, and Bill O'Reilly on Fox News, who dominated the hour with 2.7 million viewers.

"Mr. Donahue's show had been growing slightly over the past few months, and he was actually attracting more viewers than any other show on MSNBC, even the channel's signature prime-time program Hardball with Chris Matthews. Mr. Matthews's show has averaged 413,000 viewers over the last month.

"The difference, an NBC News executive explained, was that Mr. Donahue's show was extremely expensive to produce, because it involved a studio audience. The network was also disappointed that he was not more competitive with Ms. Chung."

And it would appear that Donahue is gone from the line-up even sooner than expected. After running a repeat on Tuesday (with Peter Jennings), on Wednesday night MSNBC expanded Countdown: Iraq to two hours, from 7 to 9pm EST, an expansion that was not expected to begin until next week. Or it could have been a one- night aberration because of President Bush's Iraq speech ending at 7:50pm EST.

[Mr. Mulliner]

It's hard to believe that Donahue's abysmal ratings were the best MSNBC could do.

By the way, isn't Jesse Ventura going to have a show on MSNBC? When does that start?

[OldFriend]

Since Matthews ratings were even lower than Donahue, it is clear that Matthews is protected by the demonrat party and therefore, untouchable.

[Media Insurgent]

Not necessarily. I actually believe the rationale that Donahue got the axe before Hardball because it was more expensive to produce. MSNBC has to air something, so if Hardball is cheap to produce, they might as well keep it on until they have a replacement ready. I don't know what the costs are involved with the various shows, but I doubt Matthews makes all that much money relative to other talking heads, and there are probably no more production costs involved with putting on that show than there would be with putting Lester Holt on for an extra hour. My guess is that it had less to do with ideology than with dollars & cents.

[Nick Danger]

It is no more difficult to tune in MSNBC than it is any other cable channel, so the fact that they cannot seem to find even a single winner tells us that there is something fundamentally wrong with the people who are picking the shows.

Some people have the knack for knowing, when they see someone, that this person will be a hit. Roger Ailes has it. The guy has picked one ratings winner after another. It's beyond being a fluke... the guy has the "golden gut" for spotting talent.

Before MSNBC spends another dime on a new show, they need to get somebody in there who has a better 'gut' than whoever they have now. It's just one loser after another at that place. Let's stop blaming the hosts and admit that whoever is picking them is out of touch with the public taste. It matters less whether they go liberal or conservative -- Alan Keyes and Phil Donahue were equally unsuccessful.

[Jabba the Nutt]

Heh, I'd completely forgotten that Connie Chung was on tv. That's how little I see CNN. MSNBC's military coverage is pretty good. Fox News has been having far too much junk about Joe Millionaire and other reality shows.

Fox & Friends in the morning is dynamite. Brian Kilmeade has been on a roll for at least a couple weeks. He was over in Kuwait and got a squad of Marines to chant Mancow, during his segment. Mancow was stunned into silence and even cried. Great tv.

This week Kilmeade took on Janeane Garofalo and showed her to be the uninformed, anti-American twit she is.

[Doctor Mongo]

In re the twit Garafalo: wanna buy a vowel?

[Jhoffa_]

Since Matthews ratings were even lower than Donahue, it is clear that Matthews is protected by the demonrat party and therefore, untouchable.

I think they are on the level and it's a margin thing.

Like if you can sell 10 Phils for a profit of .10 cents a unit you made a dollar in profit.

Or, you can sell 5 Matthews @ .25 profit each and make $1.25 so even Phils are in higher demand, you make more selling Matthews.

When it comes down to money, I trust these guy's. Unless there’s taxpayers subsidizing it, I don't think they will throw good money after bad.

(Please note: the dollar amounts assigned to each Liberal idiot are excessive.. They are grossly inflated only to serve as an example, the author of this post is in NO way suggesting either of them is actually worth this amount.)

[Calvin Locke]

Heard Matthews on a book tour (radio that is). He blamed the poor numbers from Phil's lead in. But I started to pay
attention to numbers, and Matthews started to tank too. I wonder if it had anything to do with that really, really
"Hard Ball" with Hitlery?

Besides, Matthews has that Sunday show on NBC as an escape.
Maybe that's where the Dem's protection comes in?

[OldFriend]

Since Matthews has been travelling all over the country to college campus venues, I fail to see how it cost more to produce Donahue.