The Day the TV Died..

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As upset and disappointed as I am about no longer being able to watch MSNBC on my standard cable lineup, I’ve encountered one very noticeable, perhaps positive, side-effect of the transition: I’m sure as hell watching a lot less television.

I remember about four years ago, my wife and I decided to shut off the television and it was one of the most refreshing and positive things we ever did for ourselves, our marriage, and our sense of overall well-being. Slowly, over the course of about 9-12 months or so, we slowly brought back television into our lives, although our viewing habits have never quite been the same. Prior to shutting off the tube back in 2003-2004, we watched mindless reality programs, MTV, and a few network dramas. More recently, this consumption was cut way back and limited mainly to political talkshows, the NFL, the NBA Playoffs, and the occassional episode of South Park, the Daily Show Now, and/or the Colbert Report.

Now that Chris and Keith on MSNBC are once again no longer fixtures of my evenings and Joe Scarborough and crew no longer join me as I get ready for my day each morning, there is suddenly a gaping chasm in my connection to the daily “goings on” of the 2008 Presidential Campaign. In many ways, this development isn’t too bad, as I have been experiencing some level of campaign fatigue lately anyway.

And there is another new “benefit” to the disappearance of MSNBC on my cable lineup. And that’s the addition of my new penpal and frequent blog commenter, Jim Hughes of Comcast. Since I posted my first comment on Comcast’s decision to pull MSNBC from its Standard lineup in the Boston area, Jim has been commenting on my blogs and emailing me back and forth with “answers” to some of my questions.

I am not sure what Jim’s position is at Comcast, but he seems to work in the PR shop, perhaps under former Romney Press Secretary Shawn Feddeman, who I had first cited as the possible GOP connection behind the decision to jettison the progressive-leaning MSNBC to digital while leaving wingnut FoxNews and spineless CNN available on standard cable. Jim’s comments and emails have been cordial beyond belief, and a quick web search tells me that he has been reaching out to a handful of other bloggers who have also discussed this topic in the last few months.

When he first responded, I was excited to reach someone at Comcast and finally get some straight answers about the decision to pull from MSNBC from standard cable, particularly the answer to the following question:

3) If Comcast’s motivation was not political, but instead to “ensur[e] that [y]our network is able to deliver the maximum benefit to the maximum number of customers,” why do CNN, FoxNews, and CNBC remain available in analog format?

With the ratings numbers I showed you, MSNBC outperforms CNBC hands down, all the time, outperforms FoxNews and CNN in certain demographics, and only trails CNN in the main demo by a few percentage points.

In other words, what I’m getting at is the fact that in your attempt to deliver the “maximum” benefit, you are shutting out a huge audience and your not doing the same to the analog viewers of FoxNews, CNN, or CNBC. Please explain.

If you’d like to see some of those ratings figures, click here.

A few days later I got a response from Jim, but it was hardly as substantial as I expected, given the specificity of my query:

Paul, sorry for the delay, I’ve been traveling. I had this question in mind as I explained how these kinds of decisions are driven by a combination of customer input and contractual obligations with programmers. Sorry for any confusion if I didn’t make that clear enough.

Now I’m not sure if I’m going to get any more explanation behind this direct question, but the response from Jim above, while polite, doesn’t seem to directly address why exactly FoxNews and CNN are still available to analog customers. Jim, if you’re still out there and would like to take on this question directly, we are all ears!

Until then, we can’t help but assume that there is another motive behind the move, otherwise the answers would be more direct. The facts that the person who runs the PR shop at Comcast in the Northeast is a frequent GOP campaign contributer, that during an election season a purely political network that provides a foil to the distortions and propaganda of FoxNews and toothlessness of CNN has been effectively silenced to a large population of the politically savvy-electorate, and that the cable provider, Comcast, can’t adequately explain why this move was made without invoking platitudes and circumlocutions, tells me that something still remains to be revealed about the true motivations behind this decision.

The Other Side to the Story: MSNBC Complicity?

Financial Basketcase?

