Why I Find Big Ed's Demotion To Weekends Troubling

[MADem]

66. Yes--but he was saying that five months ago--before there was any discussion of going to

"real people" on the weekends. The paradigm has since shifted.

It's fresh territory. Once upon a time, there was no MSNBC--now it's "must see TV" for a huge demographic. That didn't happen in a day--and the network was constrained during all those Bush years, too, by people at the top of the GE food chain (Jack The Asshole Welch, specifically).

Ed isn't "Anderson Cooper" .... but Wolf Blitzer does work on Saturdays at CNN, doing a Situation Room, and Candy Crowley works on Sundays. To say nothing of Piers Morgan and Fareed Zakaria--none of whom are "second stringers." Don Lemon and Frederica Whitfield work the weekends, too. These are all first tier 'known quantities' and anchors who get paid an awful lot...and they attract an audience.

Young people just don't sit around watching TV on the weekend. Older people do, though. You don't put out a tray of cookies if no one's there to eat them--trying to appeal to the youth demographic on the weekends is a fool's errand. They're out at the movies, having fun with friends, not glued to the tube. Further, half the time, if they want to watch TV, they'll pick up their laptop or some other device and watch that way. But there is room and opportunity to grab the older audience share at that time, the older farts who sit there holding the remote, and I think MSNBC is being smart in FINALLY going after it, particularly as people are falling away from Faux in droves.

This is an opportunity to grab and keep new viewers (plenty of those people turning off Faux find many aspects of Ed's message appealing--particularly the "hard working everyman" thing, and the "Fight the power" vibe), and MSNBC is taking it.

They're using Ed, with his robust partisanship and exhortative manner, as the tip of the spear. If he does "out and about" pieces where he's away from the anchor desk and on location interacting with regular people on occasion, it is very likely he could have a real winner on his hands. It's worth a shot, certainly.

Ed is worth many millions--he won't starve, but more importantly, he's an asset. I think he's finally being used in a way where more people will see him.