red states rule
11-17-2007, 06:42 AM
Confirming what we already knew, MSNBC President Phil Griffin admitting his little watched network has a liberal bias
In an article in the NY Times, he explained why and did not have a problem with the bias
Cable Channel Nods to Ratings and Leans Left
By JACQUES STEINBERG
snip
Having a prime-time lineup that tilts ever more demonstrably to the left could be risky for General Electric, MSNBC’s parent company, which is subject to legislation and regulation far afield of the cable landscape. Officials at MSNBC emphasize that they never set out to create a liberal version of Fox News.
“It happened naturally,” Phil Griffin, a senior vice president of NBC News who is the executive in charge of MSNBC, said Friday, referring specifically to the channel’s passion and point of view from 7 to 10 p.m. “There isn’t a dogma we’re putting through. There is a ‘Go for it.’”
Fox News consistently denies any political bias in its programming. But whether by design or not, MSNBC is managing to add viewers at a moment when its hosts echo the country’s disaffection with President Bush.
The channel has done so much as Fox News did beginning in 1996, when the president was Bill Clinton, a Democrat. On some nights recently, Mr. Olbermann has even come tantalizingly close to surpassing the ratings of the host he describes as his nemesis, Bill O’Reilly on Fox News, at least among viewers ages 25 to 54, which is the demographic cable news advertisers prefer. Most of the time, though, Mr. O’Reilly outdraws Mr. Olbermann by about 1.5 million viewers over all at the same hour, according to Nielsen Media Research.
Still, as its most recognizable face, MSNBC has marshaled behind Mr. Olbermann, who on July 3, in an eight-minute “special comment” at the close of his show, addressed President Bush directly and called on him to resign. Two months later, the channel chose Mr. Olbermann to serve as the principal host of its coverage of a major prime-time address by Mr. Bush.
Mr. Olbermann’s “special comments” — more than 20 in the last 12 months, and nearly all of them first-person editorials that find some fault with the administration — have helped increase the ratings of his program by 33 percent in just the last year, to about 773,000 viewers a night, according to Nielsen. With those ratings, Mr. Olbermann’s program surpassed “Paula Zahn Now” on CNN, which was canceled last summer.
Mr. Olbermann comes on after “Hardball” with Mr. Matthews, whose longtime opposition to the war — and to what he describes as Vice President Dick Cheney’s outsize role in the administration — has become only more pointed since he took on the title of managing editor of his broadcast over the summer.
Since then, he has talked, both on the air and off, about the “criminality” of the Bush White House, as epitomized, he says, by the role of I. Lewis Libby Jr., the vice president’s former chief of staff, in the C.I.A. leak case. Mr. Matthews’s overall ratings have edged up in the process, though not on the scale of Mr. Olbermann’s.
Even Joe Scarborough, once a conservative congressman from Florida who stood behind President Bush during a campaign rally in 2004, has seemed to have a change of heart about his fellow Republicans in recent months, as is obvious to viewers of “Morning Joe,” his new morning show on MSNBC. In recent weeks, he could be heard praising Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton’s outreach to the military and her husband’s accomplishments as an ex-president, sentiments that, he acknowledged, had surprised even him.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/06/business/media/06msnb.html?_r=1&oref=slogin&pagewanted=print
In an article in the NY Times, he explained why and did not have a problem with the bias
Cable Channel Nods to Ratings and Leans Left
By JACQUES STEINBERG
snip
Having a prime-time lineup that tilts ever more demonstrably to the left could be risky for General Electric, MSNBC’s parent company, which is subject to legislation and regulation far afield of the cable landscape. Officials at MSNBC emphasize that they never set out to create a liberal version of Fox News.
“It happened naturally,” Phil Griffin, a senior vice president of NBC News who is the executive in charge of MSNBC, said Friday, referring specifically to the channel’s passion and point of view from 7 to 10 p.m. “There isn’t a dogma we’re putting through. There is a ‘Go for it.’”
Fox News consistently denies any political bias in its programming. But whether by design or not, MSNBC is managing to add viewers at a moment when its hosts echo the country’s disaffection with President Bush.
The channel has done so much as Fox News did beginning in 1996, when the president was Bill Clinton, a Democrat. On some nights recently, Mr. Olbermann has even come tantalizingly close to surpassing the ratings of the host he describes as his nemesis, Bill O’Reilly on Fox News, at least among viewers ages 25 to 54, which is the demographic cable news advertisers prefer. Most of the time, though, Mr. O’Reilly outdraws Mr. Olbermann by about 1.5 million viewers over all at the same hour, according to Nielsen Media Research.
Still, as its most recognizable face, MSNBC has marshaled behind Mr. Olbermann, who on July 3, in an eight-minute “special comment” at the close of his show, addressed President Bush directly and called on him to resign. Two months later, the channel chose Mr. Olbermann to serve as the principal host of its coverage of a major prime-time address by Mr. Bush.
Mr. Olbermann’s “special comments” — more than 20 in the last 12 months, and nearly all of them first-person editorials that find some fault with the administration — have helped increase the ratings of his program by 33 percent in just the last year, to about 773,000 viewers a night, according to Nielsen. With those ratings, Mr. Olbermann’s program surpassed “Paula Zahn Now” on CNN, which was canceled last summer.
Mr. Olbermann comes on after “Hardball” with Mr. Matthews, whose longtime opposition to the war — and to what he describes as Vice President Dick Cheney’s outsize role in the administration — has become only more pointed since he took on the title of managing editor of his broadcast over the summer.
Since then, he has talked, both on the air and off, about the “criminality” of the Bush White House, as epitomized, he says, by the role of I. Lewis Libby Jr., the vice president’s former chief of staff, in the C.I.A. leak case. Mr. Matthews’s overall ratings have edged up in the process, though not on the scale of Mr. Olbermann’s.
Even Joe Scarborough, once a conservative congressman from Florida who stood behind President Bush during a campaign rally in 2004, has seemed to have a change of heart about his fellow Republicans in recent months, as is obvious to viewers of “Morning Joe,” his new morning show on MSNBC. In recent weeks, he could be heard praising Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton’s outreach to the military and her husband’s accomplishments as an ex-president, sentiments that, he acknowledged, had surprised even him.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/06/business/media/06msnb.html?_r=1&oref=slogin&pagewanted=print