In Depth: Todd/Guthrie/Ratigan/Snyderman: Where’s this going?

Let’s take a closer look at some of the finer points in the just announced changes to MSNBC dayside. Some of these things were spelled out but nobody picked up on them and some were left unanswered. To wit:

1) “The Daily Rundown” with Chuck Todd and Savannah Guthrie – Lost in the announcement of this program are two things. According to information Howard Kurtz’s reporting and the MSNBC release on the announcement, there are a couple of things that immediately leap out.

First, though the show has not yet debuted so we don’t know exactly how the format of the show will work, it appears on its face like The Daily Rundown will be a kissing cousin to Andrea Mitchell’s 1pm program. This raises the question “What differentiates Todd and Guthrie’s show from Mitchell’s?” aside from the obvious difference of the talent anchoring their respective shows. What’s makes The Daily Rundown unique? If the show is going to be about politics, with a likely emphasis on the 2010 campaign season, how does MSNBC make the two shows different enough to make them not appear to be carbon copies of each other?

If there is a lot of overlap, one might then wonder whether Mitchell’s show might be in jeopardy down the road. Her program is part of the “old dayside” which has been under-performing in the ratings.

Second, and this is a finer point which nobody has so far picked up on, concerns this little tidbit from Howard Kurtz:

Both insist the extra work won’t diminish their reporting, and the plan is for one of them to anchor from the road when President Obama is traveling.

Remotes are incredibly expensive to pull off for an hour. Insiders have told ICN that, as far as recent history in an “NBCU 2.0 world” is concerned, NBC News at the very highest levels has maintained a very hard line on extended live remotes for MSNBC because of the cost involved. I’m not going to get into specifics or name names but I’ve heard about several planned live remotes with MSNBC dayside talent in years past that were rejected because of the cost concern. The question will arise as to how this planned “on the road” broadcasting can be sustained if the ratings don’t go up. The answer may be that the cost is amortized because whoever is on the road will likely be doing live reports for Today.

2) Moving Ratigan to 4pm – This will be seen by many as a sign of weakness for Ratigan’s show since it’s moving from a lowly rated two hours from 9-11 to a one hour slot at 4pm. But, I think this is the right move. MSNBC tried to move away from headline style news in the mid-morning with Ratigan but I thought it was a mistake because TV viewers don’t want analysis or talking heads during the morning/early afternoon. They want news. CNN knows it. HLN knows it. FNC knows it. That’s why you don’t see any of those networks putting on talking head style shows during those time periods. Ratigan’s new slot is better suited for the format of his show. And this leads me to…

3) Dr. Nancy’s days are numbered – I called it before the show even launched when I tweeted about it from Palau when the show was announced and it’s still true today. An all health show will fail as a mid-day M-Fr show. None of the other networks have attempted a show like that for a reason. It flies in the face of the purpose of network dayside news. And the ratings Snyderman’s show has gotten have beared this point out. It’s only a matter of time before MSNBC pulls the plug on Snyderman’s show. The only reason it hasn’t done it yet, even though it’s one of the lowest rated shows on MSNBC’s dayside lineup, is because of a directive at GE for a health initiative, and Snyderman has figured prominently in NBC’s new health initiative. But initiative or no initiative, dismal ratings can’t be ignored forever. Expect Dr. Nancy to either be cancelled outright or moved to weekends in an attempt to keep the initiative alive with Snyderman in a different way.