Fellow MSNBC anchors were weighing in this week on the strong ratings from “good person” Rachel Maddow, as her program on Tuesday was the top-rated on MSNBC (it was again on Thursday).
And with The Daily Kos site buzzing about the new duo, Keith Olbermann showed up in the comments section to heap his own praise (and refute the “new Republican meme” that “people are ‘rejecting’ Countdown because Rachel gets higher ratings some night”). He also referenced the high ratings during his toss to Maddow’s program last night, introducing “The cable juggernaut that is, The Rachel Maddow Show.”
In his comment on the Daily Kos, Olbermann writes, “I’ll be the one applauding loudest if she gets more every night,” and continues into a discussion of the ratings reasoning. Here’s a part:
Even if I was as shallow as somebody here suggests, you need to look a little bigger-picture.
This is our schedule, 8 PM-Midnight Eastern:
8 PM Me
9 PM Rach
10 PM Me
11 PM RachIt’s not just that I’m her lead-in; she is also my lead-in.
When I do really well at 8, she’s likely to do really well at 9. If she does really well at 9, I’m likely to do really well at 10. If I do really well at 10, she’s likely to do really well at 11.
So if she does better at 9 than I did at 8, I will do even better than I otherwise would have at 10, etc.
I did better than she did on Monday. She did better than I did on Tuesday. I did better than she did on Wednesday. But the point is, we’re talking viewership totals above 1,500,000 in each of these hours, and “demo” viewerships in giddying numbers: 500,000; 600,000; 700,000. The shows are really profitable at something like 185,000 “demo” viewers (25 to 54’s).