Planting Liberally

Earlier this week, MSNBC announced that Rachel Maddow would get her own show in the nightly line-up, replacing Dan Abrams. The announcement was a victory for progressives in a number of ways. First, Maddow's show will strengthen the toe-hold that progressive voices like Keith Olbermann have on cable TV. Second, Maddow represents perhaps the first progressive voice to bubble up through the nascent progressive media machine and into traditional media. Finally, Maddow is the first woman with her own show representing progressives on one of the three major cable news channels.

As important a victory as Maddow's show is, we should not bask too long in the glow of victory. Now that corporate media has acknowledged the importance of attracting a progressive audience, it's time for the movement to flex its muscle still further.

In the short term, this means doing some of what we're already doing, only more often and more emphatically. Certainly, we should make sure to tune in to Maddow's show, and to promote it by embedding and spreading video clips of the show through blogs and social networks. On top of that, we should work to voice our support for Maddow to MSNBC management and advertisers. And once the show gets going, we should play the role of constructive critics, in order to improve and perfect it over time. Maddow has already proven her mettle as a commenter and as a replacement for Olbermann; and the progressive grassroots has already proven its enthusiasm for supporting her work, so this part of the job should be pretty easy.

The more difficult work will be in extending our victory outside of Maddow's show. The combination of Maddow and Olbermann on MSNBC should mark the network as the unofficial liberal cable news channel, but the network still plays host to more than enough conservative viewpoints; replacing voices like Joe Scarborough with new progressive voices will help clear up any confusion viewers might have about who is and who isn't a progressive on the channel. The slow rightward drift of CNN needs to be halted and reversed. And perhaps most importantly, we need a genuine progressive cable news channel, not one like MSNBC. As Cable News Confidential vividly depicts, it's not wise to entrust progressive voices to large corporations with decidedly unprogressive interests, like GE, and management which doesn't understand niche programming, like MSNBC's.

Of course, it's one thing to lay these goals out, and quite another to achieve them. Fortunately, there is already some progress on these fronts. Without a major scandal, like the one which took Don Imus off of MSNBC and CBS, it's hard to remove a show from the air and make room for a new progressive show. On the other hand, it should be possible to push more progressives into positions as commentators, replacement hosts, or even co-hosts. A number of high-profile liberal bloggers have already made the leap into one-time commentator gigs. Perhaps it's time to cultivate more of those gigs, provide training to those bloggers, and assemble grassroots support for those individuals. In particular, the coalition that was assembled for Stephanie Miller as a potential replacement for Don Imus on MSNBC should be rekindled and prepared to support a bid for her to take any potential opportunities that might open up.

Establishing a genuinely progressive nationwide cable news channel will be even harder. Fortunately, there are a few fledgling efforts, like Link TV, The Real News and Free Speech TV. Currently programming from these channels is available in a limited number of markets and via satellite TV. We should work to expand the reach of these channels, perhaps starting with leasing time on existing, struggling channels, or by cross-promoting these channels with existing progressive radio shows. In addition, we should work to integrate the programming from these channels, as well as material from existing web-based progressive political shows like The Young Turks, into other progressive media, in order to build popular demand for the channels.

On top of the efforts we can make to drive popular demand for this kind of programming to be available on cable, we can also work to create a potential supply of sponsorship or advertising. Certainly, there are plenty of big- budget advertisers who should have at least latent interest in reaching a niche progressive audience on TV - think of Toyota advertising for the Prius, Miramax advertising a Michael Moore film, or Apple trying to reach a creative and largely progressive audience. Moreover, as Spot.us and similar TV advertising resellers have demonstrated, it's possible to aggregate large blocks of advertising spots in order to make localized, on-the-cheap advertising available to the kinds of mom-and-pop retailers that progressives love to frequent - bookstores, coffee shops, and independent movie theaters. It's not yet clear how this kind of latent advertising demand can be organized and leveraged into the kind of start-up funding needed to credibly build a nationwide progressive cable TV channel, but it is clear that many of the raw materials are in place.

None of this will be particularly easy, nor do I imagine that we'll be successful on all fronts. It took conservatives the better part of a decade to start making inroads with CNN, and quite a lot of money to establish Fox News. At the same time, I think we have reached an important moment to build momentum and to develop a strategy to permanently transform cable news.

