"... This memo, just soon after you were fired that came out of NBC, that was -- that said that as we led into the invasion of Iraq, they didn't want to have their flagship show, no matter how successful it was, the most popular show on MSNBC, being one that provided a forum for anti-war voices. They didn't want an anti-war face when the other networks were waving the American flag....
That memo was a fact, and it was reported by The New York Times and other publications.... the numbers did not warrant our departure, our dismissal. And along the way it became clear to us that they were terrified that we were going to become a place -- an anti-war kind of platform, where all of these radicals would come and oppose the war."
But now that it is politically safe to do such a thing, oh, it's O.K. now!
Well, FUCK YOU for the way Donahue and people like me were treated all these years!
Yeah, here is your new "liberal" network for you!
MSNBC: Ron Paul sets one-day fundraising record 'in the name of a terrorist'
So TAKE YOUR FUCKING "LIBERAL" NETWORK and SHOVE IT!!!!!!!!!!
"Cable Channel Nods to Ratings and Leans Left" by JACQUES STEINBERG
Riding a ratings wave from “Countdown With Keith Olberman,” a program that takes strong issue with the Bush administration, MSNBC is increasingly seeking to showcase its nighttime lineup as a welcome haven for viewers of a similar mind.
Lest there be any doubt that the cable channel believes there is ratings gold in shows that criticize the administration with the same vigor with which Fox News’s hosts often champion it, two NBC executives acknowledged yesterday that they were talking to Rosie O’Donnell about a prime-time show on MSNBC.
Not because they are agin the war, but for RATINGS!!!!
And unless they are going to let Rosie talk 9/11 Truth, I'm not buying any of this alleged "shift."
Just playing FOOLEYS!!!!!!
When was the last time Olbermann had a 9/11 Truther on? Answer: NEVER!
When does Israel ever come in for criticism? Answer: Never!
When is Ron Paul's name ever brought up? Answer: Never!
Now I like Olbermann and I watch him, but I know what he is, too!
During the nine months she spent on “The View” before departing abruptly last spring, Ms. O’Donnell raised viewership notably. She did so while lamenting the unabated casualties of the Iraq war and advocating the right to gay marriage, among other positions.
The great unholy of 9/11 the complicit and collaborative Times will dare not mention!
Under one option, Ms. O’Donnell would take the 9 p.m. slot each weeknight on MSNBC, pitting her against “Larry King Live” on CNN and “Hannity & Colmes” on Fox News.
But even without Ms. O’Donnell, MSNBC already presents a three-hour block of nighttime talk — Chris Matthews’s “Hardball” at 7, Mr. Olbermann at 8, and “Live With Dan Abrams” at 9 — in which the White House takes a regular beating.
Really? You are NOT WATCHING then, "reporter!"
The one early-evening program on MSNBC that is often most sympathetic to the administration, “Tucker” with Tucker Carlson at 6 p.m., is in real danger of being canceled, said one NBC executive, who, like those who spoke of Ms. O’Donnell, would do so only on condition of anonymity.
Awwwww, Tucker is getting canceled?
Good, because Tucker is an ASSHOLE and his show sucked!
Having a prime-time lineup that tilts ever more demonstrably to the left could be risky for General Electric, MSNBC’s parent company, which is subject to legislation and regulation far afield of the cable landscape. Officials at MSNBC emphasize that they never set out to create a liberal version of Fox News.
Yup, OPPOSING the WAR is RISKY for big MSM!!!
Never mind the American people being against it!
You know, the people allegedly running the country!
That explains the coverage more than any blog ever could!
“It happened naturally,” Phil Griffin, a senior vice president of NBC News who is the executive in charge of MSNBC, said Friday, referring specifically to the channel’s passion and point of view from 7 to 10 p.m. “There isn’t a dogma we’re putting through. There is a ‘Go for it.’”
I'm INSULTED after what you assholes did to Donahue!!!!
Fox News consistently denies any political bias in its programming. But whether by design or not, MSNBC is managing to add viewers at a moment when its hosts echo the country’s disaffection with President Bush.
And still nothing changes!
The channel has done so much as Fox News did beginning in 1996, when the president was Bill Clinton, a Democrat. On some nights recently, Mr. Olbermann has even come tantalizingly close to surpassing the ratings of the host he describes as his nemesis, Bill O’Reilly on Fox News, at least among viewers ages 25 to 54, which is the demographic cable news advertisers prefer. Most of the time, though, Mr. O’Reilly outdraws Mr. Olbermann by about 1.5 million viewers over all at the same hour, according to Nielsen Media Research.
That sounds too much like MSM polls, so I don't believe those numbers.
Still, as its most recognizable face, MSNBC has marshaled behind Mr. Olbermann, who on July 3, in an eight-minute “special comment” at the close of his show, addressed President Bush directly and called on him to resign.
And? Where was the rest of the MSM?
Two months later, the channel chose Mr. Olbermann to serve as the principal host of its coverage of a major prime-time address by Mr. Bush.
