We Could Be … No. 2
MSNBC Tweaks the Fox Formula — Personality, Politics and Opinion — To Try and Overtake CNN With News Viewers
By Linda Moss -- Multichannel News, 10/21/2007 8:00:00 PM
MSNBC’s primetime star, Keith Olbermann, shows no signs of letting up on his archrival, Fox News Channel’s Bill O’Reilly.
Recently, Olbermann skewered O’Reilly for claiming his controversial comments about black patrons at a Harlem restaurant had been unfairly taken out of context.
Then Olbermann went on to accuse O’Reilly of being paranoid for charging that the media can’t be trusted.
“We haven’t trusted you in 10 years,” Olbermann jabbed at his Fox News nemesis.
During that particular segment, Countdown With Keith Olbermann also ran graphics that said “O’Reilly Off the Rails?” and “Is Bill Ill?”
| NEWS BREAK: MSNBC Gains Ground | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| MSNBC has gained the most viewers in primetime in the past two years … | ||||
| (Average Primetime Viewers, All Ages, In Thousands) | ||||
| Fox News | CNN | Headline News | MSNBC | |
| *Nielsen Media Research, U.S. Ratings, Most Current (Live plus Blended Live plus Same Day): Jan. 1, 2007 to Sept. 30, 2007. SOURCE: Disney ABC Television Group analysis of Nielsen data. |
||||
| 2000 | 435 | 753 | 180 | 343 |
| 2001 | 868 | 1,009 | 261 | 485 |
| 2002 | 1,179 | 898 | 229 | 360 |
| 2003 | 1,706 | 1,095 | 239 | 443 |
| 2004 | 1,666 | 855 | 212 | 373 |
| 2005 | 1,768 | 853 | 350 | 363 |
| 2006 | 1,412 | 753 | 335 | 385 |
| 2007* | 1,488 | 775 | 391 | 505 |
| Gain (loss) last two years | (280) | (78) | 41 | 140 |
The attack on his counterpart at cable’s top-ranked news service has helped stoke Olbermann’s ratings, as well as those of his network, MSNBC, which is struggling to change its status as the perennial third-place also-ran, behind Fox News at No. 1 and CNN at No. 2.
With the success of shows such as Countdown, MSNBC officials argue that their network finally has momentum in the increasingly cutthroat news-channel wars. MSNBC claims to be making inroads against CNN, coming closer to being in a position to finally challenge it for second place after a decade of chasing it.
While Olbermann still lags far behind The O’Reilly Factor, Countdown has overtaken CNN in the 8 p.m. time slot. MSNBC saw huge audience growth in the summer, up 44% in total primetime viewers. In the third quarter, MSNBC was the only one of the three major news networks to see gains in overall primetime viewership.
Today (Oct. 22), MSNBC is slated to begin telecasting from a new state-of-the-art studio at 30 Rockefeller Plaza, where the cable network has just started sharing digs with NBC News, which is in charge of the 24-hour news channel. Some 450 MSNBC employees are moving over from Secaucus, N.J., as part of the consolidation.
MSNBC expects to benefit by having access to the state-of-the-art production facilities at the new NBC News World Headquarters, able to work more closely with its broadcast brethren at Today and NBC Nightly News With Brian Williams.
“CNN has defined cable news for a long time,” said NBC News senior vice president Phil Griffin, who was given day-to-day management responsibility for MSNBC last month.
“And there’s no question MS[NBC], over the past decade, has had its ups and downs and its struggles,” Griffin said. “So to be moving into this building at this time, when we’re doing so well that the people at 30 Rock really are welcoming the channel in, I just think is going to make us that much stronger.”
He was referring not only to the increased partnership with NBC News, but MSNBC’s new studio, with its HDTV gear, dozens of monitors, catwalk and moving platforms.
“It gives us so many different options,” said Griffin, who first met Olbermann 26 years ago, when both were working at CNN.
