. . . they could do away with their ratings problems. But, sadly for the network, though Barbra Streisand may have cloned her dog Samantha twice in the last eight years, cloning humans is something that currently still just takes place on screen in films like MICKEY 17.
MSNBC, for those who don't know, is talk TV. Every hour is pretty much a talk show hour. Like CNN and FOX "NEWS," it bills itself as a "news network" but barring a huge disaster -- natural or human made -- they're not breaking from their talk show format.
And then the thing about talk shows is that you've got to want to spend an hour with the host. Oh sure, you hear a certain singer or comedian's going to be on a talk show, you tune in for that episode, but to watch a regular talk show, especially five days a week, you need a host people want to spend time with.
And spending time is MSNBC's biggest problem. The left doesn't need marching orders and they're not hungry for that. MSNBC regularly forgets that which is how Saturday they got Jen Pskai doing yet another MSNBC segment with Zohran Kwame Mamdani.
Who? is the cry around the country since MSNBC is a national channel and not some over the air broadcast little station that reaches Queens and, on a good day, Brooklyn
Exactly.
These are the candidates in the Democratic Party primary for NYC mayor: Adrienne Adams, Michael Blake, Andrew Cuomo, Brad Lander, Zohran Mamdani, Zellnor Myrie, Jessica Ramos, Scott Stringer and Whitney Tilson. Cuomo is also running as an Independent. The Working Families Party does not plan to endorse at this time. Their plan is to go with whomever wins the Democratic Party primary unless it's former New York Governor Cuomo -- in which case they will declare a candidate. The current mayor is Eric Adams and he is a Democrat but he's running as an independent due to numerous scandals and his recent save-your-own-ass relationship with Donald Chump who saw to it that criminal charges against Adam were dropped.
Now there are other candidates but we're focusing on Democrats the primary will be June 24th (early voting has already started and, good news, this will be a ranked choice election). The story of the Democratic Party primary is also a story of fools and whores -- you decide which -- like Bill McKibben, Jane Fonda, Rashida I-Love-Donald-Trump Tlaib, Kai Penn, etc. Why do we say that? This is an election for the mayor of New York City. The people listed -- and many others who have endorsed -- do not live in NYC and are not currently working in NYC It really is none of their business.
And it's not MSNBC's business to endorse either.
So anyway, we sat down on the couch and turned on the TV. I'm not interested in MSNBC pimping a candidate for NYC, by the way. I find that offensive and disgusting when they pull that s**t and pick whomever they want to favorite of the Democratic Party candidates running.
Jen Psaki, you make it so easy for me not to watch you when you pull that s**t.
To which Mike added:
Exactly. That's why I've never been big on MSNBC. Since the 2024 election, I've really grown to appreciate Rachel Maddow. I've always loved Lawrence O'Donnell and Katie Phang. I've started watching Stephanie Ruhle since the election and enjoy her.
But I can't take this bulls**t of you're going to use a corporate network to try to influence a political primary by picking your personal favorite Democrat -- a Socialist, by the way, not a Democrat.
Zohran Mamdan got yet another MSNBC segment last week on Monday
Yet another. There may be nine candidates in the primary but only one gets invited on MSNBC repeatedly.
This is what former US President Bill Clinton meant when he observed MSNBC was just another side of the coin to FOX "NEWS."
They're not informing you because they can never resist the temptation to order you, to propagandize you. It's something the corporation should have put an end to long, long ago.
It's why so many of us on the left reject MSNBC.
On the left, we value education, we value facts. We're not watching to learn talking points or hear half the story.
Unlike the fright-wing, we're actually educated people. Many of us went to college, but all of us spent considerable time on our own educating ourselves and continue to spend that time doing so.
MSNBC thinks we're zombies like FOX "NEWS" viewers and that we need our daily marching orders. That's not only why so many of us don't tune in, it's also why it's so hard for most of us to consume more than one hour a day of MSNBC.
The network provides conditioning and socialization and marching orders and talking points, but it's not real big on actual facts and information.
Rachel Maddow is the MSNBC star and when she returned to nightly shows Monday through Friday during Chump's first 100 days of his second term, ratings soared.
She's now back on Mondays only (her choice, not the network's) and ratings are, in many ways, worse than they were before the election.
That has to do with the nature of the network, yes. For every Rachel and Lawrence O'Donnell who can make a strong arguments, there are so many lazy whores.
Worse than lazy, they're just unappealing.
We've bit our tongue on Jen Psaki who was wrongly given Rachel's time slot.
We've done that because she became very hesitant (and useless) once she assumed Rachel's time slot on every night but Monday. We know Jen's getting notes constantly to be this or be that or do this or do that. We know that's happening because of what we hear. But we also know it because of what we see on screen. Since taking over those nights, Jen has shrunk, not expanded.
