It wasn’t MSNBC President Phil Griffin’s best year.
In 2013, the cable news network fell behind arch rival CNN in total viewers throughout the day — after gaining a lot of momentum in 2012’s election year — and had to suffer through a succession of recent on-air debacles.
In the past two months alone, three MSNBC anchors — Martin Bashir, Alec Baldwin and Melissa Harris-Perry — experienced damaging cases of foot-in-mouth syndrome and had to apologize.
Two — Bashir and Baldwin — lost their jobs.
At the same time, CNN, after boss Jeff Zucker’s first full year, reported increased ratings in 2013.
“MSNBC has had a perfect storm of difficulties,” noted Eric Deggans, the television critic of NPR as well as the author of “Race-Baiter: How the Media Wields Dangerous Words to Divide a Nation.”
For Griffin, who had hoped he had finally secured the No. 2 position behind Fox News Channel, the on-air gaffes were a disappointment.
“We took the appropriate actions,” Griffin said in an interview last week, referring to the public apologies that were made after each incident.
Media-industry and crisis-management experts suggest that MSNBC and parent Comcast will have to rein in its outspoken journalists and personalities to avoid having additional embarrassing on-air cases.
“Comcast needs to show that everyone at MSNBC, from the president on down, must be held accountable from now on and that this [behavior] cannot continue to happen,” said Mike Paul, a 25-year public-relations strategist known as “The Reputation Doctor.”
“We live in a society where sensationalism is often rewarded,” Paul pointed out. “That has to be factored in when we consider why people are constantly crossing the line.”
MSNBC, which caters to a liberal audience, made its mistakes in the pursuit of viewers. Is it a coincidence, then, that Sarah Palin and Mitt Romney, two highly visible Republicans, were the target of the insults?
One thing is clear: Cable anchors of all political stripes are encouraged to express strong and provocative views, as a way to cut through the glut of media voices.
“The appeal of cable television is not always about the news,” said Charles Haddad, a journalism professor at Stony Brook University. “What counts to the networks is whether they’re watched, not whether they’re right or wrong. Getting eyeballs is what matters.”
Griffin can still boast that in the key 25-to-54-year old demographic MSNBC is still ahead of CNN — but just barely.
“When you include MSNBC’s series Lockup, Caught on Camera, Undercover, Predator Raw, and To Catch a Predator in the network’s all-day viewership,” Mediaite noted on Jan. 8, “they rack up 133k (thousand) in the key demo,” placing just a thousand demo viewers ahead of CNN.
Remove those controversial documentaries, however, and MSNBC’s total-day demo ratings fall to third, about 4,000 behind CNN.