It’s not all altruism. The destruction MSNBC also wants to avoid is the havoc such news has been wreaking on its competitive standing.
In May, MSNBC, which generally runs second to the dominant leader, Fox News, among cable news channels, plunged all the way to fourth place, dropping behind not only its closest rival, CNN, but also that network’s sister channel, HLN (formerly Headline News).
At a time of intensely high interest in news, MSNBC’s ratings declined from the same period a year ago by about 20 percent. The explanation, in the network’s own analysis, comes down to this: breaking news is not really what MSNBC does.
“We’re not the place for that,” said Phil Griffin, the channel’s president, in reference to covering breaking events as CNN does. “Our brand is not that.”
The brand, one MSNBC has cultivated with success, is defined by its tagline, “The Place for Politics,” and a skew toward left-wing, progressive political talk, the opposite of the conservative-based approach that has worked well for Fox News.
MSNBC began to commit itself to presenting a liberal spin on political coverage in the middle of the last decade, partly because it had not found success in previous models (like trying to be a news channel for younger viewers) and mostly because it had one host, Keith Olbermann, whose ratings were exploding based on his outspoken criticisms of the Bush administration and the conservative voices on Fox News.
MSNBC has ridden this formula to a consistent edge over CNN. It has topped that network about 80 percent of the time over the last three years, Mr. Griffin noted, by relying on a lineup of prime-time shows with strong hosts like Rachel Maddow. CNN has never made ideologically impassioned shows the basis of its appeal. Instead, it has thrived when its potent brand identity, the channel for breaking news, has come into play.
Mr. Griffin acknowledged that CNN, which has experienced ratings gains near 100 percent in the last two months, shines in periods of intense news interest. But, he said, this will pass.
“You do have to look at the long term,” Mr. Griffin said in May. “In the first quarter of this year, Fox News had its lowest quarter in a decade. A year ago CNN had its worst month ever. I tip my hat to what CNN has done this month, but let’s not be so myopic as to think the whole world has changed.”
For the second quarter so far, MSNBC has averaged 704,000 viewers in prime time, down 18 percent from last year. Among viewers that news advertisers pay to reach, those 25 to 54, MSNBC has averaged 214,000 for the quarter, down 11 percent.
The network has experienced steady growth in ratings over the last several years, however, and profits have followed. For example, a Pew Research study put the network’s annual profit at $186.6 million for 2011, up from $168.8 million the prior year. The research firm SNL Kagan estimated MSNBC’s 2012 profit at $202 million.
Mr. Griffin pointed out that CNN has surged ahead of MSNBC (and occasionally even Fox News) when enormous news was breaking, like the tsunami in Japan in 2011 — but fell back once the news cooled. And on three nights last week, MSNBC edged back ahead of CNN in the prime-time hours, though CNN maintained a lead over the full day.
But there is speculation that something different may be happening this time, that a combination of a more aggressive approach from CNN, dimming interest in political news in general, and a sense that MSNBC has less to offer in hard news coverage, may be eroding the advantage that the channel has enjoyed.
Mr. Griffin acknowledged that with Jeff Zucker, the former NBC chief executive and an experienced news producer from the “Today” show, now leading CNN, the competition is going to increase.
“We have to be aware of it,” he said. “We’ll figure out how to deal with their aggression in our own way.”
The way will be consistent with the political brand — and that could be a risk.
Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/03/business/media/devoted-to-politics-msnbc-slips-on-breaking-news.html?partner=rss&emc=rss