MSNBC Pumps Up the Volume

literally.

Even after fatuously anointing itself “America’s News- Channel,” this flailing NBC-Microsoft hybrid a week ago assumed a second identity as cable’s replica of frantic talk radio. You know, knee-jerk, yet superficial.

In fact, MSNBC is America’s SchmoozeChannel. No, not snooze, for it’s hard dozing through a din, notably one as loud as this--created by an agenda that is usually not coherent discourse, but attention-grabbing combat.

The message: Don’t confuse making a racket with passion. That’s especially so in MSNBC’s evening hours (mostly late afternoon here on the West Coast) that it calls its prime time.

When not screaming, MSNBC’s prime talkers screech. When not screeching, they bellow. When not bellowing, they shout. The strategy here is to transfix viewers with a brand of self-goosing that will boost MSNBC’s wee audience so that it one day will overtake its more popular rivals, CNN and the Fox News Channel. MSNBC gained a bit against CNN this week before sliding back, but it’s too early for definitive judgments when it comes to ratings.

There’s a shorter cut for MSNBC. Why not cut the gab and give Mike Tyson a show and some guests to bite, and call it an evening.

MSNBC will always have in common with CNN and Fox an addiction to mislabeling rumor and innuendo as news. Call it gene sharing. There’s nothing wrong with MSNBC trying to separate itself from competitors by going to talk, however, with bows to such breaking stories as the stock market collapse and Samantha Runnion murder case. Two unevenly performing 24-hour news channels are surely plenty, and a talk channel makes sense in this era of specialized narrowcasting.

Buyer beware, though.

MSNBC has talk hosts galore accomplished at chomping the set, among them the one, the only (before imitators usurped his act) Phil Donahue. “Fasten your seat belts,” MSNBC ballyhooed in advance of Thursday’s fruitless headline clash on “Donahue.” It pitted Donahue--the talk-show pioneer exhumed from TV’s dank catacombs for this reconstituted go against CNN and Fox--against his lead guest, that snide, nasty Dragon Lady of the right, Ann Coulter.

In a classic talk-show symbiosis, Coulter and Donahue engaged in a mutually beneficial taffy pull. She used “Donahue” to promote her bestseller, “Slander,” which attacks the left, and he used her reputation as a liberal slasher to advertise his new show. Called “fireworks” by one MSNBC anchor, portions of the Donahue-Coulter duel were rerun Friday, as if worthy of banner headlines.

Question: What do you learn from fireworks? That they’re loud and produce light that swiftly disappears.

Naturally Donahue and Coulter fought, going white against white--his hair, her teeth. He got her to admit writing that liberals “hate” all religions except Islam, and slammed her for “trying to get Bubba (Bill Clinton).” She accused him of calling her names and “losing the entire viewing audience when I’m trying to sell a book.” The nerve.

It was bitter, it was brutal, and in the control booth there were surely high-fives and shouts of “Great TV!” all around.

The fairness advocate in me wanted Donahue to grant Coulter more time to state her case instead of continually stomping over her when she attempted to speak. The liberal in me applauded him for bullying someone known for smearing her leftish targets by deploying words against them carelessly.

In a curious way, Coulter and MSNBC have identical agendas. She draws attention to herself with a book many regard as outrageous, just as the new, blabbier MSNBC hopes to earn attention by behaving outrageously.

MSNBC has “Donahue” preceding “Hardball With Chris Matthews,” which is headed by the speed-talking former CNBC host rivaled only by Fox’s Bill O’Reilly in the art of delivering clamor. But young Dan Abrams of MSNBC’s “The Abrams Report” often registers impressive noise himself in this new talk bloc, and with Matthews and Donahue as role models, his future in shouting down guests looks promising.

The exception here is “Nachman With Jerry Nachman,” the “Donahue” lead-in whose arrogant host has the gift of irritating without ever raising his voice. Nachman’s show is apparently his ego-stroking gift to Nachman, a news veteran who is also MSNBC’s new vice president and editor in chief.

“He’s Nachman,” announces an MSNBC promo melodramatically, as if he prowls the dark streets for stories in a trench coat and snap-brim hat. Nachman is a pretty smart guy, all right, but not smart enough to know that he belongs behind the camera, not in front, a lesson he should have learned a few years ago when bombing as an interviewer on KCET’s “Life & Times.”

His roundness and baldness are not relevant here, only his tendency to cut off guests prematurely, stumble over words, belabor topics and sourly present himself as superior. That came across when he apologized “for the entire [news] industry” to the father of missing Elizabeth Smart for its shift of focus to Samantha Runnion from her. Yeah, like the media hasn’t spent enough time on the Smart abduction.

As editor in chief, moreover, Nachman can assign himself to be debriefed daily by anchor Lester Holt about the Runnion case, as if his insights were unique. Obviously, he’s not Nachman for nothing.

Donahue, on the other hand, spent an entire career shaping and tailoring himself to TV. For many years he was daytime’s only talk-show host with the smarts and debating, interviewing and devil’s-advocacy skills to go highbrow as often as low, and tackle topics worldly and complex.

When it came to ratings, though, that didn’t stop his rear appendage from getting ultimately kicked by Oprah and others heading lesser talk shows, and his attempts to recast himself in their images flopped badly.

His first week on MSNBC produced some good interviews, including a pair with Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wis.) and Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) on the U.S. Patriot Act that were admirably civil as well as informative. Another came with NBC’s Bob Costas about alleged illegal steroid use in professional baseball.

But the Feingold/Kyl chats followed a debate on the same act by others that was deafeningly shrill and vitriolic to the point of being incomprehensible, with Donahue either unable or unwilling to rein it in. “I regret we are unable to have a civil wrap-up of this,” he apologized later.

And the Costas interview followed Donahue’s stereophonic shout-out with Pat Buchanan, whom MSNBC advertised here for promotional purposes as a conservative “firebrand,” even though it bills him reverently as “one of America’s leading conservative voices” for “Buchanan and Press,” its new talk show that he co-hosts with liberal Bill Press.

Donahue was shocked, just shocked, by his blowup with Buchanan. “I didn’t think we’d be screaming at each other here,” he said afterward. “Maybe we ought to go back to the drawing board.”

Puh-leeeeeeze, Phil, baby, sweetheart. Screaming is the drawing board.

Howard Rosenberg’s column appears Mondays and Fridays. He can be contacted at howard.rosenberg@latimes.com.