CNN officials assert that their channel, positioned as a pure news network, is in scant danger of being overtaken by MSNBC. CNN says it resoundingly dominates MSNBC in many measures, including overall audience in nearly all time slots, key demographics and cumulative reach. So MSNBC’s win in just one period, 8 p.m., is a very narrow — and hollow — victory, according to CNN.
“We have a tremendous competitive advantage over MSNBC for all dayparts for the year,” CNN senior vice president of public relations Christa Robinson said.
CNN contends that MSNBC has boosted its primetime ratings by rerunning Dateline NBC’s child-molester sting series, To Catch a Predator.
To address its weakness at 8 p.m., CNN has hired former NBC Weekend Today co-anchor Campbell Brown as a permanent replacement for Paula Zahn. Zahn left in August as Paula Zahn Now, her 8 p.m. show on CNN, faltered. Brown’s CNN primetime program is scheduled to debut in late February.
'KNIFE FIGHT’
Griffin described the battle between the cable-news networks as “a knife fight every day.” That fight has been increasingly bloody this year. And Olbermann isn’t the only one taking stabs.
Fox News recently did a critical story on CNN’s documentary series, God’s Warriors. A pro-Israeli media watchdog group alleged the CNN series was “grossly distorted” — a charge the network denies. And Nielsen Media Research this summer told MSNBC to clarify one of its promos, in which it claimed to have “beaten” CNN in primetime. CNN had cried foul over the ad, whose definition of “primetime” didn’t jibe with Nielsen’s.
When asked about MSNBC’s prospects versus CNN, some ad buyers and media analysts cite cable history: CNN was the longtime No. 1 news network, until it underestimated — and was unseated by — the upstart Fox News Channel in 2002.
“At a point in the past, no one believed that CNN was vulnerable, and Fox News came on with a different approach and certainly made more than inroads: It’s overtaken CNN,” said Katz Television Group vice president and director of programming Bill Carroll.
“Given the fact that CNN has pretty much stayed the same,” and MSNBC has become more competitive, there is “the possibility” that MSNBC could overtake CNN, according to Carroll.
As for MSNBC’s odds for success in moving out of the No. 3 slot, Sam Armando, senior vice president of research analysis and activation for the ad agency Starcom USA, said never say never.
“When Fox News launched, everybody laughed at the possibility of them catching CNN, and it happened, so obviously I’m not going to say it can’t happen [MSNBC become No. 2],” Armando said. “What we’ve seen at 8 [MSNBC outperforming CNN], certainly there’s no reason why it can’t happen at 7 and at 9 and at 10 as well.”
Fox News declined comment for this story.
POPULAR OPINION
After years of trying to carve out a distinct identity, MSNBC finally seems to have found one: Politics and opinion served up by strong personalities such as Olbermann, who consistently criticizes the increasingly unpopular Bush Administration.
The 2008 presidential election will give MSNBC a chance to execute on its strategy of being “the place for politics” by trying to break out with coverage and analysis featuring not only its own talent — such as Olbermann and Chris Matthews, who hosts Hardball With Chris Matthews — but high-profile names from the mothership, NBC News, such as Williams and Tim Russert.
As part of the drive to bolster MSNBC’s political coverage, earlier this month NBC News moved Russert’s weekend show from CNBC to MSNBC.
That comes as MSNBC boasts that it has been the fastest-growing cable news channel for four consecutive quarters. This summer, the network saw a 67% gain in primetime ratings, to a 0.5, and 44% growth in total viewers, to 504,000, according to a Disney-ABC Television Group analysis of Nielsen data.
Most recently, in the third quarter, both Fox News and CNN saw decreases in primetime viewership, while MSNBC jumped to 540,000 viewers, up from 369,000 last year.
But MSNBC still has a long way to go. CNN said its numbers suffer in comparison to last year in the third quarter, when it got a lift from coverage of a Middle East flare-up. And Fox News Channel remains far and away the cable-news champ, enjoying 23 consecutive quarters in the No. 1 slot in primetime. Its third-quarter viewership was more than CNN and MSNBC combined.
