Sunday Morning Comin' Down

This week, Meet the Press host Shuck Todd decided to kick it old school -- 

NBC insiders are “relieved” to not have to suffer through another week of dull ratings for “Meet the Press” under new host Chuck Todd, sources sniped to Page Six.

In the wake of the program’s third-place finish in the ratings last week, this Sunday’s broadcast will be pre-empted for the Ryder Cup golf tournament.

Political guru Todd scored a quick win in his Sept. 7 debut on “MTP” with an exclusive interview with President Obama, drawing nearly 3 million viewers. But he’s since slipped to third place, grabbing only 2.4 million viewers for the Sept. 21 program. ABC’s “This Week With George Stephanopoulos” scored 3 million viewers on the Sept. 21 show, while CBS’s “Face the Nation” earned 2. 9 million viewers.

One media insider told us of NBC execs: “They are quite relieved there is no broadcast given their showings in the ratings. They lost by a huge margin and have poured so much money into promotion and press that it’s a surprise they’re not doing a little better and weren’t able to hold any of the audience that tuned in for Todd’s premiere week.”

-- and deploy what I identified back in May as former host David Gregory's career endgame strategy of improving MTP's ratings by not airig MTP:

...

Several weeks ago when this started, I riffed mockingly that this was NBC test-driving a burn-the-village-to-save-the-village strategy to relieve David Gregory of the responsibility of pretending to be a journalist long enough to let the searing actuality of Greggers' week-in-week-out banal, Beltway incompetence fade and be replaced by the same kind of nostalgia for a fake past that drives people to pine for the Good Old Days of St. Ronny Reagan.

The Meet the Press ratings death-spiral was briefly arrested due to preemption by a soccer game, which meant that the John McCain/Lindsay Graham Human Neocon Centipede was able to sleep in today, and Chuck Todd had to read his 2016 goat entrails alone in his kitchenette with no one listening.  I think this bold "Saving Meet the Press by not actually airing Meet the Press" idea has a lot of promise.

But now that they have done it yet again, I cannot help but wonder what special senior executive money-lined face-saving coffin they have prepared for Mr. Gregory and what fresh hell the geniuses at NB-See/NB-Do have waiting in the wings to drive down my estimation of American journalism even further.

So if you wanted a big, ol' toke of Todd this Sunday, you had to shimmy into your HazMat suit and slide on over to the Breitbart Columbarium of the Journalistic Undead where Shuck was busy doing a little retail sucking up to the shallow end of the American gene pool.

Sample Question (with emphasis added):

...But what Reagan inherited was just as bad as what Obama inherited. The Reagan policies created a million jobs in one month. Now we're six years into Obama's policies. At what point, for the good of the country, do we admit Obama's policies have failed?

Correct  Answer:

Let me explain why that is quite possibly the stupidest damn thing I have heard since the last time Sarah Palin opened her pie hole.  I will go slow and use little wordsies.

Shuck Todd Answer:

It's always been: "This is going to be the year the economy accelerates," and every time you think the economy is stepping on the gas, something trips it up. I think we're going to know in six to nine months. That's when a judgment will start to be made.

 Jesus, man, where's your fucking pride?

If I had to guess, I'd guess that within three months, NBC will revive the now-nearly-forgotten "wheel show" concept



and put Todd, Joe Scarborough, Luke Russert and a Random Wingnut Guest Host on a one-week-on/three-week-off rotation.

Thus creating a train wreck which will be visible from orbit.

And proving definitively that the only topical public interest teevee being aired on Sunday anymore is a half hour comedy on HBO (h/t Heather at Crooks and Liars)