The anchor of one of MSNBC’s lowest-rated shows has been put in charge of day-to- day operations of the ratings- starved cable-news network.
On the other hand, Dan Abrams gives great e-mail.
Abrams, son of high-profile First Amendment lawyer Floyd Abrams, was named general manager of the NBC-owned cable network Monday.
He will report to Phil Griffin, who was named executive in charge of MSNBC.
Griffin will continue to oversee NBC’s “Today” show, as he has done for a little more than a year.
The new team replaces Rick Kaplan, who last week stepped down as president of MSNBC.
Kaplan had reported directly to NBC News president Steve Capus, who said Monday they were very fortunate that Griffin, an MSNBC alum who most recently had been in charge of its prime time, would reassume a leadership position.
Capus also acknowledged that putting Abrams in charge of day-to-day operations was a bit unorthodox.
But, Capus noted, so was naming NBC sports producer Jim Bell executive producer of “Today” in April 2005. Except that Bell had at least some producing credits. Among other things, he was coordinating producer for NBC’s Olympics coverage, responsible for all aspects of nearly 100 hours of afternoon and late-night Olympic programming during the 2004 Athens Summer Games, producer for other NBC broadcasts including the French Open and Wimbledon. You know – he’d run things.
Ah, but Abrams said, he has run “The Abrams Report.”
“I have been running my show for the last 4 1/2 years with a staff of 15 people and dealing with many of the same issues I’ll be dealing with on a grander scale running the network,” Abrams said.
And how has that been going? Let’s look at May, shall we? At 4 p.m. “The Abrams Report” clocked 211,000 viewers, while Wolf Blitzer’s “The Situation Room” on CNN averaged nearly 500,000 viewers and Fox News Channel’s “Your World With Neil Cavuto” averaged nearly 800,000.
At 6 p.m., “The Abrams Report” averaged 253,000 viewers, to Lou Dobbs’ 813,000 on CNN and Brit Hume’s 1.2 million viewers on Fox.
Asked what has been his biggest frustration running “The Abrams Report,” Abrams said, “The 6 o’clock time period has always been a very tough time period for that program.”
Still, Griffin insists Abrams is the perfect person for the job – as opposed to, say, someone who has run one of MSNBC’s more successful shows, such as “Hardball With Chris Matthews” or “Countdown With Keith Olbermann” (both averaged nearly 400,000 viewers between 7 and 9 p.m. in May) – because Abrams, who has been with the network since 1997, is the ultimate “insider.”
“He’s always been an insider,” Griffin said. “He’s a lawyer, and he understands things. He is a quick study; he’s always at the front when there’s a big legal story.”
Kaplan, who lasted little more than two years, was an outsider, hailing mostly from CNN and ABC News.