CNN also argues that its kid-sister service, Headline News, is not that far behind MSNBC in terms of overall viewership, actually matching it in unique viewers in September, with 57 million.
The third quarter could be something of a blip, as well. Overall, each of the three big news networks is up in primetime this year. Through Sept. 30, Fox News is up in total viewers to 1.49 million from 1.44 million; CNN is averaging 775,000 viewers, versus 750,000; and MSNBC is at 505,000, up from 356,000.
But in the third quarter in the key demographic for news networks, 25 to 54, MSNBC came within striking distance of CNN. In primetime, MSNBC had 220,000 viewers in that age group, up 41%, according to a Turner Research analysis of Nielsen data. CNN reached 256,000, down 9%. Fox News averaged 339,000 adults 25 to 54, down 17%.
“We’ve got real momentum, and we’ve got to build on it,” Griffin said. “The hard part is ahead of us. We’ve got to be as good as anybody in politics. We’ve got to be as smart about our daytime coverage and use the best of NBC News.”
But “the stars are in alignment,” according to Griffin. “We’re doing as well as we’ve ever done,” he said. “We have the opportunity to knock CNN down. And that’s a big deal.”
MSNBC shouldn’t be judged merely by its viewership gains, but rather for the role it plays for NBC News, whose forte has always been its political coverage, according to Andrew Tyndall, publisher of Tyndallreport.com, which monitors newscasts. MSNBC is the news division’s outlet for political news and analysis.
“A minor uptick in a very small audience during primetime on a couple of its programs is a small part of the big picture,” Tyndall said. “The important thing about MSNBC, when you’re judging its success, you cannot treat MSNBC as a standalone network: You’ve got to treat it as one of the platforms of NBC News.”
MSNBC 2.0
The consolidation of MSNBC’s operations with NBC News in Manhattan came on the heels of corporate cost-cutting measures announced by NBC Universal a year ago as part of its “2.0 initiative,” which included trimming expenses in the news division.
Griffin, also oversees Today, took over direct responsibility for MSNBC this September, at the same time that several interim shows were made permanent additions to the network’s lineup.
Griffin essentially assumed the role of directly running the network that was being performed by Dan Abrams, who was not only general manager but was also hosting a 9 p.m. show.
MSNBC made Joe Scarborough and his show, Morning Joe, the permanent replacement for Don Imus. Scarborough, a former Florida congressman, had been filling in the morning slot on MSNBC since late May after the cable network and CBS Radio dropped the shock jock for making disparaging remarks about the Rutgers University women’s basketball team.
Abrams, who had gone into the 9 p.m. slot left vacant when Scarborough went to the morning, will permanently do his primetime talk show, Live With Dan Abrams.
Griffin claims MSNBC is seeing audience gains because of the edge and analysis it brings to news, while imparting information — rather than reciting headlines or just offering opinion, which he believes are CNN and Fox News’ respective formulas.
MSNBC is putting a different twist on election coverage than it has in the past, going to campuses with candidates or traveling beyond the convention floors, to places such as Faneuil Hall in Boston and Times Square in New York, according to Griffin.
MSNBC’s 2004 convention coverage “was not the same stale way of two men sitting high above the convention floor talking about what was going on with the delegates,” he said. “In this day and age, you cannot do it the same old way. People get bored. There are too many options for them.”
Nonetheless, CNN has aggressively covered politics, and just won an Emmy Award for its 2006 Election Night coverage.
KO PUNCHES
MSNBC’s recent ratings gains have come as it has turned to personalities and opinion, essentially the same strategy that Fox News successfully used to rise to No. 1, according to Carroll.
“The CNN model tends to play it down the middle,” said Carroll, who believes that primetime viewers want more.
“It seems at a time when the audience craves opinion, news with opinion, MSNBC is benefiting from the fact that certainly no one would describe Keith Olbermann as a shrinking violet,” Carroll said.
Carroll also pointed out that just as Fox News’ O’Reilly and Sean Hannity rose in popularity by attacking then-President Clinton, “Olbermann has found his target” with Bush.
