Monday appeared to be the day that MSNBC commentators bashed the ratings of Sunday political talk shows other than NBC's "Meet the Press."
After Chris Matthews ridiculed ABC's "This Week" despite it having more than three times his audience, Lawrence O'Donnell went after Chris Wallace and "Fox News Sunday" (video follows with transcript and commentary):
LAWRENCE O’DONNELL: Well, I think, you know, Jon Stewart’s point about Fox News has Chris Wallace on there just so they can say they have him, just so they can say they have a reasonably fair Sunday morning show. It comes in dead last in the ratings. David Gregory just kills it, you know, by a million miles. So it isn't there as a real business. It's just there as a fig leaf for the Fox News people to claim there's a news show Sunday morning.
"David Gregory just kills it, you know, by a million miles."
Really? According to TVNewser, "[W]hen the two cable replays on Fox News are taken into consideration, 'FNS' draws more viewers than 'Face the Nation' or 'This Week.'”
When organizations like Nielsen rank these Sunday shows, they only factor in the broadcast ratings. Add in those watching "FNS" on FNC and it normally comes in first.
As "Meet the Press" typically averages about 3.5 million viewers every Sunday, that means "FNS's" combined numbers are greater than this.
If O'Donnell thinks this isn't a "real business" model for Fox, what does he think of the roughly 1.5 million viewers he gets each day - 57 percent less than Wallace! - during the combined airings of "The Last Word?"
Oh. That's right. MSNBC isn't in this racket to make money.
This is liberal advocacy plain and simple no matter the cost - as long as the new owners at Comcast are willing to go along with it, that is.