Last week was her worst week ever on MSNBC. And that started long before Saturday night when she was back to pimping MSNBC's clubhouse candidate for NYC mayor.
She's trying to stand out -- good for her -- but failing in skits like let-me-pretend-I'm-still-White-House-spokesperson. She pretends to answer the questions Propaganda Pig Karoline Leavitt ignores at press briefings.
Are we supposed to be laughing? Because we're not.
It should be funny or at least sharp.
But there she is getting meeker and meeker each time she does it. Her low energy is like a sad barista at Starbucks greeting you with, "We're all out of oat milk."
Either up the energy and get an actual POV (point of view) for the segment or drop it. Currently, it goes nowhere. It makes for the worst segment of far too many of Jen's shows currently.
We don't have time or space to outline all the things Jen needs to be doing -- and, again, we're aware that she's hearing feedback from countless consultants already.
But one thing she needs to do is book better guests.
Last week, our mouths dropped in horror as she did a segment on artificial information and digital data and blah blah.
Our mouths dropped because of the freak show guest.
One of us (C.I.) has known Ronan Farrow his whole life.
WHAT THE F**K HAS HE DONE TO HIS FACE?
That's all caps because the whole world should be yelling it. His face looks like an overstuffed pillow and his addiction to altering his looks now surpasses that of Michael Jackson -- and don't get us started on those eyebrows. Not since serial plagiarist Gerald Posner have we seen someone associated with the news industry work so hard to destroy their face with so much bad plastic surgery.
TV is a visual medium. That alone should prevent Ronan Farrow from ever being brought on as a guest again.
But there are other reasons as well including that Ronan already bombed with MSNBC viewers a long, long time ago.
Did no one learn from 2014? That's when Ronan bombed on MSNBC -- when more people were watching THE GOLDEN GIRLS repeats on HALLMARK than watching RONAN FARROW DAILY -- and awful, awful show -- see our "TV: Another idiot for the idiot box" from March 2014. A ton of money was spent promoting that show and no one could stand to watch it. That was due to Ronan and we explained that and his personal habits/problems/ticks that resulted from his childhood (and his mother) and rendered him too odd for TV.
Maybe if he'd stayed with Jon Lovett, he could have addressed those problems. But Ronan didn't want to deal and screwed up the only real thing he ever had in his personal life just like he screwed up his chance at TV fame.
Keep the weirdo away. People don't need to look at that face before bedtime -- no one wants nightmares.
They want facts.
Rachel turned a talk show monologue into just that with her own show. Lawrence was doing that before she got her own show. Talk shows need openings and need monologues. But they need to be delivered with confidence.
Confidence is where MSNBC continues to struggle.
Joy Reid had it. And she had ratings and praise. Coming off an award, MSNBC cancels her. They have three strange people now filling her slot. It's not working and it never will. MORNING JOE (a problem all its own) could recreate early in the evening. But when Joe Scarborough is on the set, he is the star of the show. His opinion's the one everyone goes to. With Joy's replacement show, you have three hosts that aren't that attractive or charismatic and the show's all over the place because the hosts are all over the place. A show has to have a POV. Joy provided one. The ratings have crashed in the weeks since she was fired.
A smart network would have snapped her back up within a month, would've called her on the phone and said, "We made a huge mistake and we're adult enough to say that. Let's negotiate your return."
Along with getting rid of Joy, they got rid of Alex Wagner and Katie Phang. They also delivered audiences. People could watch them and feel they were being informed.
That's not happening with most of the line up currently.
Why in the world, looking at the ratings, does Chris Hayes still have his time slot?
We're not saying fire Chris, we're saying his rating are bad. Move him to an earlier time slot and put Ari Melber in Chris' current slot and you've got building blocks for a winning prime time line up.
Ari is delivering and those ratings are because he's strong on air. Do the execs not see that? An hour of Ari delivers a POV and a strong on camera presence. Ari -- Rachel substitute -- Lawrence O'Donnell -- Stephanie Ruhle could be a strong evening of programming that won over viewers.
Chris is too laid back. Comfortable? Snooze worthy. He's not aggressive enough for prime time and should be moved to an afternoon slot.
Another who should be moved? Nicole Wallace. She's got a POV, she wins viewers yet, in terms of time slots, she's stuck in Siberia.
How do the MSNBC suits watch their own network -- they do watch, right? -- and not see that Ari, Nicole and Jonathan Capehart are TV talk show stars. They have the presence, they have the command.
Building the network around strong hosts and grasping that viewers want facts and information not marching orders would allow MSNBC to finally become a network the country needs. Such a development would qualify as civic duty and actual journalism.