MSNBC has found another way to alienate their alleged audience. MSNBC has decided to cancel Joy Reid while keeping Ronan Farrow on the air.
Andrew Kirell at Mediaite reported that according to two internal sources, MSNBC “has canceled The Reid Report… Our sources at the network say Reid was informed of her show’s cancelation on Thursday. It is unclear when the show will go off-air.”
This is not going over well already, because Ronan Farrow, who has even fewer viewers, is “seemingly” being kept on.
To get more stories like this, subscribe to our newsletter The Daily.
Kirell’s tipsters were none too happy, “To that end, one of our tipsters — who has worked at MSNBC for just under a decade — complained to Mediaite that the decision to cancel Reid but seemingly keep Farrow in the lineup is ‘a slap in the face of a woman of color,’ especially because Reid’s ratings have been consistently higher than Farrow’s, and yet ‘she’s been given no support and no promotion.'”
But this is also a slap in the face to the audience MSNBC is trying so hard to cultivate and hang on to. It’s almost as if someone is deliberately sabotaging the network and only the super strong, like Rachel Maddow, can survive. At a network where they seem to equate intelligence with being a man who wears glasses, it should come as no surprise if Joy Reid is canceled but Ronan Farrow kept on. I am personally not a Farrow hater (and I found the initial criticisms of his attractiveness rather disturbing for an allegedly liberal audience), but the numbers don’t support this decision.
Ronan Farrow’s ratings are so bad that he is finishing behind a newscast on Al-Jazeera America. On February 4, 2014, Farrow had 22,000 total viewers compared to 44,000 for Al Jazeera America (AJAM). The former Current TV is available in fewer homes than MSNBC, so a smaller network is doubling Farrow’s viewership. Joy Reid was also struggling in the ratings, but her show was not performing as badly as Farrow’s. Plus, any chance that she had to be successful was destroyed by the fact that Farrow was her lead in.
Reid’s show has not performed well, but she deserved a chance to see what she could do without the dead weight of Ronan Farrow weighing her down.
MSNBC boss Phil Griffin refuses to listen to his audience. The Wrap reported that Griffin is stubbornly attached to the hosts that he developed:
“It’s stubbornness,” another insider told TheWrap about Griffin’s reluctance to axe struggling shows hosted by his handpicked talent. “There are certain shows and talent that are very much his. They were his ideas, so I think that’s where you see the least flexibility.”
The ratings-challenged trio of Alex Wagner, Ronan Farrow, and Chris Hayes were all his ideas. The problem is that all of these shows are killing MSNBC’s ratings. Viewers have rejected Wagner, Farrow, and Hayes, but Phil Griffin doesn’t care what you want.
MSNBC used to be a promising network, but it has become an out of control tire fire. Rachel Maddow’s ratings have plunged, and many former MSNBC viewers have fled to CNN.
The refusal to listen to the audience is the reason the next firing at MSNBC should be Phil Griffin.
Update: Ronan Farrow has been canceled, and MSNBC has stated that they are going to a more news driven daytime lineup.
