FYI
Just so you know, the fact that Comcast was just cleared to buy NBC Universal has nothing whatsoever to do with Keith Olbermann leaving MSNBC.
Oh, yes, the fact that MSNBC was still advertising Countdown with Keith Olbermann after he told his audience that he was out, should not be assumed to indicate that this was a sudden move on anyone’s part.
And, nothing should be assumed from the fact that MSNBC was moved over to the NBC News division’s control after Keith Olbermann was penalized for violating a rule of NBC News that didn’t exist at MSNBC.
This is a professional operation that just lost the individual with the highest rating in their prime time line-up, but they know what they are doing.
[If you believe any of that you work at the White House or are another form of Republican. If anyone missed the point, this is sarcasm.]
13 comments
Nothing to see here…Move along…move along. Nothing to see…
Uh…yeah.
Duffy, if it was all about ratings, why did they fire Olberman, not Tweety Mathews who only pulled 2/3rds the audience of Olberman last year? Olberman’s show had a higher viewership than every other show on cable news, whether talking MSNBC or CNN (note that Fox “News” is not a news channel, it is the propaganda arm of the Republican Party). If you fire your highest-rated anchor rather than your lowest one, it was NOT about ratings. Just sayin’.
–Badtux the Numbers Penguin
“Politicususa” … hmm. They should rename the Web “Alice’s Restaurant,” because “you can get anything you want” there… as long as you don’t care if it’s true or not. We know what Duffy wants, and he obviously gets that at Politicususa.
OT, or maybe not… I love those penguins!
I was waiting for ‘Tux to do something so I could slip them in.
It seems likely to me that Olbermann had some sort of personal dispute with MSNBC management (old or new). If his political views were the problem, Rachel Maddow would also be out on the street, which apparently she isn’t.
Duffy, to paraphrase that infamous Republan (sic… an “ic” for an “ic”), Richard Nixon, you don’t have Olbermann to kick around anymore. He’s gone. Give it up, or be seen for the regressive fool you really are.
I’m not sure I understand why you reproduced those ratings here (which, BTW, I also reproduced on my own blog). They state exactly what I stated, which is that Olberman was the top-rated news commentator on any news channel not named Fox, and that his ratings were over 60% higher than those of Tweety Mathews (Hardball), who did *not* get fired, so ratings weren’t the issue.
As for why I call Fox an organ of the Republican Party rather than a news channel, well, Google for “fox news memo slant” and get oodles of memos by Fox News executives ordering their reporters to slant the news towards the Republican line… ’nuff said on that.
BTW, the biggest reason for the difference in ratings is that Sir Rupert Murdoch runs Fox News as a propaganda organ rather than a money-making enterprise, Fox News loses money each year because they pay cable companies to run Fox News on basic cable where everybody can get it. Meanwhile, MSNBC has to make a profit, thus charges cable companies the usual amount of money to carry it, thus is on premium cable. You have to pay extra to get MSNBC, you don’t have to pay extra to get Fox News. Does that make a difference? Hmm….
– Badtux the Ratings Penguin
Steve – Rachel’s not out Yet….remember, we’re talking ComCrap here….
Moi, if you depend on Comcast, how would you know a show had been canceled, as opposed to the system is down again?
There is a built-in conflict of corporate interest in this arrangement. Comcast has to negotiate with the other media companies to have their shows on their cable system, and has its own shows to promote. It would obviously not charge itself for NBC Universal channels, but would it jack up the prices to other cable systems to make up the difference?
I can’t believe that anyone thought this was a good idea for competition or consumers.
“I can’t believe that anyone thought this was a good idea for competition or consumers.”
Two Democrats and two Republicans on the FCC voted for the merger. Only Michael Copps, the member who has shown reasonable foresight in the past, voted against it. And hence the public was robbed of one more opportunity for multiple media sources.
On my site I referred to the vote as “Copps and robbers.”
