By Jueseppi B.
From The WEEK & By Peter Weber
Why MSNBC is demoting Ed Schultz:
Why MSNBC is demoting Ed Schultz [Updated]
MSNBC’s Ed Schultz had a big scoop on Wednesday night: An interview with Scott Prouty, the previously anonymous Florida bartender who secretly recorded Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney‘s disparaging comments about 47 percent of Americans. Then, at the end of the show, Schultz announced that, starting in April, his prime-time show would move to the weekends.
Schultz said the time switch was his idea — “I raised my hand for this assignment for a number of personal and professional reasons,” he said. “I’m very proud of the work our team has done here at 8 p.m., but sitting behind this desk five nights a week doesn’t cut it for me.” Few people are convinced. “Sources at MSNBC told Politico that that was a very generous interpretation of events,” says Politico’s Dylan Byers. “Schultz was pushed out to make way for new talent, they said.”
Until we get that backstory, all we have is speculation — and Brian Stelter of The New York Times. Last November, Stelter reported that MSNBC was thinking about replacing Schultz with Washington Post wunderkind blogger Ezra Klein, drawing a furious denial from Schultz. “If somebody is telling Stelter that I’m going to be replaced, we know that his nose as a reporter doesn’t sniff very well,” he said on his radio show.
On Wednesday night, Stelter cited his old story, saying Schultz’s ouster “has been expected at least since late last year,” and repeated that Klein is still the frontrunner for Schultz’s spot, along with Chris Hayes and Joy Reid. He doesn’t say why Schultz is being pushed out, but in a March 1 profile of Schultz in the Columbia Journalism Review, Stelter tells Michael Meyer: “When MSNBC talks about its brand, it talks about Rachel Maddow and Lawrence O’Donnell and Chris Hayes. It doesn’t talk as often about Ed Schultz.”
It has been announced that Chris Hayes will move from Saturday’s & Sunday’s to fill Ed’s time slot at 8 PM EST Monday thru Friday. Now I will be sick……sick of Chris hates that is.
With his bombast and focus on the labor movement, “Schultz is as close to a perennial underdog as you could find,” says CJR’s Meyer. But “one area where even Schultz can’t cast himself as underdog, for the moment at least, is ratings.”
After briefly moving from 6 p.m. to 10 p.m. in the primetime reshuffling that followed Keith Olbermann‘s parting ways with MSNBC in 2011, The Ed Show finally settled in at 8 p.m., and went on to have an impressive year in 2012. The “fat, red-headed guy from Fargo,” as Schultz refers to himself, handily beat the more camera-friendly Anderson Cooper in that timeslot. And while it seems no one ever will top Fox’s Bill O’Reilly, Schultz earned MSNBC its best 8 p.m. ratings among the coveted 25-to-54 demographic since 2009. [CJR]
“The change may be one of tone rather than numbers,” say Anjali Sareen and Jack Mirkinson at The Huffington Post. This is “a clear demotion” for Schultz — “the 8 p.m. cable news slot is one of the biggest prizes in prime time,” and the weekend is “simply a less prestigious time period” — but it probably says more about MSNBC than Schultz.
His barnstorming, Midwestern, labor-friendly brand of populist liberalism has come to look more and more at odds with the increasingly elite and wonkish tone taking hold on the rest of MSNBC. The network has spent its last year grooming hosts like Chris Hayes, Melissa Harris-Perry, and Ezra Klein, all of whom bring a far different approach to their work than Schultz. [Huffington Post]
“It’s arguable that, just as the Democrats viewed Schultz as the right man for the job during the heart of the Bush years, MSNBC is beginning to view others as a better fit in the age of Obama,” says CJR’s Meyer.
Schultz’s bombast, which resembles the Fox News style of the 2000s, was once the hallmark of opinionated cable news. But now, perhaps, MSNBC sees a different way forward, and is building a lineup in the sober, technocrat image of the current administration. [CJR]
Update: Chris Hayes has been picked as Schultz’s successor at 8 p.m.
Peter Weber is a senior editor at TheWeek.com, and has handled the editorial night shift since the website launched in 2008. A graduate of Northwestern University, Peter has worked at Facts on File and The New York Times Magazine. He speaks Spanish and Italian, and plays in an Austin rock band, The Heavenly Rays
The WEEK & By Peter Weber
I’m not a huge Ed Show Fan…..BUT Chris Hayes???? You have got to be joking MSNBC. I can’t take 2 days of Chris Hayes on Saturday & Sunday……NOW I gotta see/hear him 5 days a week??
Give Me Melisa Harris-Perry…..5 days a week in Ed’s slot.
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Jueseppi B.
Chris Hayes?Really?What a disappointment !
I see more censorship by corporate media. The Ed Show put the fear of God into the corporate medai and GOP.
Sad to see Ed go, especially when he is replaced by the likes of Chris Hayes. A lightweight.
Sad, if they pushed him out the door. That seems to happen a lot.
Some say it was his wife’s battle with cancer that made weekend work more attractive to him. Others say he was pushed out for a younger host, to appeal to a younger crowd. I was not a huge fan of the Ed Show but replacing him with teeny bopper and light weight Chris Hayes is just stupid.
We will see what happens next
Yeah, I’m waiting……
I think that it’s also the fact that Ed’s beloved wife has had health issues recently, which threw him for a loop. He had back problems which only lately has been ameliorated. I think that MSNBC, frankly, are a buncha wimps for not allowing many voices of progressivism to thrive there. While I still like Maddow, I sure don’t like her cozying up to Andrea “Mrs. Alan Greenspan” Mitchell, who is part of the conservative bunch. And Chris Hayes is too young and too quiet for 8 p.m., but that is Maddow’s protege. Nope, she’s not Keith’s protegee any more.
Meanwhile, Keith is making tentative moves to move back to ESPN and doing surprise appearances at other pundit shows.
Yes, I watched him go through that cancer episode with his wife, and although she is currently in remission, she probably still needs him. This was my first thought when I learned he was moving to weekends, less work. But then I read yesterday that MSNBC has been planning to move him out for over a year, “according to sources”.
Either way MSNBC is now worse than CNN and starting to become Faux Spews.
It’s good to see you, hope you had a good holiday.
I feel you on MHP though; she’s sharp as a tack! (Nothing against Ed)
YES move her to Ed’s slot. Good to see you back for a spell.