Imagine you’ve started a new job, working for four weeks straight on a new project, and then the fifth week you get to put a couple of days in before being furloughed for two weeks. When you get back, how quickly can you get back into the swing of things?
If you’re MSNBC’s The Cycle, that’s your story. The show debuted on June 25th, and a month later was suspended so MSNBC could cover the Olympics. That’s not a great strategy for building and retaining an audience!
With NBC’s Olympics coverage knocking two weeks out of MSNBC’s schedule, a lot of the daytime and weekend shows were off the air for an extended period. Would viewers find something else to do during those time slots — and would they stick with the new choices after the Olympics ended?
This week saw the debut of the replacement for The Dylan Ratigan Show on MSNBC, The Cycle. And what a newsy week it was to start! So how did the gang of four do on Twitter?
Compare the daily Twitter mentions for The Cycle to how Dylan Ratigan did, on average, for the last seven weeks he was on the air:
Not bad — it’s a nice boost in activity. The Cycle’s team has definitely engaged with their audience on Twitter.
The failed Wisconsin recall a week ago (6/5) generated a lot of conventional wisdom: Scott Walker renewed his mandate, the unions lost, and a new dynamic was introduced into the presidential campaign that helped the Romney campaign. And from a media perspective, Fox News was crowned the winner while MSNBC and, in particular, Ed Schultz were the grieving losers.
The mood around MSNBC that night and the next day bore witness to the disappointment of the MSNBC hosts. Pundits — conservative and liberal — mocked MSNBC’s seemingly all-in bet on the recall.
Despite their disappointment being palpable, it does not mean that MSNBC “lost”. MSNBC is not in the business of getting democrats elected (as much as it may seem to be the case); MSNBC is in the business of selling its viewers to advertisers. When you look at it from the perspective of ratings and social media, the night becomes a win for Ed Schultz.
There is a belief, widely accepted, that the Internet is drawing audiences away from television as people refocus their time to active engagement with social media. But for television shows with social media savvy, the best of both worlds can be theirs: top shelf video production with an audience that is engaged in the conversation via Twitter.
Two new(ish) shows on MSNBC have shot out of the starting gate with a strong social media component: the Melissa Harris-Perry Show and Up with Chris Hayes, which are broadcast Saturday and Sunday mornings. I looked at their Twitter engagement shortly after their launches (here are the older posts on Melissa Harris-Perry Show and Up With Chris Hayes). A few months have passed since I wrote those posts; in the interim, the shows have had a chance to hit their stride. I thought now would be a good time to revisit them and see how they’re doing!