In television, ratings are the bottom line, and Rachel Maddow has little to worry about these days. In the six weeks since Maddow took over the 9:00 p.m. hour on MSNBC, she's doubled the timeslot's audience.
"I'm pinching myself," Phil Griffin, the president of MSNBC, tells The New York Times
From today's NYT...
http://www.nytimes.com/...
Rachel Maddow, a woman who does not own a television set, has done something that is virtually unheard of: she has doubled the audience for a cable news channel’s 9 p.m. hour in a matter of days.
More important for her bosses at MSNBC is that “The Rachel Maddow Show,” her left-leaning news and commentary program, has averaged a higher rating among 25- to 54-year-olds than “Larry King Live” on CNN for 13 of the 25 nights she has been host. While the average total audience of her program remains slightly smaller than that of Mr. King’s, Ms. Maddow, 35, has made MSNBC competitive in that time slot for the first time in a decade. The channel at that hour has an average viewership of 1.7 million since she started on Sept. 8, compared with 800,000 before.
Given that advertising dollars — and the reputations of networks — rise and fall on prime-time ratings, Ms. Maddow’s rise has been closely watched by media executives.
Intelligence, integrity, wit.....people are just starved for it and Maddow has it. Now if MSNBC would just replace some of their idiotic hacks with the same kind of intelligence and integrity that Maddow brings to the air, we'd all be grateful. Are you listening David Gregory and Joe Scarborough? Chris Matthews obviously got "religion" when he was constantly ridiculed by the viewers and media when he veered seriously off track during the primaries. He learned that spewing garbage won't work anymore, and to his credit, Matthews has been a sort of changed man since those first primaries back in January. More out of necessity, than real ideology, I'm sure. He sees where the ratings gold lies, and I do believe that Matthews has become quite aware that he too, can be relegated to relic status as his contemporaries, Maddow and Olbermann dominate the MSNBC ratings ladder.
“I’m pinching myself,” said Phil Griffin, the president of MSNBC, who used to caution that it “takes two or three years for a show to find its audience.” That was certainly true for Keith Olbermann, whose five-year-old “Countdown” program at 8 p.m. (which leads into Ms. Maddow’s program) now beats CNN in the 25-to-54-year-old demographic segment every evening.
Mr. Griffin said that Ms. Maddow’s advantages included her regular appearances on “Countdown” and her popularity on the Internet, where, he said, “word spread like wildfire” about her new show. Ms. Maddow, a former AIDS activist, was also presumably helped by her four years on the Air America radio network.
I can see Maddow as the permanent host of Meet The Press. To pidgeonhole her as a "liberal" pundit does her an injustice. She's honest, insightful, intelligent, fair and balanced and well informed. Maddow strives for truth and she's just as likely to to admonish a left leaning surrogate for not telling the truth or proffering false information, as she is for admonishing a right leaning surrogate for the same thing. Maddow is a young and very bright intellectual who would offer a dynamic alternative to Stephanopoulos or Schieffer.
I think it's a great idea to email the presidents of NBC and MSNBC and let them know how grateful we are to have Maddow and Olbermann. Let them know it's also in their best interest, as well as ours, to rid the network of the bottom dwellers. Joe Scarborough and David Gregory.
steve.capus@nbc.com
President NBC
phil.griffin@nbc.com
President MSNBC