MSNBC's progressive advocacy format is not attracting viewers. According to a report in the similarly progressive New York Times,"MSNBC has seen its ratings hit one of the deepest skids in its history, with the recently completed third quarter of 2014 generating some record lows."
In its report, the Times gives many possible reasons for the slide but ignores the most obvious: the network's progressive bias.
Phil Griffin, the president of MSNBC, acknowledged that his network had been struggling, but put it in the context of the overall drop in cable news. “This has been a tough year all around,” he said. “All three cable news channels are drawing a smaller combined audience than they were five years ago.” He also emphasized that despite the plunge that caused it to trail CNN in the last quarter, the network remained ahead of CNN for the full year.
In the past, MSNBC’s ratings have typically fallen during times of intensely followed major news events. The current period is awash in them, with stories like ISIS and Ebola commanding a high degree of international reporting. This plays well to CNN’s strengths.
In other words, when viewers want "real news" they go somewhere else.
MSNBC consciously established its brand as politics-centric, approaching stories from a left-of-center viewpoint, in deliberate contrast to the right-of-center approach of Fox News, which continues to dominate the news channel ratings. At the same time, MSNBC moved away from a close relationship with NBC News that it had during the early years of the network. Today, fewer NBC News correspondents appear on MSNBC.
Perhaps fewer NBC News correspondents appear on MSNBC because they would like to maintain some degree of objectivity.
Even in its comparison with Fox, the Times report errs. When FNC is presenting an issue it will generally present people from each side of the issue and let them fight it out. Outside of Morning Joe, MSNBC rarely invites a guest who disagrees with the progressive point of view. Even when a Republican appears on a program, usually it's one who agrees with the host.
Mr. Griffin said that a general apathy about American politics has also hurt the network. “You can look at the dysfunction in Washington, the wariness about politics, the low approval ratings,” he said. “That’s had an impact. But we’ve got to adjust; we’ve got to evolve.”
MSNBC’s recent results have not been encouraging. During the third quarter, Ms. Maddow reached an average of 183,000 viewers in the audience component that most matters to MSNBC’s advertisers, viewers between the ages of 25 and 54, her lowest total since she started her show in 2008.
More worrying is the slide for “Morning Joe,” which has, for much of its time on the air, enjoyed status as one of the most talked-about shows in media industry circles. Now the heat around the show seems to have dissipated. For four straight months, and six of the last eight, “Morning Joe” has trailed CNN’s new morning entry, “New Day.”
One longtime news executive who has worked for both network and cable news organizations said the problem with “Morning Joe” was partly a broader issue with MSNBC. “ ‘Morning Joe’ has been hurt because no one is tuning in to watch the channel now; they go right by,” he said. “The show took its eye off the ball, but you can’t discount the fact that nobody is watching the channel.”
Perhaps "nobody is watching the channel" because viewers prefer the more balanced approaches found on FNC and CNN.
The executive also said viewers were tiring of Rachel Maddow: “In terms of Rachel, everybody knows every night what she’s going to say,” he said. “The network just doesn’t surprise you.”