Mr. Olbermann’s “special comments” — more than 20 in the last 12 months, and nearly all of them first-person editorials that find some fault with the administration — have helped increase the ratings of his program by 33 percent in just the last year, to about 773,000 viewers a night, according to Nielsen.
That's because he is SAYING WHAT THE AMERICAN PEOPLE THINK, assholes!!!
START LISTENING!!!!!!!!!!!!!
With those ratings, Mr. Olbermann’s program surpassed “Paula Zahn Now” on CNN, which was canceled last summer.
Mr. Olbermann comes on after “Hardball” with Mr. Matthews, whose longtime opposition to the war — and to what he describes as Vice President Dick Cheney’s outsize role in the administration — has become only more pointed since he took on the title of managing editor of his broadcast over the summer.
That's what Matthews says, but I've been watching him for years, and it's a LIE!!!!
Matthews is like a chameleon, always changing his tune to fit the tenor of the times, that's all!
And how come Matthews avoids Ron Paul like he's the plague or something?
Since then, he has talked, both on the air and off, about the “criminality” of the Bush White House, as epitomized, he says, by the role of I. Lewis Libby Jr., the vice president’s former chief of staff, in the C.I.A. leak case. Mr. Matthews’s overall ratings have edged up in the process, though not on the scale of Mr. Olbermann’s.
Yeah, and Matthews said that to a closed group of politicians!
Not meant for public's ears!
Even Joe Scarborough, once a conservative congressman from Florida who stood behind President Bush during a campaign rally in 2004, has seemed to have a change of heart about his fellow Republicans in recent months, as is obvious to viewers of “Morning Joe,” his new morning show on MSNBC.
I watch it all the time, and no way!
Joe is a rabid rightist, as he was just bashing the State Dept. folk for not wanting to serve!
Aw, you signed up for the job, you chickens, now let's talk about our troops."
He constantly berates Globalist Mika Brzezinski when she offers a contrary opinion!
He verbally attacks her! I've SEEN IT with mine own eyes!
I'm not going to get into my everyday viewing habits, but the representations in this article are completely false!
In recent weeks, he could be heard praising Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton’s outreach to the military and her husband’s accomplishments as an ex-president, sentiments that, he acknowledged, had surprised even him.
In a telephone interview yesterday morning, hours before the news of the O’Donnell negotiations surfaced, Mr. Scarborough sounded more like Mr. Olbermann than vintage Newt Gingrich.
“I’m just as conservative as I was in 1994, when everyone was calling me a right-wing nut,” he said. “I think the difference is the Republican Party leaders, a lot of them, have run a bloated government, have been corrupt, and have gone a very, very long way from what we were trying to do in 1994. Also, the Republican Party has just been incompetent.”
Not to mention CRIMINAL!!!!
Asked if Mr. Olbermann and Mr. Matthews in particular provided an outlet for the opinions of viewers unhappy with the current administration, Mr. Scarborough said yes.
“While I don’t agree with a lot of the things those guys say night in and night out,” he said, “I think it’s very important that those disaffected voices have a place to go when they think somebody out there needs to be speaking truth to power.”
The fucking smugness and arrogance are enraging!
Yup, those brave guys at MSNBC!
After you guys SHIT ALL OVER the PEACE MOVEMENT for YEARS!!!!!
FUCK YOU!!!!!!!!
Which is not to say that all of the channel’s hosts speak in one voice. On that same day last month when Mr. Scarborough spoke warmly of the Clintons, for example, he also referred to Democrats generally as “stupid people” and “morons.”
But he gets away with that shit all the time.
Imus run out on a rail, and yet we get an ignoramus rightist and that's o.k.!
In an interview Friday, Mr. Matthews, who was once an aide to Thomas P. O’Neill Jr., the former Democratic speaker of the House, recalled that his criticisms of the Clintons in the mid-to-late 1990s made him an outcast within the party, and are still echoed in his skepticism about Mrs. Clinton today.
“I really do take on people with power,” he said. “Deceit is what drives me crazy, either by Bill Clinton or the hawks in this administration.”
Pffffffttttt!
Remember him cozying up to Tom Delay about Hillary's poll #s?
Remember him saying he really liked McCain?!
Matthews is nothing but a scrotum-sucking shill!
Where were you on Iraq, shitter? We needed ya back when!
That said, in a separate interview last week, Mr. Olbermann acknowledged that for MSNBC’s nighttime lineup to ultimately work, viewers needed to be able to follow at least some common themes from one show to another. He likened himself and his fellow hosts, collectively, to the menu of a hamburger restaurant with several variations of the same dish.
No, no, don't eat any more hamburgers!
“If you go into a burger place, and you go in there for the fish, you might want the fish occasionally but it’s probably a mistake,” he said. “Could you be utterly different politically and succeed in this format? You’d basically be throwing your audience away."
Well, I liked his special comment last night
yet once again it falls on deaf MSM ears!
