MSNBC

On the morning of Sunday, Nov. 30, David Gregory, NBC News’ ubiquitous robo-anchor, popped up in front of the cameras at Rockefeller Plaza where over the course of several drizzly hours, he held forth on such topics as the dismal weather, Barry Manilow and the world’s largest floating Christmas Tree, which turns out to be in located in Rio de Janeiro.

Mr. Gregory—NBC’s chief White House correspondent, host of MSNBC’s 6 p.m. show 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, and the world’s most indomitable substitute anchor—was filling in on Sunday for Lester Holt as co-anchor of Weekend Today.

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With a run-off in Georgia set for Tuesday and a lengthy recount still ongoing in Minnesota, not all of this year's Senate races have been resolved. And yet it is a contest that won't even take place for two years that has arguably stirred the most interest this past week.

For months, it's been obvious that Chris Matthews would like to return to his native Pennsylvania and run for Arlen Specter's Senate seat in 2010. He's done nothing to silence media speculation that he'll be a candidate, declared on national television, "I want to be a senator," and even  read more »

On Monday evening, former MSNBC general manager and current NBC News chief legal analyst Dan Abrams was talking about his new gig.

Less than a week after he announced he was launching a “global strategy firm” that would assemble a network of thousands of working journalists, bloggers, authors and ex-journalists, he was drowning in applications.

He’d made it easy, of course. The same day he announced his plans, he launched a Web site where anyone can pretty much apply to become an “expert” for the firm by simply submitting one’s background information and by checking off areas of media-related expertise, ranging from politics and sports to pharmaceuticals and video games.  read more »

On Wednesday, Nov. 19, former MSNBC general manager and current NBC News chief legal analyst Dan Abrams announced that he was launching a "global strategy firm" that would assemble a network of thousands of working journalists, bloggers, authors, and ex-journalists and then use the collective media brain trust to consult deep-pocked individuals and institutions on various aspects of media strategy.

That same day, the firm launched its Web site. There, you can apply to become an "expert" for the firm by simply submitting your background information and by checking off your areas of media-related expertise, ranging from politics and sports to pharmaceuticals and video games.  read more »

In recent months, bad news in the financial world has translated into big news for CNBC, and big news is good news for a 24-hour cable news network. With national interest in financial news at a fever pitch, the business news network has been posting its highest ratings in its 19-year history.

And now, owner GE is rewarding them with … budget cuts!

Bosses at CNBC, The Observer has learned, are now preparing to scale back budgets. Sources inside CNBC have heard that the figure could approach a 10 percent overall budget cut.

“We’re committed to having the best team in business news worldwide,” said CNBC spokesman Kevin Goldman.  read more »

MSNBC President Phil Griffin announced today that the cable news channel has extended Keith Olbermann's contract through 2012.

In February of last year, MSNBC and Mr. Olbermann reached an agreement that would keep the Countdown host under contract through 2011.

The new agreement would seem to extend Mr. Olbermann's commitment to MSNBC through the 2012 presidential election.

"Keith Olbermann is at the core of MSNBC's current success," said Mr. Griffin in a press release today. "'Countdown' is our signature program and I'm thrilled that we're going to be able to bring it to Keith's loyal viewers for another four year term."

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On Thursday, MSNBC's Rachel Maddow appeared on Comedy Central’s The Colbert Report, where she discussed such things as the new king of Bhutan and her lack of Peabody Awards.

"Just for the record, how many Peabody's do you have?" Mr. Colbert asked her at the outset. "I don't have any Peabodys," Ms. Maddow answered.

"I've got a couple," Mr. Colbert boasted before suggesting that she, like Bill O'Reilly, just claim she has some. "Nobody checks," he assured her.

On Tuesday night, some 71.5 million viewers tuned in across 14 television networks to watch Senator Barack Obama's victory over Senator John McCain, according to The Hollywood Reporter. Overall it was the highest rated election night since 1980.

On broadcast television, ABC News was big winner. On cable, CNN dominated.

The Nielsen numbers for total viewers via THR:

ABC: 13,135,000

NBC: 12,018,000

CBS: 7,829,000

Fox: 5,137,000

CNN: 12,304,000

Fox News: 9,044,000

MSNBC: 5,889,000

It was Tuesday afternoon around 2:30 p.m., and Chris Matthews had been up since early in the morning, working the phones, jotting down notes, marveling at American democracy and the turnout in North Carolina, thinking about Roosevelt, and Truman, and J.F.K. In a few short hours, he would be on the air at MSNBC, guiding viewers through the returns.

