COMCAST IS UNBURDENING ITSELF OF WHAT HAS BEEN: MSNB-See-Ya: Comcast Dumps Cable Channels In Midst of Ethics Scandal.
As rumored for weeks ahead of the election, Comcast has decided to get out of the cable-TV market. This impacts more than just MSNBC, but none of the other cable properties Comcast will shed in this spinoff has the credibility and viewer issues that their progressive-bubble service has at the moment. One has to wonder whether Comcast or its spinoff would look more attractive to investors without MSNBC as part of its package:
Comcast said Wednesday that it will spin off its cable networks, including MSNBC and CNBC, in a bid to unshackle its movie studio and theme parks from the waning fortunes of traditional television.
NBCUniversal, Comcast’s media division, is set to cleave off a bundle of cable channels that generate roughly $7 billion in revenue annually, including USA, Oxygen, E!, Syfy and Golf Channel, into a new public company. Comcast will keep the NBC broadcast network under NBCUniversal, along with Bravo, home to reality TV programs like “Top Chef,” the company’s theme parks and its Universal studio. …
Cable television, once a juggernaut that propelled the share prices of traditional media companies, has become a financial albatross. Though they remain enormously profitable, cable TV channels are in long-term decline as viewers replace subscriptions with streaming services like Netflix or YouTube TV.
Given MSNBC’s cratering ratings post-election, will Joe and Mika and Rachel still have their shows after Comcast offloads their far-left channel? And what of Al Sharpton? Long been accused of being paid by the network for his low-rated Sunday morning show as a form of protection money to prevent him from defenestrating one of their hosts, as he did to Don Imus in 2007, he’s facing more recent questions: Harris Campaign and MSNBC Involved in Major Ethics Violation Over $500k ‘Donation’ to Al Sharpton.
Shortly before sitting down with MSNBC’s Al Sharpton, Harris’s campaign made a half-a-million-dollar donation to his nonprofit organization the National Action Network, the Washington Free Beacon reported today. The campaign also paid Roland Martin’s Nu Vision Media company $350,000 about a month before she appeared as a guest on his streaming program.
While some of these fees have been dismissed as “production costs” and “advertising,” the fact that Harris exchanged any money with Sharpton at all is a major ethics problem for MSNBC. Megyn Kelly has been especially vocal about it, stating that Sharpton and MSNBC did not disclose the donations before what Fox News referred to as a “friendly interview.”
On her SiriusXM show last week, Kelly spoke of the situation during an interview with Bill Ackman, the CEO of Pershing Square:
“I’m dying from the conflict of interest. I’m dead… The bias is coming out of the ears. This is so irresponsible, unethical, and not allowed. It is so egregious… You cannot make a donation to an anchor’s charity on the side of $500,000 as a presidential candidate, then go sit with the anchor and he didn’t disclose it… This is not a news organization, but they continue to masquerade as one.”
As the name implies, when MSNBC debuted in 1996, it was initially a technology-focused channel, devoted to charting the future of the then-new, bright and shiny World Wide Web. As with A&E long ago ditching its focus on middlebrow culture and MTV its focus on video clips, it’s entirely possible the zombie future of the channel could be very different than its current incarnation, particularly since it likely won’t be sharing on-air talent and resources with NBC and CNBC.