As the Democratic Party loses popularity with voters, the party’s "house network" MSNBC is seeing its ratings plummet among the all-important 25-to-54 age group, according to
USA Today media critic Michael Wolff.
In the October ratings battle, MSNBC trailed Fox News and CNN in total day viewership and garnered its lowest prime-time total audience since 2005, according to
Mediabistro. In terms of total-day viewership among 25- to 54-year-olds, the network ranked behind Fox, CNN, and HLN.
MSNBC’s star
Rachel Maddow recently experienced her lowest quarterly ratings since her show began.
The network has tried to emulate Fox News’ success in building an audience of ideologically driven viewers, and in the mid-to-late 2000s managed to boost its very low ratings by identifying with the growing unpopularity of the Bush administration.
With Barack Obama’s election as president in 2008, MSNBC thought it had found its ticket toward ratings success in his efforts to transform the United States.
But, as the recent election results show, the public appears to have soured on the president, while MSNBC is left with "a lineup of ever-righteous and often sulky defenders of President Obama, who seem, not just to conservatives but to many liberals, too, bizarrely tone deaf and lost in time," Wolff writes.
Hillary Clinton’s position as a heavy favorite to win the Democratic presidential nomination in 2016 could prove to be another obstacle to MSNBC’s efforts to improve its ratings.
"Who, but a dedicated masochist, will diligently watch that show?" asks Wolff.
Clinton largely represents a "grand establishment return," which is "the opposite of the sense of insurgency that makes for political storytelling."
MSNBC President Phil Griffin "has painted himself into a corner, losing the base, and yet without the philosophical wherewithal to appeal to a larger group," Wolff adds.
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