It's about time: after months of speculation, it appears that Rachel Maddow will replace Dan Abrams in the MSNBC lineup. The move will shift the lineup emphatically to the left, and finally gives progressives a regularly-appearing female voice on one of the three major cable news channels.

Maddows' ascension comes after a somewhat convoluted path that began with a radio show on Air America, continued with her role as a frequent commentator during MSNBC election coverage, and, perhaps most significantly, her occasional stints as a replacement for Keith Olbermann on Countdown. In other words, this is perhaps the first example in recent memory of a progressive commentator "bubbling up" from the new progressie media machine into traditional corporate media, and as such it's an important milestone. It would be nice to see this kind of thing happen more frequently, and perhaps, if Maddow's show receives good ratings, CNN might take notice. Olbermann's diary on DailyKos suggested that both he and Maddow's grassroots supporters helped make the show a reality, but, unfortunately we don't have much of a roadmap for the next progressive cable TV coup.

Last year, when it appeared that Tucker Carlson's show was in jeopardy, I wrote that replacing Carlson with a second progressive voice in the MSNBC lineup should be a short-term goal for the progressive movement. Now that we've achieved that goal (or half of it), it's worth looking farther down the road. What should be the next milestone that the nascent progressive media machine strives for, when it comes to Cable TV? Here are a few that come to mind:

• Establishing more avowedly progressive talk shows on MSNBC or CNN
• Getting more progressive commentators to appear on MSNBC or CNN
• Expanding the racial and gender diversity on cable talk shows
• Establishing a fourth, and genuinely progressive, cable news channel
• Expanding the reach and programming of fledgling progressive networks like Link TV, Free Speech TV, or Real News Network
• Indirectly altering cable news through regulatory reform - e.g., a la carte retail cable

Any others? And more importantly - what can we do to reach these goals? I'd love to hear your thoughts.

Tucker Carlson's low ratings at MSNBC have put his show on the chopping block. Not long ago, MSNBC almost inked a deal to replace Carlson with Rosie O'Donnell. O'Donnell, while not exactly a movement progressive, is certainly left-of-center in a non-establishment way, and a marked improvement over Carlson.

This is a great opportunity for the progressive movement. If Carlson is replaced by a progressive, the MSNBC line up really will start to look like a bona fide progressive alternative to Fox. I'm the last person to trust that MSNBC will stay dedicated to that kind of lineup, or that they will appropriately market the lineup and do a good job of getting businesses to advertise. Still, this is about the shortest path we have towards a progressive alternative to Fox, and we should not ignore it. (Incidentally, there was an important FCC ruling earlier this week which does create another path, though much longer and more arduous, towards progressive cable -
more on that soon.)

And yet, we are having difficulty converting this opportunity into reality. For starters, MSNBC doesn't appear to have a viable replacement for Carlson. I'm not sure why that is, exactly. Certainly there are good progressives capable of hosting a good news and opinion talk show, like Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez, or Tavis Smiley. My last post on installing progressives at MSNBC offered up a few other interesting alternatives in the comments - including David Shuster, Rachel Maddow and Randi Rhodes. The problem could be a matter of availability, or it could be differences in editorial style (i.e., MSNBC might not be interested in giving Smiley a slot because they don't like his views/interview style/whatever.) Unfortunately, there doesn't appear to be an organized progressive effort to get behind a replacement for Carlson, while conservatives are rallying to keep the show on the air (see savetucker.org).

What should we be doing to find a viable progressive alternative to Tucker Carlson, and to convince MSNBC management to choose that alternative? I'd love to hear thoughts on this.

It looks like conservatives have set up a petition site to urge MSNBC to reconsider firing Tucker Carlson (http://savetucker.org/). Removing Tucker Carlson should be a top priority for liberal media activists in the next few weeks; this is a wonderful opportunity to push the traditional mass media to the left. We should be responding to this.

