Jeff Zucker on MSNBC: ‘We didn’t have a secret meeting where we said, ‘maybe we should just go left”

Former NBC Universal CEO Jeff Zucker spoke at the Harvard faculty club recently, and FutureOfCapitlaism.com has the details of what he said.

Zucker spoke about his career, as well his relationship with General Electric CEO Jeff Immelt. He also spoke about the state of journalism, and MSNBC:

Mr. Zucker said he thought the cable news landscape of Fox News and MSNBC has “gotten a little too heated” to the detriment of democracy, but he also noted, “if you don’t like it, you don’t have to watch it.”

As for MSNBC, “We didn’t have a secret meeting where we said, ‘maybe we should just go left,’” he said. Rather, “people started watching Keith Olbermann,” and programmers planned the rest of the schedule to “flow” with his show.

http://www.mediabistro.com/tvnewser/jeff-zucker-on-msnbc-we-didnt-have-a-secret-meeting-where-we-said-maybe-we-should-just-go-left_b64681#more-64681

'We thought it might be profitable to present that type of programming.' I imagine that's what Murdoch was thinking back in the 1990s.

they'll pull the plug.

I get the impression that a big reason Murdoch created Fox News was that his researchers detected a large audience of conservatives who were not happy with their news options of television (the big three networks and CNN) and would be willing to watch a network that presented the news from an unmistakeably conservative perspective.

Their success has siphoned conservative viewers from other news outlets, which of course means that the group that stuck with the rest of the MSM is more left-leaning than it would have been if the Fox viewers were still watching. MSNBC no doubt determined that the non-Fox audience would be more amenable to news from a left-wing perspective and voila, there you have it.

I'm sure there are a million other factors that account for all of this as well. I've thought that demographics might play a role too, notably many baby boomers aging into conservatism and members of Generation Y maturing into adult news consumers (though still young enough to be somewhat liberal).

Of COURSE they're going to be seen as 'left'.

They are unfair and conservatively biased in the morning, middle of the road with a fairer bent in the afternoon, and fairest in the evening...and prison all the time on the week-ends.

Profit, baby! (The GE way...)