Things got a bit awkward when Morning Joe addressed a Wall Street Journal report that Comcast was planning to spinoff its suite of NBC Universal-owned cable channels, including the very network that employs them — MSNBC.WSJ’s Amol Sharma broke the news Tuesday evening, reporting: Comcast is expected to announce Wednesday that it is moving forward with a plan to spin off its NBCUniversal cable TV networks, according to people familiar with the situation, acknowledging that it will be better off without a business that was once its crown jewel. The company, which last month said it was studying the idea, will separate off entertainment and news channels including MSNBC, CNBC, USA, Oxygen, E!, Syfy and Golf Channel. Those assets generated about $7 billion in revenue in the 12 months ended Sept. 30Given the recent challenges facing linear television operators—combined with MSNBC’s death spiral of poor ratings following the election of Donald Trump—the news that its corporate overlord is ostensibly giving up on a cable network model, particularly cable news, is ominous, especially for a morning show dealing with its controversial pivot to meeting with Trump after years of comparing him to Hitler.So, in that context, Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarbrough deserve credit for reporting the news that their corporate overlords will likely soon be changing, which is almost certainly likely to unsettle a status quo that feels a bit fin de siècle.After Brzezinski reported the news straight, Scarborough was left to make some sense of it, and opened by joking about his wife’s “penthouse” that she lets no one into. While it was intended as a comedic aside, the ivory tower metaphor was clear, particularly given just how wrong their network got the nation’s mood during the 2024 election cycle.https://www.mediaite.com/tv/we-could-be-fired-tomorrow-morning-joe-awkwardly-jokes-about-comcast-selling-off-msnbc/
“I will say really quickly on this, you know, Drudge at the top said, like ‘News melts down!’ all this other stuff,” Scarborough continued, noting lead stories on the Drudge Report.“I mean, I could be completely wrong: we could all be fired a year from now,” he said, “When this happens, you never know what’s going to happen,” to which Brzezinski added, “Or tomorrow,” with what seemed to be a slightly forced laugh to tired of overselling the lightness of what clearly an existential threat to the network and their talent.Scarborough continued about the past and future streaming model, praising Comcast and Disney for playing the streaming game correctly and including comments from the rest of the Morning Joe panel.
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>>489089490The news channels have a viewership under 200,000 during regular viewing hours. They’d already be dead if it wasn’t for the cable subsidies.
