Tuesday, November 6, 2007
MSNBC Shifts Liberal
MSNBC has been leaning so sharply to the left that the cable channel is even talking to ultra-liberal Rosie O’Donnell about a prime-time show.
Under one option, O’Donnell’s show would run at 9 p.m. on weekdays on MSNBC, against “Larry King Live” on CNN and “Hannity & Colmes” on Fox News, according to NBC executives who spoke with the New York Times.
Even without O’Donnell, the cable channel already is home to three prime-time shows that regularly bash the Bush administration, hosted by Chris Matthews, Keith Olbermann and lastly with Dan Abrams.
The early-evening show on MSNBC that is the most pro-Bush, “Tucker” with Tucker Carlson, is in danger of cancellation, one NBC executive told the Times.
Why the tilt to the left? Ratings is the obvious answer.
Olbermann in July went so far in an editorial as to call on President Bush to resign. Similar editorials in the past year have helped boost the ratings of his show by 33 percent.
Matthews, who has talked about the “criminality” of the Bush White House, has seen his overall ratings rise as well, though not as sharply as Olbermann’s.
Even Joe Scarborough, a former conservative congressman from Florida who now hosts a morning show on MSNBC, has changed his view of his fellow Republicans in the past few months. He recently praised Hillary Clinton’s outreach to the military and Bill Clinton’s accomplishments as president, while at the same time referring to Democrats generally as “morons.”
In an interview with the Times, Scarborough said he is “just as conservative as I was in 1994, when everyone was calling me a right-wing nut.
“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,” he added. “Also, the Republican Party has just been incompetent.”
MSNBC has been leaning so sharply to the left that the cable channel is even talking to ultra-liberal Rosie O’Donnell about a prime-time show.
Under one option, O’Donnell’s show would run at 9 p.m. on weekdays on MSNBC, against “Larry King Live” on CNN and “Hannity & Colmes” on Fox News, according to NBC executives who spoke with the New York Times.
Even without O’Donnell, the cable channel already is home to three prime-time shows that regularly bash the Bush administration, hosted by Chris Matthews, Keith Olbermann and lastly with Dan Abrams.
The early-evening show on MSNBC that is the most pro-Bush, “Tucker” with Tucker Carlson, is in danger of cancellation, one NBC executive told the Times.
Why the tilt to the left? Ratings is the obvious answer.
Olbermann in July went so far in an editorial as to call on President Bush to resign. Similar editorials in the past year have helped boost the ratings of his show by 33 percent.
Matthews, who has talked about the “criminality” of the Bush White House, has seen his overall ratings rise as well, though not as sharply as Olbermann’s.
Even Joe Scarborough, a former conservative congressman from Florida who now hosts a morning show on MSNBC, has changed his view of his fellow Republicans in the past few months. He recently praised Hillary Clinton’s outreach to the military and Bill Clinton’s accomplishments as president, while at the same time referring to Democrats generally as “morons.”
In an interview with the Times, Scarborough said he is “just as conservative as I was in 1994, when everyone was calling me a right-wing nut.
“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,” he added. “Also, the Republican Party has just been incompetent.”
