Comcast Makes the Decision to Leave Behind Its Sinking Ship MSNBC, Rats and All

Just ahead of the election, media conglomerate Comcast-Universal hinted that it was looking into the prospect of either putting up for sale or spinning off its cable television division. The clutch of channels it owns includes a number of cable mainstays, such as CNBC, The USA Network, E!, SyFy, and The Golf Channel, as well as Oprah Winfrey’s lightly regarded Oxygen. The most prominent — and most controversial — name on the list has to be MSNBC.

 

This was a position you could almost have sympathy over, given the state of cable television these days. Cord-cutting has not only been trending, it has accelerated at a rate that it is by now an outright cultural shift, and the prospects are dim. NBC-U is not facing a buyer’s market but one in which there might be no interest. As a result, it announced today that it would divest the cable division into its own entity. 

So most of the cable networks will be bundled together into a new entity (with the curious omission being Bravo, which NBC-U will see remaining under its umbrella) as well as the cinema-based digital outlet Rotten Tomatoes and the movie ticketing/streaming service Fandango. A number of NBC executives will pilot this new entity, which will begin its separate existence in the new year.

The cable channels are reported by Ben Mullin to still be profitable, but the fortunes for this sector are looking dim, and the long-term prospects are expected to be a drag on the company. NBC-U will retain the broadcast division, as this is still considered a revenue stream, entirely due to sports, which dominate viewership these days. Last year, of the top 100 watched broadcasts, we see how dependent they are: 93 were NFL games, four were NCAA games, and the other three were special event broadcasts. The first scheduled programming you see was ranked 136th for the year.

Since that prior announcement by NBC-U, the prospects for its left-wing news channel have only become worse, with the Donald Trump victory taking things to new lows. First, there was the revelation that Al Sharpton pocketed a tidy sum from the lavish-spending Kamala Harris campaign, where the bad reverend was granted $500,000, and he repaid Kamala when he delivered a tongue-bath interview on October 20. This is a severe breach of journalism ethics, and the network heads have not addressed this payola scandal in any fashion.

Then, since the election, MSNBC has seen its ratings collapse. The days immediately following the result saw the network lose more than 50 percent of its audience, and things only deteriorated from there. The following week, they plunged to depths not seen in decades, with the recent returns showing no recovery. Then came the big admission.

On the flagship program “Morning Joe,” the wedded co-hosts came out to announce that over the weekend, a meeting with Donald Trump was arranged, as they had turned supplicants and visited him at Mar-a-Lago. This was met with all manner of negative feedback from their fanbase, others at the network, and even some names attached to the show. The revulsion was such that the program saw immediate viewer reactions within the hour.

What this spinoff plan means for the prospects of MSNBC remains in a fog. Will there be cost-cutting and salaries trimmed or even firing of talent taking place? Does this lead to a shift in focus to a more balanced approach, or will the on-air pundits be freed from a corporate mandate and allowed to spout off even more? And what about the connective tissue it currently enjoys with the NBC News division — will the relationship remain tight, or will there be a distancing seen from the parent network?

Whichever the case, it is clear that changes will emerge. It is also obvious that changes are desperately needed, but it is a mystery if corrective action will be taken.