This comes after another shake-up was announced concerning daytime – moving Dylan Ratigan to 4pmET – and may signal more announcements to come in the new year.

The reason for this is simple – ratings. Dr. Nancy, as well as Ratigan’s Morning Meeting were struggling in a big way in the A25-54 demographic. In fact, the programs finished in 5th place, behind even CNBC, during the month of November. Now programs are being dropped (Carlos Watson‘s 11amET was an earlier casualty) while others are being moved.

Yesterday we reported on Chris Matthews‘ declining demo ratings as well at 5pmET – heading for one of his worst monthly finishes during December.

The problem hours for MSNBC are the opposite of CNN – while MSNBC is thriving in prime time, CNN is struggling, and during the day it is reversed. CNN is looking for other options now as well. All of this is to jockey for 2nd place on cable news, while FNC has far surpassed the other two networks.

There will definitely be more changes – whether MSNBC keeps 10amET-1pmET as straight news hours remains to be seen – and we’ll keep you up-to-date as we hear more news out of 30 Rock.

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“What’s up with all those women?” asked Dr. Nancy Snyderman today on MSNBC, during her discussion about Tiger Woods and the increasing number of names being associated with the billionaire golfer. And she has a theory: sex addiction. And some other theories.

“I’ve been saying all morning long, ‘could this be sex addiction, or is this just bad behavior?’” she asked of her guests during the segment, while the chyron below read: “Is Tiger Woods A Sex Addict?”

Later, Dr. Nancy expanded on her personal theory:

The kid who’s channeled by an overbearing parent, the blinders are always on. Goes to Stanford makes decent grades, drops out. Channel, channel, channel, channel. Daddy dies, lots of fame, lots of money and then you marry the beautfiul swede, and then you’ve got the Madonna/Whore complex. So it’s all just a little too structured, and then boom, an explosion with no social parameters.

Not surprisingly, Dr. Drew has already weighed in on the whole “sex addiction” possibility.

Do you have a pick for Chyron of the Day? Email Steve@mediaite.com, or check out past Chyrons of the Day here.

Here’s the Dr. Nancy segment:

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By now, everyone has likely seen the video of the hair-pulling, punching female college soccer player who has been suspended indefinitely. Dr. Nancy Snyderman took this as an opportunity to delve into the topic of whether women athletes are just too darn aggressive and emotional these days.

We don’t know exactly what Dr. Nancy is implying here, but we’re pretty sure it’s not 100% un-sexist:

You want women out there aggressive, smart, nuanced. How do you take them up to that spot and not sort of, I don’t want to say let girls be girls, but push them toward the kind of stuff you would expect out of men’s sports, but just perhaps an inch or two shy of that?

So we want women to be almost as aggressive as men, but just not quite as much or else we can risk incidents like some crazy woman punching an opponent?

William Wiener, a sports pyschologist, was one of Snyderman’s guests, and he had a different, but equally cringe-worthy theory. “As we see a growth in women’s sports in general, I think this kind of aggression and people losing control of their emotions is a natural outgrowth of that and I think the systems aren’t really intact to sort of contain that,” he said.

The isolated incident (yes, there’s another high school soccer fight video now making the rounds) is the exact thing cable news likes to make into a trend.

This screengrab has nothing to do with soccer or overly emotional, aggressive women, but was from the segment after and made me laugh:

As we’ve reported before, Dr. Nancy has some of the best chyrons.

Do you have a pick for Chyron of the Day? Email me at Steve@mediaite.com. Check out all the past Chyrons of the Day here.

Here’s the video of the segment, naturally headlined “Girls Behaving Badly”:

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The segment has found a formidable defender in Elizabeth Edwards, who has stage IV breast cancer and who criticizes her lack of breast health education for the unchecked progression of the disease early on (at the 2:00 mark in the Dr. Nancy clip below):

“We need to desensitize people about some things. This is the cancer most likely to strike women… For us to be squeamish about showing how it is we stop the attack on our individual bodies, I think, is foolhardy. We need to be prepared.”

But is a beneficial public health announcement tarnished if the local news station that runs it plays up its salacious elements (cf. the alarming red band warning on the video below; the Skinemax-ish synth soundtrack and electric pink background with which the series opens up) and tellingly holds off on running it until the beginning of Nielsen’s November sweeps, which run from October 29th to November 25th this year?