Already, his mind was racing.

"If Obama wins it will be a time when the world once again looks at us with wonder," Mr. Matthews told The Observer.

"The great thing about America is that people have always looked at this country and said, How do they do it?" said Mr.  read more »

Who says liberals and leftists can't get airtime on FOX News? The Huffington Post has video of an important Election Alert from Ruper Murdoch's the "fair and balanced" news network that features William Ayers—the man whom Senator John McCain referred to in the third debate as "an old washed-up terrorist"—voting in Chicago.

Here's Megyn Kelly's artful segue into the segment:

'Well, I'll tell ya what: From Bill Clinton to a very different kind of Barack Obama supporter, and that is William Ayers, who showed up and got caught on camera going into the voting station today.

Ms. Kelly closed the segment by once again drawing a line "from Bill Clinton to Bill Ayers.  read more »

The Web is revving its engine for tomorrow's big night. Here's where you can tune in on your computer and your iPhone:

ABC News is offering live streams of its own TV broadcast and they'll have Web cams at the McCain and Obama campaign headquarters. CBS News will be offering county-by-county, up-to-the-minute results with live blogging, and a simulcast of its TV coverage, starting at 6:30 p.m. Around 2 a.m, Katie Couric will live chat with viewers on CBSNews.com and CNET.com. MSNBC has a neat results widget, which posts real-time results to your blog or Facebook profile. CNN YourRaces allows you to customize your own tracking tool (with local races too), and then watch the results in real time through CNN's site or on your  read more »

On Monday, October 27th, Bill Wolff, the executive producer of MSNBC's The Rachel Maddow Show, got an email from the show's booker Andy Dallos. Mr. Dallos had some good news: Senator Barack Obama wanted to sit down with Ms. Maddow for an interview on Thursday afternoon in Florida.

"I was like, woooh-hooo!" said Mr. Wolff.  read more »

Multichannel News' Todd Spangler reports that MSNBC will go HD in the second quarter of 2009.

"Look, I’d love to be in HD right now," said network president Phil Griffin according to Mr. Spangler. "The idea of the announcement before the election appealed to me. I pushed our guys hard... We don't want to do it in parts. We want to be fully ready." (This comes via Michael Calderone at Politico.)

Back in August, when we were riding around Denver in the back of a stretch Escalade with Rachel Maddow (and Pat Buchanan!), we wondered how long it would take for cable news audiences to warm up to Ms. Maddow's show, which, at the time, was set to debut on MSNBC in a few short weeks.

Today, in The New York Times, Brian Stelter provides the answer. As it turns out: not long!

From the article:

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.

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In the forthcoming issue of the New York Times Magazine, writer Edward Lewine and photographer Ben Stechschulte check out MSNBC anchor Rachel Maddow's "Domain" in western Massachusetts to document her life in an 1865 country house, where she lives with her long-time girlfriend, Susan, and their Labrador retriever.

The resulting feature is rich with fun details about Ms. Maddow's life and obsessions. She really likes mustard. She drives a red pick-up truck. She worries about loose nukes. She makes old-timey cocktails. She keeps a stack of comic books by her bed. Etc.

There's also one good tidbit about Ms. Maddow's media career. When asked about her favorite Fox News put-down, here's what Ms. Maddow had to say:

I don't talk much about Fox. That's more Keith Olbermann, but the only time Fox tried to book me on a show—ever—was for me to comment on Madonna and Britney Spears having kissed at an awards ceremony. I declined.

The third quarter numbers for the cable news networks are officially out today. Overall, the stretch from June 30 to Sept. 28 proved to be yet another strong period for the cable news networks, especially compared to the gloomy news coming from newspapers and broadcast television networks.

Today, each of the major cable news networks fired off press releases touting their achievements.

Releases after the jump.  read more »

On Monday, TV Newser looked at the success that Rachel Maddow's new show on MSNBC has enjoyed over its first two weeks:

Last week the program was #2 in cable news in both the A25-54 demo and in Total Viewers at 9pmET, beating CNN's Larry King Live. FNC's Hannity & Colmes was the top-rated broadcast at 9pmET. On Friday, Maddow's was the #1 show in the demo at 9pmET topping a Hannity-less H&C.