While Olbermann’s attacks on O’Reilly are meant to generate “publicity and promotion, and to get under O’Reilly’s skin,” Tyndall said that Countdown is not merely a liberal, “blue-state version” of O’Reilly
“With O’Reilly, there’s very little of the show that’s not O’Reilly, whereas with Olbermann, he’s an anchor of a news show,” Tyndall said. “Basically, it’s the news with attitude, but it’s still the news.”
In the third quarter, Olbermann’s Countdown was up 73% in total viewers, to 744,000 from 429,000 last year, according to Nielsen data from MSNBC. CNN dropped 11% in that time period, to 649,000 viewers, while Fox News was up 1%, to 2.1 million.
Countdown even managed to beat O’Reilly in the key 25-to-54 demographic once — on Sept. 7 — with 365,000 compared to Fox’s 342,000, according to MSNBC.
But on any given night, O’Reilly clobbers his rivals in the Nielsen counts. On one early October night, O’Reilly was watched by an average of 2,493,000 viewers versus 827,000 for Olbermann and 558,000 for CNN.
MSNBC faces some serious challenges on several fronts. Most notably, Scarborough’s show is not getting the ratings that Imus in the Morning did.
“Look, we got hurt in the morning,” Griffin said. “What I’m hoping is that by the maybe the first of the year, we’ll start to get some numbers [for Scarborough’s show] … But look, cable’s tough.”
In the third quarter, Morning Joe averaged 219,000 viewers, down 12% from 248,000 a year ago for Imus, according to Nielsen data from MSNBC.
MSNBC also faces an uphill battle at 9 p.m. weeknights, when Abrams faces off against CNN’s Larry King Live. “It’s such a critical hour following Keith, that we have to have success at 9 o’clock,” if MSNBC is going to seriously challenge CNN for second place in cable news competition, Griffin said.
At 9 p.m. — where Abrams’ show airs Monday through Thursday, with documentaries Friday — MSNBC was up 37% in total viewers, to 491,000, in the third quarter, according to MSNBC. That was still far behind CNN, which was down 2% to 1.2 million viewers, and Fox News, down 10% to 1.5 million.
MSNBC has racked up some strong ratings with a “doc block” from 10 p.m. to midnight. That is where its position as part of the NBC News “platform” comes into play — and into question.
In that block, MSNBC frequently airs repeats of Dateline NBC, including its To Catch a Predator installments, which have come under attack on charges that the show entraps purported child molesters.
CNN has criticized MSNBC for going “down-market” and “tabloid” in its use of the Dateline segments. Griffin defended the approach.
“We have something the other guys don’t have, which is a magazine show in-house, and a production company, Peacock Productions, that does long-form,” he said. “So why shouldn’t we use the best of NBC News, [and] fill out our day with documentaries?
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Olbermann is the best. I love his show and DVR it if I even think I'm going to miss it.
Frosty Bunny - 10/22/2007 3:57:00 PM EDT -
"...with Olbermann, he’s an anchor of a news show,â€
That made me laugh. Thanks for the snicker, I needed it. Olbermann is a
news anchor as much as I am a spacewoman from outer space.
Ashley Nicole Garrett - 10/22/2007 2:08:00 PM EDT -
Do what I did after they dropped Imus, put a block on it so it doesn't even show in passing. As far as I'm concerned, they no longer exist.
Imus Fan - 10/21/2007 1:17:00 PM EDT -
Can I get MSNBC taken off my cable?
Nonnie - 10/21/2007 10:30:00 AM EDT -
MSNBC should just give it up. I was an avid viewer, especially in the days following 9/11...for about three years afterward. They suck now. Used to watch Matthews and Olbermann, they were interesting & funny. Now they are boring and bitter and tedious. Only Imus was worth watching, and they botched that big time. The network attitude is reflected in the article---transparent corporate spin. They closed the Secaucus studio because they're going broke. Why lie? This network deserves to tank...it sucks big time and is run and staffed by spineless liars.
Melinda - 10/21/2007 8:20:00 AM EDT
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