Earlier this week, the NYT noted that MSNBC is becoming a hub for left-wing talk on cable TV. The article's assertion that Chris Matthews counts as a liberal, or Joe Scarborough as a moderate, is a pretty big stretch. And the network's decision to replace Don Imus's racist and sexist morning talk show with Joe Scarborough several months ago hardly counts as a progressive programming decision. Nevertheless, Keith Olbermann calls MSNBC his home; Tucker Carlson's show is on the ropes; and until Wednesday, network executives were considering adding a talk show with Rosie O'Donnell to the mix. (The O'Donnell deal fell apart, apparently, because MSNBC wanted a longer commitment than O'Donnell was willing to make.) If Carlson does get the boot, and a new liberal talk show host akin to O'Donnell joins the MSNBC lineup, then the network will easily count as the most progressive of the three major cable news channels.
The cable news industry - indeed, the entire cable TV industry - is in a very interesting position these days. Poor service and high prices have led to widespread dissatisfaction with cable carriers, especially Comcast. There's significant buyer dissatisfaction with the overall cable-purchasing model as well, as most cable subscribers clamor for a la carte channels. At the same time, there are signs that the FCC will almost certainly begin regulating the industry more heavily.
The new FCC regulations, which appear to be focused on expanding access to cable news channels by liberalizing leased access rules, open up some interesting opportunities for bringing more progressive voices to cable news.
For example, an entrepreneur could undertake an experiment to lease cable access in order to air a progressive talk show, like the Stephanie Miller show, at a time that competes with MSNBC's Scarborough morning show. (When MSNBC fired Don Imus a few months ago, Miller auditioned for the morning time slot; despite several well-received Miller shows and a spirited petition effort on the part of progressives, Scarborough got the slot.) If the entrepreneur coupled that move with a concerted strategy to market Miller's show to progressives - incorporating YouTube excerpts, blog and social network marketing, etc. - then Miller's show might gain audience share against Scarborough. If the experiment could be conducted in enough major markets to put a dent in Scarborough's ratings, MSNBC might eventually be persuaded to replace Scarborough with Miller.
This kind of experiment would be novel. Most leased access shows are localized, and rely on local or regional advertising for revenue. Moreover, leased access is obtained through local cable providers, not on a national level, so it would be very difficult to string together leased access in enough markets to make a significant dent in the ratings of a national show. (For a good background piece on leased access, check out this Videomaker piece.) On the other hand, a liberal entrepreneur willing to try this out could crowdsource the process of obtaining leased access, by enlisting progressive netroots activists in the time-consuming effort of contacting and cajoling local cable offices. Moreover, because progressives are emphatically ignored on cable and broadcast TV, there's a large, untapped potential for capturing advertising dollars for products that are best marketed on TV and have a natural liberal audience - for example, progressive movies and documentaries. In other words, this kind of experiment would be massive and novel, but potentially very profitable.
Ultimately, the viability of this kind of experiment depends on the FCC's new regulations. Hopefully, we will soon have many more opportunities to challenge cable carriers to carry more progressive networks, and to challenge existing cable news networks to carry more progressive programming. Liberal entrepreneurs interested in cable should stay on their toes for a potential opportunity to make money while making way for progressive voices on cable news.

More and more, it seems, we in the progressive movement are bumping heads against what appear to be more-or-less insane corporate policies which are not only harmful to society at large, not only unprofitable, but more or less the conventional wisdom within an entire industry.  There are a couple of examples that come to mind immediately: the consensus opinion among cable news channels that talk shows should be predominantly conservative or right-center, and the consensus opinion in big business that unionization is bad and should be thwarted, even using illegal means.

These are just a couple of examples, but even these two have devestating consequences for the progressive movement and the country as a whole.  The conservative domination of cable news is part of the reason we're bogged down in Iraq, and it's a very powerful echo chamber that tends to silence the progressive voices in our party, and favors Republican and conservative Democratic candidates.  Meanwhile, the relentless union-busting ethos in corporate America is wreaking havoc on the economy, because it sharply exaggerates economic inequality; at the same time, it deflates the idea of solidarity in the workplace, which is one of the pillars of the progressive movement.

I became very curious about these phenomena when I read Jeff Cohen's book, Cable News Confidential.  The book provides incredible detail on the atmosphere at MSNBC in the months leading up to the war in Iraq, and some of the reasoning behind the managerial decisions which led to the failure of Donohue on MSNBC, and the increasingly shrill pro-war views expressed on all three cable news channels.  What's interesting is that, from Cohen's vantage point, these decisions were remarkably boneheaded, and appeared to defy simple business reasoning.  MSNBC was not trying to find a way to attract more viewers than Fox News Channel, it was simply trying to imitate Fox.  MSNBC did not shrewdly ascertain that Fox's success was based on its cultivation of a niche audience, and that the secret to success in cable news was finding a different niche and attracting that niche in novel ways; instead, it obtusely assumed that cable news consumers were emphaticaly right-leaning, and so it attempted to mimic Fox rather than provide an alternative.  CNN, which should have naturally been the beneficiary of MSNBC's bumbling inability to compete with Fox, instead appears to have done much the same.