Who’s crying in their beer? All I was saying was that Olbermann was fired because MSNBC’s head honcho can’t stand him and wanted to fire him for months but was not allowed to do so since Olbermann’s ratings were one of the material assets being sold to Comcast (and said head honcho is probably going to be fired by Comcast anyhow, the head honchos usually are after a corporate takeover so it was a case of firing while the firing was possible), rather than because of ratings.
I did not personally watch Olbermann because I found him a bit… strident. I prefer Rachel Maddow’s evisceration-with-a-smile of right-wing loons, or Jon Stewart turning them into the punchline of jokes *using their own words*. But clearly there’s an audience for strident left-wing commentary, so it’s interesting to see whether we have a robust enough media industry left in America for Olbermann to pop up somewhere else. (Note that unlike the UK, which has right wing, left wing, and centrist media outlets, here in America we have right wing, righter wing, and ultra-batshit-lunatic-right-wing media… there is no U.S. newspaper like the Independent or Guardian).
— Badtux the Media Penguin
Compare the New York Times to the Independent or Guardian (UK), and yes, it’s right-wing. The Independent is blatantly Socialist, and the Guardian is blatantly Social Democrat, they make no bones about where they stand and vigorously report their news based upon those orientations, as vs the Times (UK) which is blatantly right-wing and again makes no apologies for that. The New York Times is the newspaper that published Judith Miller’s war-mongering that got the U.S. into Iraq. You’re saying that the newspaper that published Judith “Mouthpiece for Bush Administration” Miller’s channeling of the Bush Administration’s official propaganda line on Iraqi WMD and OMG they were going to KILL US ALL if tghe U.S. didn’t invade, is LEFT-wing? Since when did repeating official Bush Administration propaganda become left wing? Since when did war-mongering become left wing?!
What may be confusing you is that the New York Times occasionally makes time to note what’s actually true in the real world, vs. the fictional world you right-wingers live in where unicorns are real, cotton candy grows on trees, and the U.S. has an actual left-wing mainstream media. Straying from the corral and occasionally stating that the Earth is, in fact, round, rather than reporting the controversy (“The round Earth theory: Opinions differ”) tend to irritate you flat-earthers. How *dare* they point out that, uhm, well, Saddam *didn’t* have a nuclear weapons program?! Granted, it took them *FIVE YEARS* to report such (and three years after Dear Leader’s own hand-picked inspection team reported the same), but still. Reporting the truth? Everybody knows that the truth has a liberal bias!
– Badtux the Snarky Penguin
Oh right, I forgot about Krugman, who is today the NYT’s “token liberal” on their all-right-wing editorial page. The Times hired Krugman as an economist way back in the day to write columns extolling the virtues of globalization, which he did, globalization being a *right wing* policy in case you’re wondering since globalization presumes that free markets will take care of replacing the outsourced jobs. He still only mildly left-of-center — he does not, for example, advocate for outright socialist, indeed advocates *against* socialism in many cases and vigorously defends capitalism against critics, merely stating that capitalism must be regulated, not abolished.
But I can see why you consider Krugman to be liberal. Krugman cares about facts, and as we all know, facts have a liberal bias. If measured by the virtues of traditional American conservatism, which was all about, well, preserving what works rather than about being anarchists intent upon destroying government (the current Republican agenda in the United States), he would be conservative because of his vigorous defenses of capitalism and his opposition to changing government regulations that worked well for 50+ years… traditional conservationism is about opposition to change, and Krugman certainly has done that a lot over the past ten years.
But of course we don’t have traditional conservatives here in the United States anymore, just batshit crazy anarchists intent upon destroying government so that they can live in their capito-anarchist paradise. They are not true conservatives, they are revolutionary radicals no different from the anarchists of the late 19th century who tried to bomb the U.S. into being an anarcho-socialist paradise, even to the point of assassinating a President of the United States (McKinley). I have little truck with anarchists, I am far too aware of the fundamental mean-spiritedness of too many people to believe that anarchy — the current Republican policy here in America, which is all about destroying government — is a worthwhile goal. I have no patience with radicals of any stripe, and anarchists, being the most insane of all radicals, especially get my ire.
So, Mr. Duff, when did you become an anarchist? ;).