An extremely interesting, and revealing, piece by Felix Gillette in The New York Observer today.
It seems that MSNBC wasn't interested, at first, in running the Anderson Cooper telethon--news networks are not, as a general rule, in the advocacy business, even for good causes. MSNBC is presumably in the news business, and there's plenty of news, nationwide and worldwide, other than Haiti. But then, according to Gillette's reporting, a "vocal group" within the cabler, led by Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow, demanded that MSNBC run the telethon. And so MSNBC did, although the titular head of MS, Phil Griffin, had to go crawling to CNN to get the rights to the telethon.
That's known, in the industry argot, as "backing down to talent," and it's not the way networks operate--at least not for long. Why? Because talent is supposed to focus on the air, while the execs figure out everything else. If talent runs the network, as well as get the airtime, then someone isn't doing his or her job properly.
In addition, it's noteworthy that this news leaked out so quickly. Leaked from whom? The Cable Gamer wouldn't be surprised to learn that Olbermann leaked this tidbit to Gillette, just to prove that he runs MSNBC--which, of course, has not been in doubt for some time now, ever since Olbermann publicly took credit for the hiring of Maddow back in '08.
So the illustration above, inspired by the Tony Danza sitcom from the 80s, "Who's the Boss?" speaks to the true power relationship at MSNBC. This is Olbermann's network. He is the biggest star they have at MS, and he has terrorized Griffin into submission--that's poor Phil, pictured at lower left. The guy at top right is Jeff Zucker, who, of course, is still reeling from the Jay Leno v. Conan O'Brien, in which Zucker's reputation was the big loser. So he is no position to argue with Olby. And GE chief Jeff Immelt is nowhere to be seen; has long ago checked out from MSNBC business since he arranged the sale of NBC-U to Comcast.
So the real question, of course, is what Comcast thinks about all this. But the folks in Philadelphia are keeping quiet, which is no doubt smart, at least until they get their hands on NBC-U. Then, we can expect change; Comcast didn't get so big and strong by mismanaging its assets.
And the fellow in between Griffin and Zucker is the great character actor Bob Balaban, also quoted in Gillette's article, who played a former NBC exec in the 1996 HBO movie "The Late Shift," about the period when "The Tonight Show" shifted from the late Johnny Carson to Leno. Which reminds us: It's only a matter of time before books and shows come out about the latest fiasco at NBC.
Here, for the record, is Gillette's description of the byplay:
But on the night of Jan. 22, American TV viewers saw the peripatetic anchor pop up in a previously unimaginable territory—namely, MSNBC.
To wit: On Friday night, MSNBC joined twenty or so other broadcast and cable networks in airing the Hope for Haiti Now telethon, despite the fact that the benefit largely revolved around the star power of an anchor from its rival network.
As it turns out, the decision to air the telethon involved a last-minute, behind-the-scenes push by power brokers inside MSNBC.
On the morning of the telethon, MSNBC executives woke up planning to stick with the network’s usual programming. As the day progressed, according to multiple sources, a vocal group inside the network began lobbying MSNBC president Phil Griffin to turn over the MSNBC airtime to the worthwhile cause.
One of the Newtonian laws of television journalism is that anchors never willingly preempt their own airtime. But according to sources, it was Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow who led the charge, despite the fact that the event with Mr. Cooper and company would push them out of prime time.
Mr. Griffin soon agreed to put on the telethon. However, there was one problem. MSNBC didn’t have the rights to air it. In the subsequent scramble to secure the rights from MTV Networks, which was coordinating the production of the event, Mr. Griffin picked up the phone to enlist the help of a longtime acquaintance with some sway in the telethon—Anderson Cooper’s boss, Jim Walton, with whom Mr. Griffin had worked in the early, primordial days of CNN.
