MSNBC’s Journey From ‘News Network’ To Opinion Network

One of the things I believe Griffin learned from the failure in 2009 was that he didn’t follow the blueprint of his successful approach to primetime. With primetime Griffin had been deliberate and incremental, bordering on sloth-like. It took him nearly two years to go from just [Keith] Olbermann at 8 to a fully leftward POV 3 hour primetime; the complete opposite of what he tried to do in 2009 when he made most of his changes at the same time.

Griffin himself seemed to acknowledge this in an October 2010 New York Magazine article by Gabriel Sherman…

To throw things up, which we did for many years and see if it sticks, is not a strategy. And I’ll never do it again,” he tells me. “It’s too painful.

So, for POV attempt #2 Griffin would return to the methodical approach of changing only parts of MSNBC dayside at a time and the changes would be more gradual. And there would be an accompanying branding for it which itself would methodically and gradually change over time.
In October of 2010 MSNBC announced that branding campaign. It was called Lean Forward. At its debut there was considerable head scratching over the meaning of Lean Forward and how it related to MSNBC but, in truth, Lean Forward as a brand was relatively innocuous at the time. The first TV ads were generic “big sky” productions. More specific ads involving select members of MSNBC’s talent were similarly vague with nobody sticking their necks out regarding anything in particular. Even MSNBC’s POV stars came across tame. It was merely the starting point for something bigger.

2011 would be the year Griffin’s second attempt at extending POV to as much of MSNBC as possible would begin in earnest.

In February of 2011 Martin Bashir’s show debuted. The consensus expectation based on the information at hand (read: nothing to go on whatsoever) was that it would probably be some kind of news or newsmaker program. Bashir had spent many years at ABC’s Nightline where he had demonstrated little disposition towards POV programming. However, when The Martin Bashir show did debut that consensus expectation proved to be wildly off the mark. It was a POV analysis news program with Bashir revealing a progressive bent while making little editorials at the end of the show. It would be another year before MSNBC would publicly confirm that Bashir’s show was indeed a POV show.

To fill the slot vacated by Cenk Uygur’s acrimonious departure, MSNBC hired Al Sharpton in late summer 2011. It was already well established that 3-11pm was POV time on MSNBC but Sharpton’s hiring was seen by most as a POV escalation beyond what would have been contemplated previously. Suddenly the media writers, many of whom had been demonstrating a dogged display of resigned indifference to what Griffin had been attempting to do on MSNBC with POV the previous years, snapped to attention with the announcement of Sharpton’s hire. A bunch of articles came out questioning MSNBC’s selection of a lightning rod with as much controversial history as Sharpton.

Griffin, for his part, remained defiant about Sharpton’s rightful place in MSNBC’s stable telling NPR’s David Folkenflik…

“I’m a big fan of Rev. Sharpton; I’ve known him quite a bit,” Griffin says. “He’s smart. He’s entertaining. He’s experienced. He’s thoughtful. He’s provocative — [he’s] all the things that I think MSNBC is.”

This new incremental approach Griffin took with expanding POV analysis in both scope and tone; first with Bashir’s show and then with the high profile Sharpton signing, continued to be applied throughout 2011 and into 2012.

For the first time Griffin expanded POV analysis into the weekend; first with Up with Chris Hayes in September 2011 and then later on adding to the new weekend POV branding with Melissa Harris-Perry in early 2012. Alex Witt’s news block was branded for the first time but its duration was nearly halved. In November 2011 Griffin added another POV analysis show to M-Fr dayside with the debut of Now with Alex Wagner.

From the beginning of 2011 to the date of this writing, MSNBC has added four different POV analysis shows (excluding Sharpton’s which was a like for like program swap) translating into a total net loss of 15 hours of straight news. But that didn’t mean that the remaining news hours were off limits from Griffin’s POV extension strategy.

NEXT>>>>Continue to page 3 of the article here