In the two weeks since Maddow took over the 9pmET slot, the program's nine shows have averaged 556,000 demo viewers and 1.6M Total Viewers. Maddow's averages are more than double the final two weeks (eight shows) of Verdict with Dan Abrams (225,000 demo / 601,000 Total Viewers.

Will the ratings success continue? Who knows. But the media's interest in Ms. Maddow shows no sign of flagging.  read more »

Thanks to some newly minted contracts with television channels across the planet, audiences from India to Indonesia to Hong Kong to South Africa will now get to watch MSNBC's never-boring political coverage, reports Paul Gough of the The Hollywood Reporter.

"MSNBC is expanding its international portfolio with a series of deals with channels around the world tied to the cable network's coverage of politics and the November presidential election," writes Mr. Gough. "The arrangements call for the channels to carry, either live or on tape delay, MSNBC's coverage of the presidential debates and Nov. 4 general election."

The Observer just spoke with Tom Brokaw who felt that our recent characterization of his role at NBC and stance towards MSBNC were inaccurate. At no point, said Mr. Brokaw, has he ever complained about the broad editorial environment of MSNBC to General Electric CEO Jeff Immelt, NBC Universal's president and CEO, Jeff Zucker, or NBC News' president, Steve Capus. Furthermore, Mr. Brokaw said he had in no way appointed himself as "the custodian of the Russert legend," as our source suggested.

Back in August, McCain campaign manager Rick Davis sent a letter to NBC News' Capus, complaining about NBC News' coverage of Mr.  read more »

On Tuesday afternoon, Phil Griffin, the president of cable-news network MSNBC, had had enough of the interviews and was getting angry.

Roughly 48 hours earlier, Mr. Griffin had announced his decision to remove Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews from anchoring big political nights for his network. Henceforth, according to Mr. Griffin’s dictum, NBC News’ chief White House correspondent, David Gregory, would handle the news duties for MSNBC. Mr. Matthews and Mr. Olbermann would shift into purely revved-up pundit mode.

This morning, Mr. Griffin was batting back a report from the New York Post that Jeffrey Immelt, CEO of NBC’s parent company General Electric, had facilitated the change after “a lot, maybe thousands” of shareholders had called up to complain about Mr.  read more »

MSNBC is moving back the center. According to a report by The New York Times' Brian Stelter, the cable news network's experiment in more partisan election coverage "appears to be over."

Writes Stelter:

After months of accusations of political bias and simmering animosity between MSNBC and its parent network NBC, the channel decided over the weekend that the NBC News correspondent and MSNBC host David Gregory would anchor news coverage of the coming debates and election night. Mr. Olbermann and Mr. Matthews will remain as analysts during the coverage.

The sometimes rancorous convention coverage repartee between Mr. Olbermann (whom The Times describes as "lightning rod for much of the criticism") and Mr.  read more »

MSNBC's Andrea Mitchell got caught in the middle of the balloon drop last night at the Republican National Convention in St. Paul. "I am somewhere on the floor of this convention," Ms. Mitchell said. "I'm about to be bombarded by balloons."

Anchor Keith Olbermann called Ms. Mitchell's location "the political equivalent of a Chuck E. Cheese."

Watch the video here.

"People come on the show and then they just stay," said Joe Scarborough. "This happened in Iowa, too, and New Hampshire. It has just sort of turned into the place to hang out."

It was shortly after 9 a.m. on Thursday morning, and Mr. Scarborough had just finished co-anchoring five hours of Morning Joe for MSNBC live from Sam's No. 3—a breakfast-burrito-serving bar and grill in downtown Denver.

"You look over this morning, and you have the head of the Council on Foreign Relations, Richard Haass, having breakfast with Tom Brokaw, having breakfast with Jonathan Capehart of The Washington Post, and on and on," said Mr.  read more »

A few minutes before 11 p.m. on Aug. 25, Rachel Maddow was sitting behind a desk in a double-decker, alfresco television studio her television network, MSNBC, had erected near the old train tracks that cut through downtown Denver, from which Ms. Maddow was to punditize to the public from the near environs of the Democratic National Convention.

“It should be noted that this is a four-night infomercial,” she said.