WJLA’s general manager Bill Lord frankly told The Washington Post that ratings were a factor in the station’s programming decisions: “‘People will say we’re doing it just for ratings,’ he said. ‘But we’re a commercial television station — we’re trying to get people to watch us. Yes, this is an attention-getting story, but it’s also an important story.’”

Speaking on Dr. Nancy, Dr. Robert Schenk made the point that even though the series and the buildup to it “clearly” seemed engineered to bolster WJLA’s ratings, that might not be such a bad thing: it would only ensure that a valuable piece of public health education would reach a bigger audience.

WJLA’s publicity and broadcast strategy is a free-market solution to a public health problem, but it’s got its issues. As compared with, say, Katie Couric’s on-air colonoscopy in 2002, which also drew big audiences, the station’s self-interest shines through a little too brightly. What’s worse, by playing off the ‘salaciousness’ of their subject matter, they inflame the social taboos that made it possible for a local TV network to get national attention for airing an uncensored breast exam.

Here’s a clip from the WJLA series in question (NSFW?):



And here’s the Dr. Nancy segment (via TownHall)



(h/t Doug Ross via Technorati)

Watson’s tenure as the 11 a.m. host was brief, awarded the gig only in June, scooping up the hour amid chatterings that Meet The Press host David Gregory would anchor at that time for one day a week, and that MSNBC Chief Washington Correspondent Norah O’Donnell was also up for an hour. Russo said that there is no replacement scheduled for the 11 a.m. slot, which will be covered by the MSNBC dayside anchor team.

Watson’s website, The Stimulust, is currently “on hiatus” according to its front page, and will be “back soon.” (Update: According to Politico’s Patrick Gavin, it’s been “stagnant for weeks.”) We’ve emailed Watson for comment and are awaiting a reply. (In the meantime, the front page slideshow looks pretty sharp; I must confess that I clicked on this. And the LeBron illustration is great.)

For background, here’s what Danielle Belton posted earlier today:

I’m hearing murmurs from sources that as of Friday Carlos Watson’s 11 a.m. MSNBC show might be no more! Will do some digging to see if that’s true… If this story is true this is a major bummer. First my Uncle Rolly Rolls gets no show from CNN (but luckily Roland Martin will be getting his own shot at a political news gig on TV One this fall), and now this! What’s it gotta take for a person of color, black or otherwise to get and keep a news show on the air?

I don’t know why Watson’s hour was canceled — Russo declined to comment on that part — but it’s no secret that the original MSNBC dayside shakeup was ratings-related. MSNBC confirmed that the hours hosted by Dylan Ratigan and Dr. Nancy Snyderman are safe, so it seems to reason that Watson’s hour was the low-rated alien-baby stepchild in the bunch.

…but then there’s this, from TV By The Numbers, just two days ago:

I’m sure there were high hopes at MSNBC a few months ago when Dylan Ratigan’s Morning Meeting (9-11am) and the Dr. Nancy (12pm) show launched that they’d rejuvenate weekday daytime ratings.

But, sadly for MSNBC, at least initially, those 2 shows have tallied weaker ratings than the shows in the same timeslots a year ago. Ratigan’s Meeting is down 26% in the cable news targeted adults 25-54 demo, and Dr. Nancy’s show is down 43% in that demo, as well as 27% in viewers.

Down 26%? Down 43%? Yikes, that is not good. (Though please consider that a year ago we were in the thick of the conventions and Sarah Palin had just been introduced into the media bloodstream. That’ll make a difference in ratings.) It stands to reason — and we have indeed heard — that Watson’s hour was also performing poorly. But — poorly enough to stand out amongst these numbers?

Also, to be fair, Watson’s hour never got the kind of promotion that Ratigan’s Morning Meeting or Snyderman’s Sniffle-Tastic Swine Flu Hour got, with interstitial promos and the like — just a look at the website makes that plain (though where is Andrea Mitchell across the top? And to be fair, David Shuster and Tamron Hall are not pictured, either).

Upshot: Watson was never announced as permanent anchor nor was given much of a push — but he did have a website with a well-covered launch, and was permitted to use feature ideas from that on his show (i.e. his “C-Note” segment). So, presumably it was his to make work, or on with the next person.

