If I appear even snarkier and surlier of late than usual, and I freely admit my usual level is well above sea level, that may be because at a time of a year when many of you are looking forward to bonuses, tax refunds and possibly even raises I learned earlier this week that my company is immediately effecting a series of initiatives that are cutting back my hours and ultimately may have our entire relationship with our partner at risk within the first few weeks of the New Year. Without boring you with details that I can’t discuss publicly anyhoo, the gist of it is that our partner was sold into an aggressive performance estimate based upon how it has delivered results in another geographic area, one that has little resemblance demographically or SES-wise than the one that track record was derived from. For a variety of reasons ranging from pre-existing language and cultural affinities, recent major purchases and even qualifying as potential customers, we have not come close to delivering the results they have been paying a substantial monthly fee to my employer to deliver.
If that sounds like the kind of agreement that advertisers and networks enter into when they sell their own version of estimates, you’d be 100 percent correct. In that world, you don’t deliver, you don’t renew. Period, dot, the end. And if you’re not delivering the numbers you promised, whether it’s to a sponsor or a board of directors, if you want to keep working, you’re gonna likely be asked to take a haircut. Regardless of whether or not you actually have hair to spare. That’s business, brother.
I’ve used similar rhetoric when I’ve had to explain to creatives why regardless of what they may passionately believe is true, if the numbers say otherwise, you have two choices. Stick to your bubble mentality viewpoint and live like a starving artist–in a cold water flat, struggling to even pay rent. Or find a way to deliver something that a larger plurality of people want and live the way you’d like to.
Which brings us to the dilemna of perhaps who is the face of the five stages of grief that continue to lament the results of what virtually everyone agrees was a free and fair and unrigged election last month, one Joy Reid of MSNBC. Reid is a self-appointed champion of an audience sector driven by passionate females of color who were evangelically driven to the kind of giddiness only matched by children at Christmas when Kamala Harris was belatedly handed the challenge of saving democracy this summer. She has made no attempt to hide that her support and views that began when the network launched her show on the heels of her nomination as the first female-of-color vice presidential candidate are based on the simple fact that she desperately wants to see people who look like her in power, often citing rationale ranging from reparation theory to simply “my way or the highway”–essentially the same sort of personalized rhetoric that her competitors at other networks and platforms employ.
Sure, there’s biased outets that are now piling on with chortling glee as to how the fall panned out for folks like Reid and Harris. And they continue to point out how defiant her demeanor and tone continue to be, even escalating since November 8th. FOX NEWS’s Jeffrey Clark took note of how she’s now in search of Harris 2.0 just yesterday:
MSNBC host Joy Reid criticized the Democratic Party on Tuesday for refusing to allow the younger and rising stars like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., a chance to take leadership roles away from the oldest and longest-serving members.
“[The] gerontocracy seems like it’s intractable,” Reid said. “I recall when Barack Obama was elected, he kind of pushed aside the DNC and created his own organization because I think there is a frustration with the sort of creaky way the DNC operates.” Reid said that the Democratic Party is dominated by “donors and consultants and people who are locked in the old ways of doing things. They want to advertise on TV. Look, I am for TV, I love TV, I work on TV, but they don’t want to do the sort of new world media. But then AOC is so good at it.”
But it’s not just her trolls that are using Reid’s own words against her–if for no other reason than the words she continues to use are downright incideniary. REAL CLEAR POLITICS’ Ian Schwartz dropped this verbatim account of her Thanksgiving love note to what remains of her viewership:
Make your own dinner, make your own sandwiches, wipe your own tears, troll amongst yourselves with Elon and leave us alone. You got your heart’s desire, the president you dreamed of and worship instead of Jesus. And this time you didn’t even have to storm the Capitol, smash the windows or try to kill police officers or issue death threats to poll workers. See, you did it just by voting this time. Congrats. You got your way.
And he even got away with breaking the law. Yay. But if you expect the 73 million who voted for the prosecutor, not the felon, and particularly the 92 percent of Black women who voted for Kamala to give you a cookie for your vote, a trophy, a hug, a high five, you might be asking too much.
