Ed Schultz achieved the almost unachievable on Friday, April 22. On that night he lost a remarkable 61% of Rachel Maddow’s lead-in audience. And it’s not like her ratings were anything to brag about.
As you can see in the following chart, MSNBC was rolling along with decent ratings – by MSNBC standards, that is – until Schultz hit the airwaves. Then it appears that leftists across America jumped for their remote controls and tuned in somewhere else. Anywhere else.
| Time | Host | Total Audience | ||
| 5 pm | Matthews | 707,000 | ||
| 6 pm | Cenk | 613,000 | 7 pm | Matthews | 601,000 | 8 pm | O’Donnell | 819,000 | 9 pm | Maddow | 959,000 | 10 pm | Schultz | 375,000 | 11 pm | O’Donnell (rerun) | 374,000 |
Not only does Ed lose 61% of Maddow’s audience, but the 11:00 rerun of Lawrence O’Donnell’s 8 p.m. show falls just 1,000 viewers short of Ed’s total. And the rerun isn’t even in prime time hours.
We’d call this an embarrassing performance, but it’s worse than that. Wholesale rejection by MSNBC’s niche audience may just be a one-way ticket back to North Dakota for Big Eddie.
Our advice? Don’t sign any long term leases, Ed.
Source: Media Bistro
