Jeff Bercovici, of Conde Nast Portfolio, is always interesting. And so his list of "champs and chumps" has plenty to provoke just about everybody.
Here's one choice passage:
CHAMP: MSNBC
"The liberal Fox News": Such a simple formulation, yet it took the 2008 election for MSNBC to turn it into a consistent, winning strategy. It's only in the past two months that the network has gone all-in, dumpin 9 p.m. host Dan Abrams for Keith Olbermann protégé Rachel Maddow, whose instant draw helped the network top CNN in the 25-to-54 age group for the first time ever in October.
CHUMP: MSNBC
On the other hand, pro wrestling gets good ratings, too. MSNBC's new positioning has made it -- and, more alarmingly, NBC News as a whole -- a bogeyman for those who think the media is already liberal enough. Signs that the lunatics were running the asylum abounded at the Democratic National Convention, where Olbermann, Chris Matthews and Joe Scarborough couldn't keep their mutual contempt off-camera. That led to Matthews and Olbermann getting taken off anchor duty, which only raised the question: What the hell were Olbermann and Matthews doing anchoring straight news coverage?
But all the nets take their licks from Bercovici.
