MSNBC president Rick Kaplan had an interesting conversation with Tom Ashbrook, the host of WBUR’s “On Point,” last week. Kaplan said he likes cable news because it’s “a whole lot more fun than a lot of things you can do in broadcast.” He said it “allows you to experiment and create and try things…and if it doesn’t go well, then it didn’t go well in front of 100,000 people instead of 10 million people. So you’ve got a lot more freedom in cable. It’s a lot of fun.”
Then a caller asked why the cable news nets cover crime stories like Natalee Holloway. The caller alleged that “nobody cares,” and Kaplan responded:
| KAPLAN: It’s not that nobody cares. If nobody cares, we wouldn’t be reporting on it. When you look at the amount of viewer interest there is in these stories — and I’ll be honest wih you and tell you, I don’t care a lot about those stories particularly, but viewers clearly do, and our job is to serve their needs. And I would hope that you don’t think we’re doing it 24/7, but we have programs that do specialize, if you will, in those kind of crime reporting stories. ASHBROOK: Do they work? Can you see, do they pump the numbers? KAPLAN: Yeah, they do. Actually, they do. They’re some of the highest-rated shows that any network has. People are interested in those stories. |
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