Monday, March 31, 2014

Maybe They Should Skew Younger?

From the NY Daily News:
Ratings may sink Ronan Farrow's show on MSNBC
'Ronan Farrow Daily' came in 708th in the Nielsens on Wednesday, and a network source says he 'sort of stinks on TV'
BY MARIANNE GARVEY, BRIAN NIEMIETZ AND LACHLAN CARTWRIGHT Monday, March 31, 2014, 2:00 AM

Ronan Farrow’s MSNBC talk show is facing cancellation amid poor ratings, sources exclusively tell Confidenti@l.

Farrow, 28 — the opinionated, blue-eyed son of actress Mia Farrow and either Woody Allen or Frank Sinatra (even Farrow’s not sure which) — has been a disaster for MSNBC. The channel took the frequent cable-show guest and handed him his own program, “Ronan Farrow Daily,” which premiered in late February.

“He sort of stinks on TV,” an MSNBC source told Confidenti@l. “He hasn’t turned out to be the superstar they were hoping for.”

The theory was that Farrow, a Rhodes scholar who graduated college when he was 15 and went on to score degrees from Yale and Oxford, would bring his 245,000 Twitter followers with him to television. “But that hasn’t happened,” the source said. “Just because someone is a boy genius-turned-Twitter star doesn’t mean they deserve their own TV show.”

Last Wednesday, Farrow drew an average of about 312,000 total viewers, which might be stellar for Twitter but “is rather measly for someone who is supposed to be a major national personality,” another source said.

Even worse: Wednesday’s show was 708th among all programming ranked by Nielsen, in both total viewers and the 18-to-49 age group advertisers covet. The midnight airing of “Baggage” on the Game Show Network came in ahead of it, at No. 707, and the 8 a.m. “Golden Girls” on the Hallmark Channel (No. 700) crushed it.
...
Maybe he and Luke Russert can get a van and travel the country solving media crimes?



5 comments:

L.A. Goldenrod said...

Granted I'm a couple of decades outside of his demo, but I had never heard of Ronan Farrow before I started seeing stories about MSNBC giving him a show.

And actually, that's not true entirely. I had never heard the name "Ronan Farrow." The last I had heard of him was when he was born and his name was Satchel.

I wondered what the big deal was, and could only furrow my brow when I learned that it was because he was a superstar on Twitter. He got a show for having a lot of Twitter followers. Okay.

And yet I'm sure there are people at MSNBC who are trying to figure out how this idea could have missed.

Of course, this is the network that gave Michael Savage a show once upon a time. And when that predictably crashed and burned, I'm sure there were people who couldn't understand why, either.

Anonymous said...

hmmm..."The Hardly Boys?"

Anonymous said...

Outside of the fact that he sucks he has a problem, his show is on during the day.

Now TV watching is common in many offices, but Fox and MSNBC are rightly banned. Not only are they bullshit, but they are prone to creating arguments among people of various political stripes. So outside of turning on them on as a way to fire people, it's more hassle than it's worth.

CNN, CNBC, CSPAN, or if you must BBC are OK during the day. Fox and MSNBC are for crazy people to watch at home when they get off work.

JerryB said...

I gave the boy a chance last week and was so underwhelmed it was embarrassing. I still don't understand why he ever got a show when there is so much talent out there not on the air.

Anonymous said...

Ronin - A samurai without a master

Ronan - A Sinatra without a veiwer