In addition to being a terrible story of journalism gone horribly wrong, this is a fascinating case study of an entire industry failing, and failing badly.  Our textbook understanding of capitalism would suggest that large companies should be constantly doing battle with one another, looking for opportunities that their competition has not found, and exploiting those opportunities for profit.  In the case of cable news, we'd expect at least one of the channels to recognize that no one was adequately serving the needs of progressive cable news consumers, and to attempt to exploit that opportunity before the competition did the same.  Not only did cable news executives not notice this opportunity in the rabidly pro-war days of early 2003, they still haven't learned the lesson, despite ample evidence that there's a large audience of progressives hungry for round-the-clock news and opinion, and despite ample evidence that the few cable news shows which do cater to a progressive audience (Countdown, Daily Show, Colbert Report) do remarkably well.  So why aren't the cable news executives rushing to exploit this opportunity, and gain ratings and ad dollars while the competition sits on its hands?

I think part of the answer lies in the concept of "information cascades", described in The Wisdom of Crowds by James Surowiecki.  In chapter 3 of the book, Surowiecki explores the concept of herding, which is a case of a large group of people imitating each other, on the assumption that some of the people in the group have a good reason for their behavior.  In many cases, this can be natural and beneficial behavior - Surowiecki cites the example of looking out the window to determine whether people on the street are carrying umbrellas, in order to determine whether it's likely to rain.  In other cases, however, this kind of behavior can be anti-competitive - Surowiecki explores data which shows that NFL coaches are overly cautious in football games.  The book also considers the case of the plank road industry, which appeared to be a profitable way to improve transportation between small towns in the early 19th century, and in fact proved to be a colossal investment disaster.

So what is behind such anti-competitive behavior?  There are a many competing theories.  Malcolm Gladwell's book The Tipping Point suggests that there are certain individuals who have unique skills which are instrumental in creating an "epidemic", which can range from a medical epidemic, to a crime epidemic, to an epidemic of stupid business decisions.  Surowiecki explores the research of economists Sushil Bikhchandani, David Hirshleifer, and Ivo Welch, which suggests that in cases where individual decisions are made with knowledge of prior decisions made by others, and where those decisions appear to have beneficial outcomes, an "information cascade" can form, allowing a large group of people to erroneously decide that the first early decisions were th right ones to make.  Welch, in fact, maintains a bibliography and resource reference on information cascades.

It's important to understand the anotomy of the right-leaning mindset in cable news, and the anti-union mindset in big business, in order to conquer and reverse these mindsets.  If there is, indeed, an information cascade among cable news executives which favors promoting conservative commentators, how do we stop that cascade?  Is the solution to boycott the news channels, regulate or sue the channels into providing balanced opinions, put public pressure on the executives through letter-writing campaigns?  Is it possible to create the competition we want to see - i.e., to start a new cable news channel which would consistently provide progerssive opinion and news, and thereby to capture audience share and advertising dollars from the current cable news channels?  Or is there some way to stop or reverse the information cascade, to flood the channels of communication that inform cable news executives, and thereby to convince them that conservative opinion per se is not the way to gain ratings on cable news, but niche-oriented programming is?

All of these questions could be applied to the union-busting industry, the gas-guzzling-cars industry, the anti-music-sharing industry, and any number of other industries in which corporate policy seems to herd around an anti-competitive and unprofitable consensus.  In this post, I've merely explored the question as it relates to the conservative-cable-news industry for the sake of example.  But I'd love to hear from you, particularly if you have some expertise on information cascades and similar fields of study - what do you think?  What is the smartest strategy for putting an end to anti-competitive conservative corporate behavior?

For those readers who are not experts in the field - would you be interested in a little bit of homework?  I'd like to see what we could accomplish by scouring the information cascade resources that Ivo Welch putting together, and seeing whether any of that material contains interesting ideas for understanding, and perhaps reversing, the information cascade in conservative cable news channels.  Let me know if that sounds interesting, and I'll try and organize it.