MSNBC The Cable Network of the Left
By Don | August 22, 2008
If there was any doubt that MSNBC is more like MSDNC then the hiring of liberal talk show host Rachel Maddow should put that argument to rest.
From the New York Times.
WITH the promotion of Rachel Maddow, the Air America radio host, to a prime-time television spot this week, the longtime third-place cable news network MSNBC cemented its identity as a channel for a liberal audience.
But is that what advertisers want it to be?
MSNBC, which is owned by NBC Universal, a unit of General Electric, does not trumpet its shift. But in the 12 years that MSNBC has competed head-to-head with CNN and the Fox News Channel, the partisan lines have never been drawn so neatly.
Maybe the feeling is that since they are a distant third what do they have to lose by shifting to the left? The risk is that they will become a cable tv version of Air America with humorless liberals that do nothing but rant about conservatives and the GOP and lose even more ground to CNN and Fox.
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August 25 at 10:58 am | #1 | Link
I had never watched MSNBC until one night due to weather conditions, channel outages left me with this choice. Keith Olberman was hosting. Tt was the most ridiculous hour I ever spent.
Watching Olberman try to copy Oreilly on the Fox News was entertaining. Olberman couldn’t come up with an original idea of his own and was repeating information which was clearly false!
He even copied Oreilly’s format of pinhead and patriot but called it some other ridiculous name.
The blatant lean to the left was also evident in the appeal to emotion rather than FACTually based approach I find on FOX and CNN sometimes - except for its Planet In Peril which gave me a few hoots also!
Why not go left - they are so far down in the ratings they can’t drop much more - or can they??