The heat of the afternoon sun had long before dissipated and a mild breeze blew across the city. After four hours of live television, Ms. Maddow and her colleagues at MSNBC were looking sun-tired as they wrapped their coverage of the opening night of the Democratic convention.  read more »

Last night, Dan Abrams hosted his final telecast of Verdict on MSNBC, which has been cancelled to make way for a new show by Rachel Maddow.

Over the course of his final hour, Mr. Abrams discussed Barack Obama’s looming VP choice, took President Bush to task for his "unprecedented use of so-called signing statements," read fan mail, and amusingly talked via phone to Tucker Carlson, who Mr. Abrams introduced as a "fellow MSNBC cancelled show host" (clip above).

"By the way, this is the third goodbye show I’ve done at MSNBC in the past five years," said Mr. Abrams, before signing off. "So don't count us out entirely."

Yesterday, Bill Carter of the New York Times broke the news that MSNBC is giving Rachel Maddow, their talented and popular 35-year-old liberal commentator, her own show, which will replace Dan Abrams' Verdict at 9 p.m. The new show, according to The Times, will start on Sept. 8. Mr. Abrams will stay on at the network as a legal correspondent and substitute anchor. His last show will be Thursday night.

Following Keith Olbermann's Countdown at 8 p.m., Ms. Maddow's new show will give MSNBC a solid two-hour block of liberal politics every weeknight, and will further solidify the cable news channel's unstated strategy of making itself the place for liberal political analysis in prime time.  read more »

As noted by The Times' Caucus writer Michael Falcone, Tucker Carlson will be appearing in a 30-second commercial for an anti-Barack Obama documentary called Hype: The Obama Effect, created by Citizens United.

In the clip, Mr. Carlson, MSNBC's Senior Campaign Correspondent, is shown saying, "Well, the press loves Obama. I mean, not just loves—I mean an early teenage crush."

Crushes run both ways, of course. (Strange bedfellows, etc.) In the July issue of Vanity Fair, James Wolcott wrote an essay headlined Mad About the Guy, in which he criticized some right wing pundits' "Man Crush" on John McCain, including The New York Times' David Brooks, who gushed to Chris Matthews, "I love the guy."

NBC News executives today named Phil Griffin president of MSNBC. Previously, Mr. Griffin had been a senior vice president of NBC News in charge of managing the cable news network. What has changed besides his title? According to the press release, Mr. Griffin will now "take over all day-to-day managment issues at MSNBC."

Last month in a profile in the New Yorker, Keith Olbermann famously said of Mr. Griffin, "Phil thinks he’s my boss.”

No word yet as to whether Mr. Olbermann is impressed by his so-called boss' new title.

More from the release:

"I've been there from the beginning, so I couldn't be happier to get this position," said Griffin.  read more »

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TV Guide's Stephen Battaglio has posted a funny Q&A with NBC News' political director, Chuck Todd.

Sample question: "Do you think you'll soon reach a point where you'll be contractually obligated to keep the facial hair?"

At one point, Mr. Todd admits to Mr. Battaglio that there is one job in television which he desperately covets.

Spoiler alert: It's not the job of moderating Meet the Press.

"I would probably quit my job tomorrow," says Mr. Todd, "if somebody asked me to be the play-by-play guy for University of Miami college football."

Tim Russert, NBC's Washington bureau chief and the influential host of its Sunday morning program Meet the Press, died the afternoon of Friday June, 13, after collapsing from a heart attack while recording voice-over segments for Sunday's show at NBC's Washington news bureau. He was 58.

had previously been diagnosed with coronary artery disease, which he treated with medication and exercise. After the collapse, medics rushed Russert to Sibley Memorial Hospital, where efforts to resuscitate him failed. According to doctors at the scene, cholesterol plaque had ruptured an artery in Russert’s heart, which was enlarged, an autopsy later revealed.

Tom Brokaw announced the news of Russert’s death on the air for NBC. His colleagues were shocked and grief stricken. Doris Kearns Goodwin, who has known Russert for about a decade and was a frequent guest of his on Meet the Press was in tears after a television station broke the news to her with a telephone call.

"I feel so bad," she told The Observer. "He was such a good friend."

"Somebody just called from the television studio and said have you heard the horrible news about Tim and I thought he must have been in a plane crash,” she added. "He's a giant and he's the best. I loved him…I can't imagine what the news bureau is going through down there. I heard it is just wailing.”  read more »

Declaring the president of the United States the "Worst Person in the World," is apparently no biggie these days, what with his historically low approval ratings and all that. But saying the same about Katie Couric?