For a moment, I’d like to dispel conspiracy theories and examine other possible motivations behind this move…

1) Despite my accusations and questions about political motivations for effectively cancelling MSNBC from standard cable, I also understand that generally speaking, most decisions that large corporate entities make are business decisions, not political decisions. Take the liberal radio network Air America for example. Although I’m not privy to 100% of the reasons why they have struggled with bankruptcy and other financial problems since their inception, even with airplay in supposedly liberal radio markets, an elementary analysis of their troubles would have one assume that if being liberal and progressive were more profitable, they wouldn’t have as many problems that they do. Certainly mismanagement has been part of the touble as well: the place has been revolving door of owners and executives since day one. Perhaps there really is a smaller market for liberal-leaning television and radio. There’s gotta be some reason why Rush Limbaugh is a multi-multi millionaire, while Air America radio hosts have been jumping the network like rats on a sinking ship.

2) Another possibility might be that Comcast recognized MSNBC’s growing popularity among consumers, driven by the cult following of Keith Olbermann’s Coundown program, and decided to pull the network from standard cable in order to charge higher fees to its customers in the digital format because they reasoned that the rabid followers might protest, but would ultimately give in to the increased fees due to their loyalty and appreciation for one of the few progressive voices on the air. Perhaps they formulated an algorithm that modeled the financial gains of charging increased fees against the PR backlash and potential losses from people like myself who are so disgusted by the whole thing that we’re willing to give up our beloved MSNBC out of principle. All television will be digital by February 2009, anyway, Comcast may have reasoned, and people will have little choice beyond that point anyway. And the fact that they will have gotten to shut down a progressive voice is just gravy, instead of the driving force behind the move.

My Other Unavailable Love...

3) A final argument in support of Comcast’s decision points not to the profitability of MSNBC, but instead to perhaps some of the financial demands the network had made of its local distributor, in this case Comcast. To provide some context on this issue, the NFL Network is currently engaged in a PR struggle over cable operators’ decisions to remove it from standard cable as well. Apparently cable operators contend that the NFL charges fees that make leaving it on standard cable cost-prohibitive. Perhaps MSNBC was attempting to leverage the increased popularity of Keith Olbermann and (Air America alum) Rachel Maddow in order to charge higher fees to Comcast, and Comcast pushed back by pulling it and covering their costs with increased “digital tier” fees from customers.

The only evidence I have on the issue of possible “MSNBC complicity” in this affair is the fact that I have sent numerous emails to MSNBC to inquire about the issue and haven’t heard back from anyone at the network at all. Specifically, I wrote emails to the following entities at MSNBC

viewerservices@msnbc.com: General customer service

letters@msnbc.com: general inquiries, etc.

countdown@msnbc.com: Keith Olbermann’s show

KOlbermann@msnbc.com: Keith Olbermann’s work email (this got kicked back as “undeliverable”)

dabrams@msnbc.com: Dan Abram’s work email (this got kicked back as “undeliverable”)

hardball@msnbc.com: Chris Matthew’s Hardball show

verdict@msnbc.com: Dan Abram’s show

joe@msnbc.com: Joe Scarborough’s show

The fact that I didn’t receive a response from six different entities at MSNBC tells me that either they have horrible customer service, or that they too have something to hide. If one searches the web, one can find plenty of Comcast-lambasting, but I haven’t seen evidence of many people attempting to connect to MSNBC directly about this issue. I would for one, would like to hear what MSNBC feels about losing a segment of their loyal audience and what their view is on the motivations behind this move.

Political Move?

Yesterday I posted a discovery I had made about one of the Comcast executives behind the yanking of MSNBC from Standard Cable to the “digital only” tier in the Boston television market.

Specifically, the Comcast’s Vice President of Public Relations here in the northeast is a woman by the name of Shawn Feddeman, who prior to running PR for Comcast, was the Press Secretary for former GOP Presidential Candidate Mitt Romney while he was Governor of Massachusetts. She was also a campaign contributor to to Romney’s failed presidential bid while serving as head of PR for Comcast in New England. I felt that this revelation was further evidence that Comcast’s decision to pull the network from its analog package was politically motivated.

Well, apparently my post made the rounds and not long thereafter I received a response from another executive at Comcast. While I appreciate the attempt to provide some clarity on the issue, the executive’s response only sparked further questions on my part.

Below I will provide that executive’s response, as well as my follow-up questions to him. Hopefully we will soon receive some answers that make some sense.