So how’s that going over? Again, let’s let the raw numbers speak for themselves. Have at it, ONLY EARTHLINGS’ Lyn Sable:
Joy Reid’s primetime show has experienced a substantial audience reduction since the election…(t)he program has witnessed a dramatic 47% decrease in total viewership, dropping from 1.4 million to 759,000 viewers. This significant decline highlights the challenges faced by cable news programs in maintaining audience engagement. The show’s performance reflects broader trends in media consumption and viewer behavior. The key demographic metrics reveal an even more pronounced viewership challenge for Reid’s program. Among viewers aged 25-54, the show has lost 52% of its audience, now averaging only 76,000 key demo viewers. This demographic shift represents a critical concern for the network’s advertising strategies. The substantial drop suggests deeper underlying changes in media consumption patterns.
Contrast those empirical figures and trajectories to those of her network’s “ratings viagra” Rachel Maddow, also per Sable:
Despite working only on Mondays, she has seen a 43% drop in total viewers, from 2.4 million to 1.4 million. Her key demographic performance shows an even more significant reduction of 56%, though she remains the only primetime host maintaining six-digit key demo viewership.
Political rhetoric aside, Reid is hemmoraging audience at pretty much the same dramatic rate as the network is as a whole, while having a pulpit of largely older viewers–far close to the “gerontracy” she apparently loathes, that is 46 per cent smaller than Maddow’s. At best, she qualifies as ratings cialis, and a low dose at that.
So it is all that surprising that MIXDEX reported this yesterday:
In a series of tweets, Jon Nicosia, head of the yet to launch News Cycle Media, reports a Comcast source saying that MSNBC’s “The ReidOut,” hosted by left leaning Joy Reid, will be canceled by mid-spring — a claim MSNBC denies.
“It’s bogus,” said an MSNBC spokesperson when contacted by MixDex about Nicosia’s tweets.
“As was the case with Chris Cuomo at CNN, Reid has allies at Comcast, however, she is now viewed as ‘unmanageable’ by many. Also, similar to Cuomo, it appears those allies have found out she has been ‘less than truthful about past incidents’,” Nicosia tweeted.
He also claims that his source says that Comcast has made its decision already, but internal work is being done on how to handle the messaging of the cancellation, which will be blamed on ratings.
The “ReidOut” was initially a ratings hit — with its premiere episode at 7 p.m. eastern in July 2020 besting Fox. However, the ratings have indeed slipped since then.
You can argue that someone like Nicosia is gaslighting, except this news came on the heels of a much lengthier and inclusive analysis from THE ANKLER’s esteemed Lachlan Cartwright which dropped earlier this week. Of note was this:
Opinion hosts Joy Reid and Stephanie Ruhle, sources tell me, have been presented with similar haircuts from their current deals but are still in talks about their future at the network.
And then Yasmeen Hamadeh of THE DAILY BEAST–perhaps as blue-pilled a resource as one can find online these days– amplified that with her own context that dropped last night:
MSNBC is reportedly demanding that top anchors like Joy Reid and Stephanie Ruhle take a pay cut to stay in their current high-profile positions—part of a trend across broadcast media to pare back the sky-high salaries of top network talent.
This is not about gerontocracy or reparations. It isn’t about seeing someone in power who looks like me. Good G-d, do I look like THIS?
Ms. Reid, your network promised numbers and you didn’t deliver them. Y’all want to keep your job at all, you’ll somehow have to manage with less. Trust me, the proportion of what you’ll be giving up is less than the proportion of your viewers who have already given up on you. And if that’s not good enough for you, go in peace somewhere else where appealing to a sliver of audience that is empirically simply not large is more valued.
By your math and actual population estimates for Black women your pulpit calculate to 4.7 million voters. That’s about three percent of the total turn-out. And again, it’s clear that a growing percentage of them aren’t continuing to watch you.
A business model where you’re chasing a target is three per cent of your total potential is simply bad business. It’s pretty much why I’m getting a pay cut at a lousy time of year. And it’s why you’re being at least given the chance to do the same thing. I’m told we should be both be grateful.
If it will help, I won’t ask you to give me a cookie or even sit down to dinner with me. In fact, I’ll even give you the same Christmas gift I’m getting.
Happy holidays, Ms. Reid.
Until next time...