Former Boston Herald TV critic Monica Collins seemed hopeful about MSNBC when it launched in 1996. She said MSNBC (and CNN) were indispensable when TWA Flight 800 crashed and a bomb exploded at the Olympic games. A year later, she said Brian Williams was “really redefining a network newscast.” But she, like other critics, stressed the need for the network to carve out a niche. In July 1997, she wrote:
| In fact, MSNBC’s new 115,000-square-foot Secaucus location is one mind-numbing array of statistics – containing enough feet of cable to stretch from New York City to Richmond, Va., and a newsroom that’s half the size of a football field. On the newsroom set alone, there are 108,200 simulated bricks, 82,400 pounds of aluminum and 900 feet of custom neon tubing. But that’s not why you watch the news – for the custom neon tubing. No, if MSNBC is going to carve out its niche, it will be because of other, more elusive qualities, commodities that can’t be bought with Microsoft’s billions. |
| MSNBC has yet to find its Bill O’Reilly or Anderson Cooper — a galvinizing personality who somehow defines the network and lifts it out of the wannabe doldrums. It seems the cable network, which started with NBC News’ cache and Microsoft’s cash, has squandered its assets over 10 years. Brian Williams became the lone star-is-born on MSNBC, but he got a higher calling. Anchor John Siegenthaler, who appeared poised to inherit Williams’ gravitas greybeard position, is now sentenced to narrating documentaries about various maximum security prisons on weekends. Joe Scarborough? Who he? Tucker Carlson is Rita Cosby in a bow tie. Keith Olbermann goes nowhere — literally and figuratively. He will flame out. MSNBC, as it goes forward without the Microsoft affiliation, is still a network in search of an identity. Breaking some news a la CNN with its intrepid Cooper during Hurricane Katrina, could help. So could anchors and talkmeisters who get out of the studio — or light it on fire. |
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