Hi Paul. Jim Hughes from Comcast’s Boston office here. As a fan of Hardball and Countdown myself, I can tell you for sure that this was not about politics — it was about ensuring that our network is able to deliver the maximum benefit to the maximum number of customers. And as you may have seen in the press, we’ve already started delivering the benefits — we announced the launch of seven new HD channels here in Mass. — Disney HD, ABC Family HD, TLC HD, AMC HD, Science Channel HD, TMC (The Movie Channel) HD and Showtime 2 HD — last week, and more are on the way. A single analog channel takes up as much space on our network as 10 digital channels, or 3 HD channels, and this change is allowing us to strike an appropriate balance between our analog and digital offerings. As for the price issue you bring up, you’re right — digital cable service requires a box-rental fee. This is the fee that we waived for a year for affected customers. And while other TV providers here and elsewhere in the country are seeing the growing consumer preference for digital TV and dropping analog service altogether, we are committed to delivering a low-cost analog option for our remaining customers who want it.

And below, you will find my response to Jim Hughes:

Hi Jim,

Thanks for reading and writing in to Monkeyinmymind.com.

While I appreciate you laying out Comcast’s plans to deliver more HD programming, and also explaining how analog channels occupy more “space” than their digital counterparts, your response still doesn’t quite answer exactly why MSNBC was chosen out of all the cable news channels to be ejected from analog into digital-only format.

To provide some context to this issue, I am aware that if one receives a digital programming package, one still generally receives access to analog versions of those digital programs (now excepting MSNBC, of course). For example, I was over at another Comcast subscriber’s home this weekend and noticed that while they had access to ESPN HD, HBO HD, and CNN HD, this person still had access to the analog versions of those channels. Why doesn’t this hold true for MSNBC?

I love the picture and quality of HD programming as much as anyone else, but I wasn’t aware that this was a “choose or lose” proposition when it comes to mainstays on the cable programming spectrum like MSNBC. As of today (and until February 17, 2009), the default television format is not yet digital so consumers like myself and many thousands of others shouldn’t be forced into converting to digital prematurely.

To that end, I was hoping you could provide additional clarity on the following questions:

1) What other channels besides MSNBC were removed from analog format in order to be digital only (I haven’t noticed anything else missing from the lineup)?

2) What type of Nielsen ratings did these other channels earn?

3) If Comcast’s motivation was not political, but instead to “ensur[e] that [y]our network is able to deliver the maximum benefit to the maximum number of customers,” why do CNN, FoxNews, and CNBC remain available in analog format?

This move smacks as a double standard, especially when one compares the ratings that each of these channels earn. Please note the following ratings numbers over this last weekend, comparing all of the cable news networks:

You will notice that while MSNBC trails FoxNews and CNN (only slightly) in one demographic, it outperforms Fox and CNN in the 25-54 demographic, and outperforms CNBC in all demographics.

Live + Same Day Weekend Ratings
Cable News Ratings August 2, 2008
P2+ Total Day
FNC – 699,000 viewers
CNN – 467,000 viewers
MSNBC – 420,000 viewers
CNBC – 132,000 viewers
HLN – 263,000 viewers

P2+ Prime Time
FNC – 1,033,000 viewers
CNN – 657,000 viewers
MSNBC – 548,000 viewers
CNBC – 262,000 viewers
HLN – 270,000 viewers

25-54 Total Day
FNC – 169,000 viewers
CNN – 145,000 viewers
MSNBC – 213,000 viewers
CNBC – 68,000 viewers
HLN – 103,000 viewers

25-54 Prime Time
FNC – 178,000 viewers
CNN – 167,000 viewers
MSNBC – 288,000 viewers
CNBC – 134,000 viewers
HLN – 101,000 viewers

Again, thanks for your forthright answers.

In order for many of us to believe that this decision was NOT politically motivated, answers to questions like mine would be sincerely appreciated.

No Longer a Viewing Option

As a left-leaning political junkie, MSNBC constitutes my sustenance, my entertainment, and my candy, especially during election cycles. As the only network with progressive commentary (i.e. Keith Olbermann on Countdown), along with other entertaining, informative, and engaging programming, to include Joe Scarborough’s Cup of Joe, Dan Abram’s Verdict, and Chris Matthews’ Hardball, MSNBC is literally the only channel that my wife and I watch together on TV (I also watch football during season and occassionally some Comedy Central stuff before going to bed).

