No surprise, after Chris Matthews went on a rant about the Bergdahl swap and put forth an opinion that is probably contrary to that of most viewers, Hardball had the “best” hour on Twitter.  Sean Hannity had the best day overall.

A couple of interesting other things: The Colbert Report almost topped Matthews (despite Colbert only having 1/2 hour).  The Kelly file did really well; her audience seems to becoming more vocal on Twitter.

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Tuesday saw The Rachel Maddow Show bring in the most mentions during an hour, while Anderson Cooper won the most mentions throughout the day.

The 7pm to 10pm block was a powerful one for MSNBC, with Twitter mentions starting strong and building from 1918, 2185, to finally 2480 mentions per hour.  That block should have gone from 5pm on, as The Ed Show, a frequent best hour winner, pulled in 1931 mentions. But Politics Nation, in the next hour, saw its mentions only come in at 614 — a substantial drop in activity.  It appears that there’s an audience that engages with Ed, drifts away with Al, and then comes back with Chris Matthews; there’s an impedance mismatch in the positioning of Politics Nation.

Were I MSNBC, I would think very carefully about whether swapping Ed and Al in the schedule would drive higher engagement and, as well, higher ratings in the evening.  This disparity of engagement between these two shows happens almost every week night. After a huge audience masses for Ed on social media, then it dissipates for Al, sputters along during Hardball, and doesn’t resume until Chris Hayes.

Were I in charge (note continuing use of subjunctive), I would go so far as to restructure the line up to be Sharpton at 5, Matthews at 6, Schultz at 7, and then on to Hayes and Maddow — I think that would produce the most seamless transition of audiences in the evening, boost engagement and, ultimately, deliver the highest ratings to MSNBC as a whole.

And were this CNN I’m talking about, I’m sure a schedule realignment would have happened – they play with their schedule all the time.  But MSNBC seems to move very slowly (and then erratically, like when Ed was exiled to the weekends or when Baldwin and Bashir were cashiered).

But is MSNBC, to invert the phrase, letting the good be the enemy of the best? Are they happy to be merely contesting for second place?

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