NBC is purchasing from Microsoft an 82 percent controlling interest in third-place cable news network MSNBC. I hope it can turn things around. I have already noticed a sea change in MSNBC's efforts to reach a broader audience. After hitting a moral low by firing Phil Donahue and hiring Michael Savage a couple of years ago, the network seems to have decided on a slightly leftward tilt. They are even promoting Keith Olbermann on some of the the most prominent liberal blogs.
But, one paragraph really jumped out at me from this New York Times story about the takeover:
Today MSNBC still ranks a distant third behind Fox News and Time Warner Inc.'s CNN in the Nielsen ratings, with just 257,000 viewers in November, versus 449,000 for CNN and 889,000 for Fox News.Fox "News" is number-one in the cable wars with fewer than 900,000 viewers for an entire sweeps month? Heck, Atrios has had 900,000 visits so far this week! Kos average 650,000 visits in a single day!
In this light, Bill O'Reilly just doesn't seem like that big a deal, does he?
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