Fade To Black?
Is MSNBC about to go under? Or at least cease to exist as a 24 hour news channel? Speculation is that it may do just that in the near future. The channel has been the perennial cellar-dweller in the ratings pretty much forever, so something has got to give.
Word is that the perennial also-ran in cable news is considering the possibility of virtually dropping out of the live-news business and devoting itself entirely to taped, newsmagazine-style programming —much of it likely repurposed from NBC News. In other words, “The Dateline: NBC Channel.”
That’s just one option under consideration. But that such a drastic idea is even on the table speaks volumes about the state of the cable news business.
If such a modification occurs, it would certainly mean changes for MSNBC’s business-news sibling, CNBC. One scenario has successful MSNBC personalities Chris Matthews and Keith Olbermann moving their respective acts to CNBC in the hopes of turbo-charging its ratings-challenged primetime. In this case, NBC News still would have both channels at its disposal should it want to go live 24/7 in the event of a terrorist attack or a major natural disaster.
Whether NBC News will choose such a dramatic course of action is a subject of debate in the industry. Naysayers argue that the challenge of transforming MSNBC into a newsmag channel doesn’t make sense from either a production or an economic standpoint. Indeed, the cost of such a transformation would fly in the face of NBC’s efforts to wring tens of millions of dollars in cuts out of the news division.
Interesting. It seems overall viewership for all of the 24/7 news channels has been sliding in the past year. So it is beginning to look like some sort of shakeup may indeed come true fairly soon.
By Roland Hesz, Tuesday, 26 September , 2006 @ 3:18 am
I don’t know if it matters at all.
I mean, look at this page, I don’t know if you need a newschannel that has separate “worldnews” for the US. The “world for the world”, and the “world for the US”.