“Ratings for the host who replaced Mr. Olbermann, Lawrence O’Donnell, are down about 10 percent from Mr. Olbermann’s results from the same period a year ago, and, more significantly, down about 22 percent from Mr. Olbermann’s performance in the fourth quarter of 2010.

Those figures are all in the category of viewers between the ages of 25 and 54, the group that television news organizations sell to advertisers, which makes it the all-important one.

(…)

A big concern among MSNBC executives was potential mass defections from Mr. Olbermann’s most loyal viewers. Some of those younger viewers seem to have defected –- at least for now — from MSNBC at 8 p.m. But so far that has not affected the channel’s 9 p.m. host, Rachel Maddow. Her ratings are essentially the same as they were before Mr. Olbermann left.

For his part, Mr. O’Donnell has been showing an aggressive side in recent commentaries that seem to take a page directly out of Mr. Olbermann’s playbook. The most noticeable play: take a whack at Bill O’Reilly.

That was a tack that Mr. Olbermann famously took in the early days of his MSNBC show: He started mentioning Mr. O’Reilly, the Fox News host who commands by far the biggest audience among the news networks, in his “Worst Person in the World” segment. Soon after, Mr. Olbermann saw his ratings pick up.”

Bill Carter, NYTimes

Recent comments

Blog comments powered by Disqus

Notes

  1. brooklynmutt posted this