If MSNBC’s executives are glass-half-full kind of guys, they look at the results of this new survey and say, “Hey, look at all the growth potential we have.”
If they’re glass-half-empty kind of guys, they say, “We are miserable friggin’ failures, we’re lucky we still have jobs, and the hosts we’ve hired couldn’t attract flies to shit. And come to think of it, that’s really a pretty good analogy.”
Politico.com reports:
The results show the growing influence that 24-hour cable news has on shaping the political consciousness, despite the fact that network newscasts still draw many multiples of the number of viewers of even the highest-rated cable news shows.…Fox’s opinionated personalities were also rated as having the greatest positive impact on the political debate in the country. Bill O’Reilly was rated as having, by far, the greatest positive impact, with 49 percent of respondents rating him positively, and 32 percent negatively.
…MSNBC’s personalities were largely ranked as unknown by respondents: 70 percent said they had never heard of Ed Schultz, 55 percent said they had never heard of Rachel Maddow and 42 percent said they had never heard of Keith Olbermann.
We would like to nominate the TV remote control as the greatest invention in history. Without it, someone might have actually lingered on MSNBC long enough to be familiar with Olbermann, Maddow and Schultz by mistake. With it, they get the anonymity they so richly deserve.
Source: Politico.com