Outrageous! (Historically low ratings may not apply in this case.)  read more »

MSNBC has ordered a second helping of Morning Joe.

The New York Times reports this morning that Joe Scarborough has extended his contract with MSNBC until March 2011. Last summer, after a successful tryout, Mr. Scarborough took over Don Imus' old morning slot on MSNBC, beating out the likes of David Gregory along the way.  read more »

Last night, CNN congressional correspondent Jessica Yellin appeared on "Anderson Cooper 360," in part to discuss the brouhaha over former White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan's tell-all book about the Bush administration, What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington's Culture of Deception.

At one point, Mr. Cooper asked Ms. Yellin about the allegations in the book that the national media was "too deferential to the White House," during the run-up to the war in Iraq.  read more »

On Monday, MSNBC kicked off The New York Times Special Primary Edition, a new irregularly recurring daytime political show hosted by John Harwood in which Times scribes chew over news from the campaign trail.

So how did the show's premier do?

Not great!

According to Nielsen data, "The New York Times Special Primary Edition," finished fourth among cable news networks in the 2 P.M. time slot.  read more »

The Times and MSNBC are joining forces for a new cable show. Today is the debut of The New York Times Special Primary Edition, a new political show hosted by John Harwood where Times-journos will handicap the election. From a Times memo, it appers these shows will appear as specials--that is, they won't run every week, but whenever MSNBC and the paper choose to do it.

Today's program will preview the Indiana and North Carolina primaries and Adam Nagourney, Pat Healy and Gail Collins are included guests.

Here's the memo:  read more »

The numbers are in for the cable news networks for the first quarter of 2008. The verdict? Thanks in large part to the nation's ravenous interest in the political season, Fox News, CNN, and MSNBC all enjoyed a strong first quarter, particularly compared with the seemingly dismal news coming from much of the rest of the industry. Today, employees of the cable news networks were falling all over themselves, trying to out-tout each other's accomplishments. Herein, some of the highlights:  read more »

A recent episode of 'Race For the White House.'

“MSNBC and NBC are one,” said Phil Griffin. “We’ve said that for over a decade. It actually is true now.”

Mr. Griffin, the senior vice president of NBC News, was speaking on the phone to NYTV on Monday afternoon. He had brought up the unification of the two news operations as a way of explaining the internal politics underpinning the launch of MSNBC’s new prime-time show, Race for the White House, which premiered on March, 17 at 6 p.m., replacing Tucker.  read more »

Today, NBC News officials announced that as of next Monday, NBC News Chief White House Correspondent David Gregory will be replacing anchor Tucker Carlson at 6 P.M. on MSNBC.

How was Mr. Carlson taking the cancellation of Tucker?

On Monday afternoon, the Media Mob caught up briefly with Mr. Carlson.

"I'm not going to whine about it," said Mr. Carlson. "They've been nice to me."

Mr. Carlson said he was "glad" to stay on with MSNBC as a senior campaign correspondent.  read more »

Tucker Carlson is out. David Gregory is in.

Today, MSNBC officials announced sweeping changes to their primetime lineup.

Most notably: starting Monday, March 17, NBC White House Correspondent (and robo newsman) David Gregory will be anchoring a new show, Race for the White House weekdays at 6 P.M.

The new show, billed as a "a fast-paced daily look at the latest election news" will replace the long struggling Tucker.  read more »

Not only will David Shuster, the MSNBC talent who got into trouble over claiming the Clinton campaign had "pimped out" former first daughter Chelsea on the hustings, be returning to the network; his suspension will have lasted two weeks, and he'll be back in time for the NBC-sponsored debate between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama Feb. 26. Broadcasting & Cable reports:  read more »

Greg Sargent at TalkingPointsMemo has confirmed with sources of his that the prime beef Hillary Clinton's campaign has had with the MSNBC network is the pugilistic behavior of Hardball's Chris Matthews.  read more »

After Hillary seemed to suggest that his suspension was not enough of a punishment for his pimp remark, MSNBC affirmed to Greg Sargent at Talking Points Memo that David Shuster will not be fired.

"He remains on suspension indefinitely, but he will not be fired and will be returning to MSNBC," MSNBC director of communications Alana Russo told Sargent, who then speculates (pretty plausibly, we think) what it all means:  read more »