As parents of a two-year old, watching Chris and Keith during the primaries was not only our source of information and news, but it was also our entertainment - our little guilty pleasure that we shared together. We felt like we knew Chris Matthews (my wife did meet and interview him during the making of our documentary film, Swing State Ohio, during the Presidential Election in 2004), and watching his show, along with the others was familiar, comforting, and relaxing. We even liked MSNBC featured conservatives Tucker Carlson, Joe Scarborough, and even Pat Buchanon, because they are all charming, wildly intelligent, and provided their views in a fair and reasoned manner.

So given our affection for this network, this lonely island in a sea of mindless wing-nuttery and mediocrity, we were shocked, dismayed, and disgusted when found out that our beloved MSNBC was being moved from standard cable to the “Digital Tier” on Comcast in the Boston area.

Thanks to the “magic of the internet” I did some looking around and found that this was happening all over the country. I found the timing to be odd, considering this network is 99% dedicated to political programming (besides their disturbing late-night prison documentary series “Lock Up”), and we are fewer than 100 days away from a kinda important political event. I also found it odd that among the cable news channels, only MSNBC, the “left-leaning” channel, was tapped to move to the digital tier, forcing its customers to cough up extra cash for the extra service.

Some further digging ensued and the Monkey and I found a comment on a blog that seemed to provide some explanation from Comcast (bold added by me):

This is Shawn Feddeman from Comcast in Boston and I wanted to address your posting about some recent channel changes we have made locally.

As you mention, Comcast did in fact move MSNBC and several other channels (what other channels?) to our digital lineup this week. This is not a more expensive tier of service, but it does require a digital cable box (which is more expensive). Most of our customers in the area aren’t impacted by these moves because they already have digital cable service. However, for the analog customers who want to continue watching MSNBC and the other channels, we are offering them a free cable box for a year (after which you will have to pay for it, proving that it is more expensive).

We made these changes to our lineup so that we could launch more HD programming - which our customers have been asking for (what, just the progressives were asking for it? - no conservatives want to see O’Reilly in HD?). In the coming weeks, we will be adding many new HD networks o respond to the demand.

Finally, I would also like to point out that there were absolutely no political motivations behind the recent channel moves. (Except for one little thing which you will find out by reading below). We have been communicating with our analog customers about these programming changes for more than a month through postcards, e-mails, calls, channel crawls and more to ensure they knew about the changes. Thanks for letting me clarify.

First of all, Shawn Feddeman is not correct about this tier not being more expensive. Many people have standard cable; digital cable costs about $40 more per month. In addition, many people (like me) also get standard cable paid for with our condo fees. In order to upgrade to digital I would have to buy my own service, an additional cost on top of my condo fees.

But I do have a question for Ms. Feddeman regarding Comcast’s motivations behind making this change: If you want to provide more HD programming, why didn’t you tap FoxNews for HD broadcast? Wouldn’t FoxNews viewers appreciate seeing their right-wing blowhards in full digital glory?

And finally, Ms. Feddeman asserts that there is no “political motivation” behind the decision to pull the left-leaning channel from the standard lineup. That would be a lot easier to believe if there wasn’t one little interesting tidbit about Ms. Feddeman’s employment prior to running the PR shop at Comcast.

Shawn Feddeman a Former GOP Operative

Former Romney Spokeswoman Feddeman

Through the “magic of the internet,” I discovered that Shawn Feddeman served as Governor Mitt Romney’s Press Secretary prior to working for Comcast. Obviously she is a Republican who was at one time actively involved in politics, working for a future Republican presidential candidate. It just doesn’t pass the sniff test that there were no political motivations in this decision. Her credentials alone indicate that certainly politics played a role in this decision to move MSNBC off basic cable.

My wife is considering poneying up for the digital tier but my intention right now is to boycott that move out of principle. I know in a way I’ll just be punishing myself, as I won’t have my favorite channel during what will be a historic and exciting Presidential campaign. I plan on writing a letter to Shawn Feddeman and will provide updates on the situation in these pages at Monkeyinmymind.com.