Ed Schultz

MSNBC Puts Ed Schultz Back On Weekday Schedule

Posted by on August 19, 2013 at 2:15 pm. 3 Comments :

Ed SchultzIn a surprisingly fast turnaround, MSNBC has shaken up their weekday programming to make room for Ed Schultz who was bumped to weekends just six months ago. MSNBC president Phil Griffin wrote this in a memo to his staff:

“This move will help us enhance the flow of our weeknight programming and concentrate Chris’ audience to one key time period. And this allows us to bring Ed’s powerful voice back to the Monday-Friday schedule. Ed connects with our viewers and I’m happy to have him back five nights a week.”

It’s true that Schultz has a unique labor-centric perspective that exists nowhere else on cable news. Consequently, he has a loyal fan base who will appreciate this expanded access to the issues he highlights. It would nice if he retools the program to dig deeper into the substance of current events and provide some of the original reporting that Hayes, Maddow, and O’Donnell do. And he really needs to ditch that useless cell phone survey.

However, the bigger news emanating from this shift is that Schultz will be occupying the 5:00pm time slot that is currently held by the first airing of Hardball with Chris Matthews. It is about time that the duplication of Hardball was terminated. Matthews will now appear only at 7:00pm, and that may be too much.

These moves, and others by competing networks, are setting up some interesting match-ups. Schultz will be going up against Fox’s The Five. Matthews, at 7:00, is already pitted against Shepard Smith’s second hour of the day, Fox Report. However, speculation that Megyn Kelly’s leap to primetime will replace Sean Hannity at 9:00 (where she will be opposite Rachel Maddow), also has Hannity moving to 7:00, where he would spar with Matthews.

Now, if MSNBC would hand over Al Sharpton’s show to Joy Reid and hire John Fugelsang to fill the gap Schultz is leaving on the weekend, we might have the makings of a real network. I would also suggest that Chris Hayes bring on a co-host. Hayes is whip-smart and knows how to present complex issues, but he is lacking in the personality department. His program would benefit from a little banter with someone like Stephanie Miller. Or for a truly inspired experiment, pick up the Daily Show’s John Oliver, who has some free time on his hands now that Jon Stewart is returning from hiatus.

MSNBC Moving Ed Schultz To The Weekend – Chris Hayes Gets His Spot In Primetime

Posted by on March 14, 2013 at 8:39 am. 6 Comments :

On last night’s broadcast of the The Ed Show, Ed Schultz announced that he would be taking his program to a new weekend slot beginning in April. Thursday will be his last broadcast in primetime. His statement came at the end of the program and said in part…

Schultz: “I raised my hand for this assignment for a number of personal and professional reasons. My fight on ‘The Ed Show’ has been for the workers and the middle class. This new time slot will give me the opportunity to produce and focus on stories that I care about and are important to American families and American workers.”

His statement implies that the move was his choice. However, there are some conflicting accounts of this and a report in the New York Times last November speculated that Schultz’s time slot might be offered to MSNBC contributor and frequent fill-in host, Ezra Klein.

As it turns out, it will be Chris Hayes taking over Schultz’s time period. Hayes is editor-at-large for the highly respected Nation magazine and is currently a host of a weekend morning program on MSNBC, “UP with Chris Hayes.” His selection affirms the appeal he has generated on his show and as a guest host for Rachel Maddow and others.

While the change for Schultz appears to be a demotion from primetime to the weekend ghetto, the details of the move may suggest some benefits. His new show will air on both Saturday and Sunday from 5:00 to 7:00pm. This means that his new show will be twice as long as the old one. You can do a lot more in a two hour format if you’re creative with segments, field production, and guests. And he will end up having nearly as much weekly time as he had before the move.

Cable News RatingsSchultz’s ratings were growing at a steady pace, although he was no match for Fox’s number one program, The O’Reilly Factor. At the end of last year he posted a 54% gain compared to O’Reilly’s 22% decline. Then again in January he scored a plus 23% to O’Reilly’s minus 25%, as Fox sunk to a twelve year low.

Last year I proposed some programming changes for MSNBC that would assist them in taking advantage of their post-election ratings surge. One of those was to give Schultz the Hardball repeat at 7:00pm and find another host to put up against O’Reilly and anchor the primetime block. Hayes was a possibility at the time, but not my choice. He is a smart and engaging host, but not the sort of personality that could compete with O’Reilly. If MSNBC is interested in taking the leap from contender to champ they need to take some risks.

One possibility would have been to develop a non-conventional format with a team of hosts. My suggestion was John Fugelsang and Joy Reid. They could produce a show that incorporated serious policy discussion along with a sense of humor and a nod to popular culture. That might have been an effective way to counter-program Fox and set up the evening’s later programs with something lighter and more broadly appealing. Perhaps MSNBC will consider such a program to replace Hayes on weekend mornings where they may be more comfortable experimenting.

As with everything in the television business, time will tell. MSNBC has been enjoying substantial gains lately, while Fox News has been suffering severe losses. Whether these trends will continue long enough for the networks to swap places in the standings remains to be seen. And CNN isn’t standing still either with their new boss, Jeff Zucker, whose influence is already being felt in significant ways. The end result is that 2013 is bound to be a year wherein the cable news business suffers the ancient Chinese curse of “living in interesting times.”