Variety’s Sam Theilman writes about MSNBC trying to push its reach the world over…
To do this, the news division has enlisted NBC’s veteran newser Jeff Gralnick, who spent 24 years at ABC News and has acted as exec producer of World News Tonight, NBC Nightly News, and exec veep of financial news at CNN.
Gralnick’s mission has been to ink as many international carriage agreements as he can to catch MSNBC up to its competitors. “We were late to the market,” Gralnick conceded. CNN Intl. has a huge international footprint and Fox News Channel, the top-rated newsie, has serious distribution chops, too, especially with help from corporate sibling-to-be BSkyB — a major British feevee majority-owned by News Corp., which is in the process of acquiring it outright.
Gralnick said his initiative got off the ground after a conversation with NBC News prexy Steve Capus.
“I said to Steve, ‘As I travel, MSNBC is invisible,’” Gralnick told Daily Variety. “‘And the MSNBC linear programs are less visible than they ought to be.’” “See if you can fix that,” was Capus’ reply.
