MSNBC's Unpopularity Results From Poor Programming Decisions

IT'S NO MYSTERY

Take The Four-Minute MSNBC Test!







Isn't programming quality fundamental to success?

Our "progressive" lefty friends have now spent several days fighting the results of a Politico / George Washington University survey that delivered ominous news for cable talk outlet MSNBC. While 42% of respondents said Fox News Channel was their main source of midterm election news and CNN for 30%, the NBC outlet fared much worse at just 12%. That's downright embarrassing.

Even more humiliating, most had never even heard of MSNBC's key personalities, according to Politico:

MSNBC’s personalities were largely ranked as unknown by respondents: 70 percent said they had never heard of Ed Schultz, 55 percent said they had never heard of Rachel Maddow and 42 percent said they had never heard of Keith Olbermann.

It's enough to make one want to hide in a cabin deep in the Berkshires, isn't it?


While it's easy to pin its failure on unpopular politics, especially after Air America's collapse (oddly featuring many of the same lackluster hosts), there's a fundamental issue of programming quality missing from this debate. From Friday's Rachel Maddow Show, here's one four-minute segment that captures the mess that is MSNBC:





Here, Maddow segues from the usual fringe political content right to fringe "entertainment", featuring bizarre musical instruments at an event in San Francisco.

Where is the popular appeal of this programming? It's taking narrowcasting to an extreme and the results are clear: low ratings, lousy polling results.

Perhaps this would work well on a local program in the Bay Area, but where is the potential national appeal beyond that point?

Who exactly is running this mess of a network?

Maddow's problem is that she's been showered with praise from the ruling media-political establishment, a group that couldn't possibly be more hated at the national level these days. Does she believe her own press?

While our lefty pals continue to complain about the poll results, they might consider taking a look at the content itself. Does this truly have ratings potential?