And who will be that next person? Well, I’m just going to throw something out there: If mornings and 11 a.m. are such a challenging spot, then maybe MSNBC needs to try something different. Here are two suggestions: (1) Force Willie Geist to stay up for one more hour and rerun a version of “Way Too Early” at 11, because that show is tight and quite fun; (2) Try for the younger demo via Ana Marie Cox, whose guest-hosting for Rachel Maddow was very impressive. Also, she has 1,104,204 Twitter followers. Those are the kind of numbers that could prop up Ratigan, Snyderman, and everyone else across the MSNBC dial. Something to think about.

(NB: I should note here that I rarely caught his show so I cannot make a qualitative judgment here. As someone who leaves MSNBC on in the background a whole lot, that, too, may be saying something. As for “Sniffle-Tastic Swine Flu Hour,” that’s not a qualitative judgment, either; I just thought it sounded funny. Swine Flu is important!)

This post has been edited and updated from its original version.

It’s not every day that the sexual compulsions of a two-year-old are discussed on cable television. So it was a bit eye-catching this afternoon when Dr. Nancy Snyderman chatted with her guest about this and other recent findings in a Pediatrics journal report.

Snyderman interviewed Dr. Carole Jenny, one of the doctors behind the report, and Jenny relayed all sorts of details about the study.

Like, as the chyron indicates, “touching genitals is normal in kids aged 2-6.” MSNBC: The Place For…That.

Do you have a pick for Chyron of the Day? Email me at Steve@Mediaite.com with an image or time/network (and check out all the past Chyrons of the Day here)…

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Do you know how tanning beds can be dangerous? New reports suggest they could be “worse than arsenic.”

Do you know what else can be dangerous? Leaving the previous chyron up for an entire intro of a completely different story.

This is what happened when Dr. Nancy Snyderman kicked off her show yesterday. After a tease about tanning bed dangers, she moved to a health care SOT from Democratic Sen. Max Baucus. But no one changed the chyron.

Sorry, Senator. But yesterday afternoon it appeared you were “worse than arsenic.”

Thanks to Don Day for passing this along.

Do you have a pick for Chyron of the Day? Email me at Steve@Mediaite.com with an image or time/network…

Ratigan’s show has a major “meeting” focus – when introducing guests, it’s not “welcome to the program,” or “welcome to the show,” it’s “welcome to the meeting.” And who was the featured guest during today’s meeting? Former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer.

Spitzer sat in for four lengthy segments this morning, one each half hour. His total TV time reached more than 30 minutes, with topics ranging from Bernie Madoff to Sonia Sotomayor. The rapport between Ratigan and Spitzer appeared to be comfortable enough for the host to joke, “There’s a reason why he’s a former governor, but that’s a different TV show,” after another guest complimented Spitzer by calling him a “former governor.”

We hear Spitzer will appear periodically on the program, but he won’t be the Mika to Ratigan’s Joe (although, that would be pretty incredible).

There’s also a noticeable Web focus to the show – from the intro, which looks Microsoft Vista-ish, to the graphics, which resemble drop-down menus.

After an hour of up-and-comer Carlos Watson, Dr. Nancy took over. For about 90 seconds. She quickly threw to Monica Novotny a regular dayside anchor on MSNBC, who handled the breaking news of Madoff’s sentencing. Novotny’s portion, featuring a report from Peter Alexander lasted about three minutes.

Then it was back to Dr. Nancy, who conducted a lengthy, and fairly meaty, interview with Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius and FDA Commissioner Dr. Peggy Hamburg (in her first interview). Later in the show Snyderman interviewed Elizabeth Edwards and had segments about the medical portion of the Michael Jackson and Billy Mays stories.

But the problem with the whole show, and one Snyderman is likely to encounter quite often, is there was actual news that had to be covered, relating to Madoff and the Supreme Court decision overruling a Sotomayor case. It was news covered extensively during the NoonET hour by CNN and Fox News, and only touched on briefly in periodic news updates by Novotny on MSNBC.

Having a health-focused hour may not be a bad move by MSNBC, but by putting Snyderman at the helm, it eliminates even the possibility she could legitimately anchor during non-health news. Maybe it’s something MSNBC management can discuss during a future Morning Meeting.

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