MSNBC drops Donahue

MSNBC announced Tuesday it has canceled TV veteran Phil Donahue’s 7-month-old weeknight show, saying the program, which never caught on with viewers, had aired its last original installment Monday.

The program will be in reruns through the end of the week, then replaced temporarily by an expanded “Countdown: Iraq.” Ex-Minnesota Gov. Jesse Ventura will join MSNBC’s lineup in the spring.

While MSNBC’s prime-time audience is larger than a year ago, Donahue’s show has drawn only an average 439,000 viewers in February, compared with an average of 970,000 for Connie Chung’s competing CNN show, which launched at the same time. And both were beaten handily by Fox News Channel’s “The O’Reilly Factor,” cable news’ top-rated show with an average 2.7 million viewers.

-- Elizabeth Jensen