MSNBC Sabotages Donahue
by
Ralph Nader
Dissident Voice
March 4, 2003
Monopolist
Microsoft and oligopolist General Electric - the co-owners of MSNBC - took their
highest rated show off the air and sent Phil Donahue away on February 25, 2003.
After choosing Donahue to host his own 8pm daily show only six months ago, the
corporate managers micromanaged, mismanaged and refused to let Phil Donahue be
Phil Donahue.
About the only freedom
Donahue had was the freedom to say what he thinks. Beyond that he was often
told what kinds of subjects to showcase and what kind of guests to have. And he
was often chided for being too tough on some guests - shades of Fox's Bill
O'Reilly, his competition for that hour, and the spitting, screeching,
viper-like Sean Hannity.
In the past few months, the
corporate "suits" even told Donahue that he had to have more
conservative or right-wing guests than liberals on the same hour show. Still,
Donahue persevered. His ratings were slowly increasing, despite the regular
lacerations that the top brass inflicted on a show that was supposed to be the
liberal counterpart of the right-wing, bellicose Fox fare stitched together by
Rupert Murdoch's media empire.
MSNBC, which was receiving
ratings of about 440,000 viewers for Donahue, was aiming for1,000,000 people.
Were they interested in one million predominately liberal viewers attracted to
the legendary talk show host who, starting in the Sixties, broke apart on
morning television the biases or taboos against women, minorities, gays and
lesbians, downtrodden workers, consumer and environmental rights? Doubtful. For
if they were, some of their promotional budgets would have gone for reaching
liberal audiences of the kind who read Utne magazine, Mother Jones, or who
watch various PBS outlets and other serious programming.
What emerged was quite
different than that described by Steve Friedman, former producer of NBC's
"Today" and the CBS "Early Show," who told a reporter:
"I think MSNBC felt the way to beat Fox was to do a liberal version of
what Fox was doing, and Phil was a good person to do that. I don't know if they
were really committed to that." They were not. Instead, the top brass allowed
other pulls to shatter the identity and consistency of the show - which, by the
way, would have always provided for contrary views to those held by Phil.
First, always hovering in
their minds are the corporate advertisers, who do not exactly like a Dr. Sid
Wolfe exposing the harmful effects of brand name drugs. Right-wing radio and
television talk show hosts dominate the electronic media because, unlike the
rare liberal host, they attack government regulation, while the rare liberal
may go after corporate crimes and abuse. Guess what? Corporations advertise and
governments do not.
But there was more to the
NBC officials' calculations. A commissioned report for NBC's internal purposes
in December put the concern this way: Donahue was described as "a tired,
left-wing liberal out of touch with the current marketplace." Continuing,
the study said that Donahue is "a difficult public face for NBC in a time
of war...he seems to delight in presenting guests who are antiwar, anti-Bush
and skeptical of the administration's motives." Unmentioned was that there
were more pro-war guests on the Donahue show than those espousing an antiwar
viewpoint.
In a pointed but polite
manner, Donahue issued a statement that indicated what was going on behind the
scenes: "We were hoping to break through the noisy drums of war on cable
and become a responsible platform for dissenters as well as Administration
supporters. The New York Times op-ed page features a variety of views regarding
the Bush war on Iraq,including regular columnists who have been critical of the
Administration's foreign policy team. MSNBC's voice should be no less diverse.
The hiring of Mike Savage, Dick Armey and Joe Scarborough suggest a strategy to
outfox Fox."
Starting last fall, leaks
from top NBC sources badmouthed their own Donahue show, leading to regular
trade press rumors about the demise of the show. This is no way to maintain
morale, much less run a business supposedly endowed with at least some
recognition of the public's right to diverse information and opinion. Top NBC
executives, given their enormous pay, should start paying attention to simple
improvements. For example, in about half the country, MSNBC is not even listed
in the daily and Sunday TV cable guides, including Washington, D.C. If your
programs are not even listed alongside CNN and Fox programs, there will be
fewer viewers. I notified a top NBC executive late last fall about this
remarkable omission. His response: "I'm astonished to hear that," and
he pledged to rectify the situation. Nothing has changed to date.
Donahue, in his gracious
manner, paid tribute to the "worker bees" at MSNBC's Secaucus, New
Jersey headquarters. These are the same workers whose state income tax payments
are in effect refunded to profit-glutted Microsoft and General Electric under a
corporate welfare scheme that the two companies demanded from then Governor
Christie Todd Whitman. Now that would have been a great Donahue show!
Ralph Nader is America’s leading consumer advocate. He is the founder of
numerous public interest groups including Public Citizen, and has twice run for President as a Green
Party candidate.
His latest book is Crashing the Party: How to Tell the Truth and Still Run
for President (St. Martin’s Press, 2002)