MSNBC Defends Move to More Talk

It was the day of the ceremony officially ending recovery efforts at New York’s World Trade Center site, and Jerry Nachman, MSNBC’s newest commentator as well as its new editor-in-chief, was on the scene.

As on the other cable news channels, CNN and Fox News, MSNBC had moving coverage of the solemn event, and numerous interviews with officials. Then there were Nachman’s guests, such as celebrity saloon-keeper Elaine Kaufman and New York Post gossip columnist Cindy Adams.

The latter told her sad story of Sept. 11, when she had to cancel a party, putting to naught advance preparations including a caterer, flowers and “a gardener doing the terrace.”

Some NBC News executives watching from offices uptown cringed.

As opinion-driven Fox has surged into first place in the ratings race among cable news channels, and more straight-laced CNN has hired well-known on-air talent such as Connie Chung, MSNBC executives have been pleading for money from their corporate bosses, NBC and Microsoft, to make the station more than an embarrassing, money-losing also-ran.

This spring, the money finally came through. But the aggressive changes that have been unveiled in the last several weeks, transforming the network from straight news to high-energy opinion that some think doesn’t befit the NBC News reputation, have left many in the industry scratching their heads.

MSNBC’s most serious newscast, “The News With Brian Williams,” anchored by the man who has been named Tom Brokaw’s eventual “NBC Nightly News” successor, will leave the channel, where it has been a drag on ratings. It’s headed to NBC-owned CNBC.

Four hours of daytime news will be replaced by two two-hour blocks of opinion, one from New York radio hosts Ron Kuby, a liberal, and Curtis Sliwa, a conservative; the other from former California Democratic party leader Bill Press, recently let go from CNN’s combative “Crossfire,” and former Republican presidential candidate Pat Buchanan, also formerly of “Crossfire.” Both shows will include news updates.

In the evening, liberal Phil Donahue is returning to television and Chris Matthews’ “Hardball,” which has diverse opinions presented in a loud format, is getting a prime slot, two moves that have gotten good reviews. Nachman, former editor of the New York Post, will have an hour that will look at stories behind the day’s news.

Former presidential candidate Alan Keyes, who got a show just last January, declined to move to MSNBC’s daytime lineup and will be off after July 15, the day most changes take effect.

Until earlier in the year, MSNBC hadn’t decided “whether they wanted to be like CNN or like Fox,” said Andrew Tyndall, a news programming analyst. “They were falling between two stools.” Now, he said, NBC “has made CNBC the high-grade channel and they’ve made MSNBC the talk-radio channel.”

The format has many inside NBC and out wondering what has happened to the vaunted synergy that was supposed to exist with NBC News, allowing it to get stories on the air when the main NBC network was running entertainment.

But NBC News President Neal Shapiro said he’s “very comfortable” with the changes. “I understand why some people are upset,” he said, but added that they haven’t seen how the moves will be executed. “We are going to be the most aggressive, hard-charging news operation on cable,” he said, and some days the commentators won’t get on the air because there is so much news.

“But as we all know,” Shapiro added, “in the news cycle there are hours when nothing’s happening. Rather than stretching reporters to say the same things over and over and over again--another criticism of cable news--why not inject a little more analysis and opinion? But until people actually see it, they fear it’s going to be nothing but a screaming fest.”

“We’re a newspaper in the morning and a weekly newsmagazine in the evening,” Erik Sorenson, MSNBC’s president, said of the new format. “We’re such a news-rich culture and society right now; what consumers are demanding is analysis. They want to know, ‘What does it mean?’ ”

He said the criticism that his new analysts are just loudmouths is “wrongheaded. These are all exceptionally smart, well-informed people capable of exploring the depth behind the headlines. These are the best and the brightest.”

As for sniping that the network was veering too far off the news, as evidenced by Nachman’s interviews at ground zero, Sorenson called them “tremendous guests, quintessential New Yorkers.”

Tyndall called the new format derivative of Fox, but said MSNBC’s inclusion of “genuine left-wingers” Kuby and Donahue--a rarity in the TV landscape--could be a smart move in trying to lure an audience.

Perhaps as important as the format changes is a new ad campaign. After spending less than an estimated $1 million on advertising and promotion in the past two years, the channel will soon embark on a campaign that insiders peg at about $5 million, plus more than that in promotions for “Donahue” on NBC’s owned stations and the NBC network.

Moreover, at a board meeting last week, Sorenson said, there were assurances that MSNBC will get support in promoting the channel from Microsoft’s powerful Internet portal MSN.com, which it has never had before. CNN has benefited from a similar relationship with its sister operation AOL.

That commitment to ramp up synergy from the two partners comes even as the MSNBC name--which promotes the companion Web site--is often disappearing from the MSNBC screen. Instead, the little identifying “bug” in the lower right corner says “America’s News Channel,” which is also the network’s latest branding strategy.

Insiders have said for months that the change signaled a possible desire to unwind the complicated Microsoft-NBC partnership, while NBC executives have insisted that it was only to lessen viewer confusion among all the various NBC-tagged channels on the air.

Sorenson denied any move to break up the joint venture. “It’s winding tighter. MSNBC.com and the Microsoft partnership are still incredibly important to us.... [The name] MSNBC is not going anywhere; it’s critically important to the interactive piece.”

Still, there are fears and whispers among MSNBC employees that if these changes don’t work, NBC will give up on all-news and try to convert the channel into a home for reruns of NBC entertainment shows. Sorenson said he is unaware of any such thinking at the company and that it will never come to that.

“I think the pressure’s on: We’ve gotta do better, we will do better, we oughta do better. I think we didn’t have the best resources to deal with the post-Sept. 11 world and now we do,” he said.

The changes will mean “gradual and visible success,” he added, predicting that MSNBC, which in May averaged 232,000 viewers per 24-hour period, will overtake second-place CNN, which averaged twice as many viewers. (Fox was on top with an average of 594,000 viewers per 24-hour period).

“CNN is takeable; they are extremely vulnerable despite their longevity and brand,” Sorenson said. “The rest of the folks at NBC feel that way too and we’re going to do it.”