"MSNBC, the also-ran in cable news after 11 years, has tapped its on-air legal-affairs anchor, Dan Abrams, to run the network that averages just 242,000 viewers a day — less than many big-city newscasts.
The move was a surprise: Abrams has little management experience, and TV news anchors rarely join executive ranks.
It comes a week after Rick Kaplan, who used to run CNN, abruptly left the helm at MSNBC after 2½ years. The joint venture between NBC and Microsoft has long placed a distant third behind top-rated Fox News and CNN, which draw nearly four times and twice MSNBC's viewership respectively.
Abrams will report to Phil Griffin, who will now oversee MSNBC and NBC's Today. Griffin spent 10 years producing at MSNBC before leaving last year to supervise Today.
"There's definitely a difference between managing 15 people and 600," Abrams, a lawyer, said Monday. "I wouldn't be doing it if I didn't want it. I'm giving up something I love": The Abrams Report, his nightly legal-affairs show.
Abrams says his immediate aim is to build on the success of two of MSNBC's highest-rated shows, Chris Matthews' Hardball and Keith Olbermann's Countdown, "and use some of the irreverence, some of the excitement that comes from those shows and have that reflected throughout the network."
Excitement!?!....."Reflected throughout the Network?"
Heh, heh...heh...hehehhhehehheheheheheh!.....*snif*...."SnOrt!".....
Well Dan will have to first sort out the rift between "exciting" Keith Olbermann and Rita Crosby. Oooooh, tension!
UPDATE: Not knowing what else to do, MSNBC runs a poll, but then again, there is a brewing scandal as more Keith Olbermann emails are about to become public.
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