This week saw the debut of The Ed Show on MSNBC, taking David Shuster's old 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue time slot at 6 p.m. After his first full week on air, I'm interested to see what people here think so far.
First off, my thoughts. Personally I like the guy and appreciate that we have another progressive voice on television. His style definitely differs from any of the anchors MSNBC has on in their evening lineup right now and I think it's got a great chance of drawing new viewers (especially since he's got a national radio show he can plug the T.V. show on as well). As a commenter on one of the first live blogs mentioned, while Keith is for the witty folk and Rachel is for the wonky folk, Ed is for the working folk. I think he definitely can speak to them much easier than the others...
BUT I think there is definitely room for improvement. I personally hoped he'd make a bigger splash, especially when "debating" conservative voices, but quite a few times I've found that he lets them talk too much without challenging some points. Lars Larson, good gracious. I know he's your friend and all but you've gotta try and punk him a bit more... His Psychotalk section is decent, and his takedown of Newt the first day was pretty good, but I find that the other MSNBC folk do a much better job of taking the nutters down. Maybe the segment is too short, as he alluded to in one of the later shows? I just think he needs to get a bit... angrier? Don't go nuts like Beck just so he can stay credible, but it just feels to me like he's holding back some. Go to town. Blast these fools. Make some news.
Here are some of best ed segments. Feel free to add your own in the comments...
Here, Ed gets right down to it, blasting Rush Limbaugh and the right for wishing for failure from the very start. This was on Friday's show, and I loved his fire. Maybe he's finally finding his rhythm.
Cheerleading the success of TARP and snagging an interview with Senator Dodd, in which Dodd accepts the blame placed on him, perhaps kicking off his image rehab tour?
Ed-ucation focus! Also snagging the first (I think?) major interview with Arne Duncan since his nomination.
Of course, there is also the bad. Here are some of the Worst Ed segments...
Ed needs to do better interviews (though he did get better as the week went on). At the very least get a strong progressive voice in there to debate wingnuts. But an unchallenged platform for the right is not acceptable. This one was terrible and he needs to do a better job here.
Then there was the segment in which he interviewed Tom Tancredo and let Tom spew his garbage without rebuttal. I couldn't find the clip on MSNBC, but you can find the transcript of the whole show here. Note that after Tancredo got to talk for a long time, Ed ends it with:
Tom, thanks for joining us tonight. We‘ll come back to you on this issue, because we definitely know where you stand on it. Thanks so much.
Meh.
Also, admeption wrote a blog on the segment. Obviously I'm not only one who thought it wasn't great.
Here are a couple of diaries written about Ed this week...
Stevej thinks Ed is all about Ed, and I paraphrase here, also feels like Ed's style "dumbs down" the debate:
At the end of the day it all comes down to presentation, whereas the likes of Maddow, Schuster and Olbermann situate their respective quirky styles on top of very solid reporting and analysis Schultz doesn’t, he finds the soundbite, grabs his megaphone and yells. Now, who does this remind you of? Reminds me of literally 100s of Right wing rent-a-mouths that saturate the TV and radio airwaves from Arizona to Alaska. The ones that destroyed the quality of debate in this country at all levels...
Peronally I don't mind it too much. As I've said, I think he can draw some viewers that might not appreciate the snark that the other anchors bring. And sometimes, we need a megaphone. It's nice to be snarky and dismissive about Glen Beck going nuts, but I also think there's a place for some real anger about this, like a permanent Keith Olbermann during one of his Special Comments.
YoungChicagoDemocrat has a nice diary with reviews and ratings information, pointing out that Ed so far is drawing a bit better than Shuster was at the time:
The early ratings are in for Ed Schultz’s The Ed Show on MSNBC, and they have provided a boost to MSNBC’s 6 pm (ET) hour. It is too soon to tell if his show will be a hit or a miss, and the show definitely could use some tweaking, but Schultz is definitely off to a good start.
For his debut on Monday night, Schultz drew 247,000 viewers age 25-64, and 725,000 total viewers. Both numbers were good enough only for third place behind Fox News and CNN, but they did represent a substantial increase over the previous occupant of the timeslot David Shuster’s 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. For the sake of comparison, Shuster’s last night at 6 pm drew 151,000 viewers in the 25-64 demographic, and 486,000 total viewers. The number of total viewers for 1600 usually hovered between 350,000 and 550,000, but MSNBC is hoping for much more from Ed Schultz...
Will he hold on to this and grow the audience? We'll see.
All in all, I'd give Ed a B so far. Congratulations on a pretty successful first week.