Today was apparently time yet again for Dylan Byers, Politico's media reporter, to do one of his monthly "MSNBC Headed Down Tubes; Big Changes Coming" pieces. I'm not going to bother going through the article to discuss the things in it that I'd take issue with, but it does raise this question: If liberals haven't flocked like lemmings to MSNBC, then what do they really want from their media? And could TV provide it?
MSNBC has struggled to answer this question, but I think part of the problem is that they're always going to be compared to Fox, and liberals are just not going to line up in the way conservatives are. As evidence, look at this chart from the Pew Research Center on where people of different ideologies get most of their news:
When conservatives answer this question, they say Fox. When liberals answer this question, they say a whole bunch of things. Some like the New York Times, some like NPR, some like CNN, and yes, some like MSNBC. But no outlet has the kind of dominant position Fox has within the conservative brainspace.
Is that just because Roger Ailes is a genius, and if you could find an equally brilliant network chief he or she could propel MSNBC to a similar position? I really doubt it. I think that generally speaking, liberals like things like the Times and NPR, which reflect a broadly liberal world-view but also have a commitment to objectivity and are relatively information-dense. But that obviously doesn't hold for all of them. It may be that no outlet designed to appeal only to liberals is ever going to get huge numbers of liberals to embrace it.
Let's not forget that MSNBC still makes a lot of money. Of course, TV is a competitive business, and there's no getting around the comparison to Fox. But maybe that's a battle MSNBC just can't win.
