MSNBC President Phil Griffin predicts the left-leaning television network can top Fox News in the ratings by 2014, according to a long profile published by the New Republic Monday.
And MSNBC is more successful now than it has ever been. At the end of this presidential election, it drew an average of 1.5 million viewers to its weekday prime time lineup. (The numbers have fallen since.) Fox still gets more than two million a night, but Griffin, optimistically, believes he can beat Fox by 2014. It’s a cockiness that has funneled down. In a recent staff meeting, one of Griffin’s producers coined a new term for Fox News: “Loserville.”
While the two networks compete, Griffin told TNR that he respects Ailes’ work at Fox. “He’s bold, he’s strong, he does not hide his feelings,” Griffin said. “I’ve always enjoyed him from afar.”
Ailes, for his part, spoke well of his counterpart at MSNBC, but included a jab at the network. “I’m fond of Phil Griffin,” Ailes told the magazine. “He’s like the guy next door who wants to borrow your lawnmower. And he does a pretty good job of managing that mean-spirited circus over there. But let’s be honest, he built his whole career out of being in Jeff Zucker’s wedding party.”
Read the full piece here.
