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.
