MSNBC Expected to Hire New Chief

Long-struggling MSNBC, NBC’s third-place cable news network, may be getting a new leader.

NBC News is expected to announce as early as today that it has hired Rick Kaplan, a senior vice president at ABC News who also previously oversaw CNN, to run the news network, sources at MSNBC said. Erik Sorenson, who has been running MSNBC since 1998 and currently is president and general manager, will move to an as-yet-undefined job at NBC.

MSNBC is a joint venture of General Electric Co.’s NBC and Microsoft Corp. NBC runs the channel.

Kaplan, who most recently has been overseeing ABC’s political coverage, is known for having strong television producing skills and news sense, honed during stints running ABC’s “World News Tonight,” “Nightline” and the launch of the newsmagazine “PrimeTime Live.” He is a close friend of NBC News President Neal Shapiro, also a former ABC News employee.

After 17 years at ABC, Kaplan left in 1997 to put in place a radical overhaul of CNN. That network then was struggling from new competition from Fox News Channel and MSNBC, both of which premiered in 1996.

But Kaplan’s tenure at CNN was rocky; his attempts to bring bigger-budget network news production skills clashed with the no-frills CNN culture. After leaving in 2000, Kaplan spent some time in academia before rejoining ABC News last year to oversee Iraq war coverage.

At MSNBC, Kaplan would confront a network that has suffered from continual format changes. Most recently, it hired a number of opinionated commentators for prime time, in an attempt to emulate the strategy that has propelled Fox News Channel to first place.

But those changes have had little effect on MSNBC’s audience, and one centerpiece show for prime time, with former Minnesota Gov. Jesse Ventura as host, was downgraded to a weekend slot before being canceled.

As the presidential race heats up, the network has been relying more on its NBC News correspondents, similar to a strategy it used during the Iraq war -- an approach that would play to Kaplan’s strengths in hard news.

Both NBC and ABC, a unit of Walt Disney Co., declined to comment.