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Viewers will stand behind a news outlet that stands for something
Phil Rosenthal
May 2, 2010
MSNBC boss Phil Griffin looks at what Roger Ailes created at Fox News Channel with no small amount of awe.
"He's changed media. Everybody does news differently because Roger's changed the world," Griffin said over coffee on a visit to Chicago the other day. He was taking a break from making a case for his own cable network to ad buyers here to make the case for changes in the media landscape to a reporter. "Roger early on figured it out and was brilliant."
With so much news coming from so many places, so often in much the same way, a leader distinguishes itself by anticipating what its audience wants and needs beyond the immediate headlines. In doing so, the most successful — and in cable, that's Ailes' FNC — will establish its own identity.
The critical lesson Griffin took from Ailes was that a news outlet that stands for something is one that consumers can stand behind and rally around.
That kind of allegiance is especially important in cable because it can be leveraged to help dictate the kind of fees networks can charge carriers per household they service, regardless of how many people actually watch. Who would dare drop a channel with such a passionate following?
"To be successful in this new age, you've got to create a community," Griffin said. "You've got to have a place where people come. They're like-minded. They share ideas. They want news, but they also get their headlines all day long on the Web, on their BlackBerrys, on their iPhones, on their iPads. It's a different universe, and nobody uses one outlet as their only source."
Fox News Channel offers news through the prisms of Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity and Bill O'Reilly. MSNBC does it with Keith Olbermann, Rachel Maddow and Chris Matthews. Whatever one may think of those people and their respective takes on the news, the important thing in this formula is that one does think of those people because of their takes on the news.
"We're talking about the actions and passions of today, which tend to be political," said Griffin, who has been with MSNBC since its 1996 launch and has had executive oversight of it for four years, the last two as its president.
This approach, of course, is not universally embraced, although Fox News has parlayed it to 100 straight months at No. 1 among cable news outlets, while MSNBC continues to lead CNN in prime time.
"Our mission, our mandate, is to deliver the best journalism in the world: firsthand reporting, incisive analysis, no bias, no agenda," Jon Klein, president of CNN/U.S., told advertisers and reporters at a New York presentation last month, according to the Los Angeles Times. "That puts us in the world of cable news in a category of one. Our traditional competitors have abandoned the field."
Fox News in April had nearly half of the prime-time cable news audience; MSNBC, one-fifth; while CNN only had 14 percent and CNN's more opinionated sister channel HLN had 13 percent. Among viewers between age 25 and 54, who advertisers prize, Fox claimed 43 percent of the cable news audience in prime time, followed by MSNBC (21 percent), HLN (15 percent) and CNN (13 percent).
Jim Walton, president of CNN Worldwide, told the advertisers, "We're the only credible, nonpartisan voice left, and that matters."
Griffin, who began his career at CNN in 1980 and spent three years there as a producer, said that CNN built a great brand in the 1980s and '90s, but "the media universe has exploded, and it's a different world. I don't go along with this idea that CNN has, that somehow they are doing the Lord's work and we are simply regurgitating what people think."
CNN was stung by bad press a month ago for its year-to-year viewer drop in the first quarter, although MSNBC suffered its own similar decline compared with the run-up to President Barack Obama's inauguration and first couple months in office.
In its announcement last week of its April audience figures spotlighting the fact it outdraws MSNBC during the workday, CNN noted that what it called "the partisan nets — FNC and MSNBC — also experienced declines compared to a year ago," but conceded that CNN itself "is always impacted more by the ebb and flow of the news cycle."
Asked whether he felt Fox News was partisan, Ailes recently told the Chicago Tribune the channel "has a bias toward the American people. What do the American people need to know to make an informed decision?"
Understanding why numbers for Fox News and MSNBC would be less affected by whether there's a big breaking story, especially in prime time, could be as simple as understanding the kind of viewer who would consider watching those channels on a regular basis.
"These are not casual observers of news, because those are the tens of millions of people who are watching everything else," Griffin said. "These are hard-core news junkies who want the latest information and they want the detail. It's a different beast. That why to not stand for something is a recipe for failure, because they want something more."
Griffin acknowledges that the niche MSNBC has carved out for itself in the continental divide of politics and cable commentary tilts toward the blue-state side.
"Could we put on a hard-right show? No. It wouldn't fit," he said. "I want flow."
From flow and staying current, he hopes that perhaps the tide will continue to change amid the shifting media sands.
Fox News Channel is "a big force. You have to be aware of what they're saying," Griffin said. "That's our goal. … I don't think we have quite the passionate support that Fox does. Some shows do, but as a network we don't. Our prime time is getting there. But that's what we want to get."
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