Spin Control…

Don’t take this at face value. Not by a long shot (backstory here.) If High was doing such a fantastic job…if Dayside was doing so phenomenally under High, then MSNBC wouldn’t be in the middle of what amounts to a near overhaul of Dayside which culminates with the June 29th launch of Ratigan and Snyderman’s shows. The writing was on the wall for High when they hired Miley to do what High was already doing. They worked out the announcement to make it look like High was still in overall control of Dayside by having Miley report to High. But it appears the intention always was to have Miley report to Griffin, which made High redundant. High still has more than a year on her contract and a VP title so she gets put on Ratigan and Snyderman’s show.

“Develop other MSNBC daytime programming” sounds like CYA to me in order to make it look like less of a demotion. What hours in the day does MSNBC have available to launch a new show? 9-11 is brand new. 12-1 is brand new. 3-5 is brand new. 2pm is sort of brand new (still waiting for Carlos Watson to start anchoring 5 days a week). That leaves 1pm which is Mitchell’s hour and, if you want to consider it available, 5pm with the first Hardball show. 11 am seems not in play because there are stories that David Gregory will get at least one hour a week in that slot, and probably Harwood/NYT Edition getting another (and maybe It’s the Economy though that seems less certain to me). So where does that really leave High room to develop anything? I suppose they could throw Mitchell under the bus as her show is the least opinionated, least prone to fireworks, show MSNBC has these days, which seems to run against the apparent direction Phil Griffin is pushing MSNBC Dayside towards (to my eternal consternation). But doing so wouldn’t look very good.