The president of MSNBC says a probe into the ratings recently reported for Fox News Channel may be in order.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, MSNBC President Phil Griffin, speaking at a briefing to preview the network’s new website, complained about what he called an "impossible" surge in ratings for Fox News on Tuesday, when Fox’s Megyn Kelly outpaced his network’s Rachel Maddow.
According to comments reported by TVNewser, Griffin said MSNBC had had a "really good day in the key demographic" Monday, when Fox News debuted three shows.
"Tuesday — you guys should be doing some investigations — I have never seen it in all my years of cable, same overnight, same everything, and they doubled their ratings in a day? It is impossible," Griffin said. “I have never seen it — they did election night numbers in the demo Tuesday. Wednesday it came back down. I complained — I was like, what?”
On Tuesday, Kelly drew 623,000 in the key news demographic of viewers 25-54, while Maddow drew 291,000. On the previous night, Maddow beat Kelly by 10,000 in the segment, THR notes.
Nielsen hadn’t responded to Griffin’s comments, according to THR.
Phil, take a deep breath. The investigation should be in Your Monday numbers. Your prime schedule isn’t even close!
The answer is the Fox Family atmosphere. When Kelly didn’t win outright on Monday, Fox Business and Fox News shows, and their hosts, put on an all-out blitz to get their viewers to turn into Kelly’s show. I have never seen anything like that! She was the number one topic from Imus in the morning through O’Reilly. All day Tues. they were all telling their viewers to tune her in and it worked.
It boils down to this. Fox sucks, but MSNBC sucks harder.
It’s called promotion and it works. Like nbc does with every talent hawking books on every feather of the peacock. Promotion. Great concept.