Rachel Maddow has been
a star waiting to happen
for some time.
A funny, unflappable,
outspoken liberal on
MSNBC, often appearing
as a guest and sometimes
substituting for Keith
Olbermann, Maddow
will get her own MSNBC
show after the conventions,
beginning Sept. 8.
She replaces Dan Abrams, host of “Verdict” and former general manager of the network, MSNBC announced this week (Olbermann did sanctioned leaks online and on “Countdown”). Abrams is expected to stick around as chief legal correspondent for NBC News.
Maddow, unlike the more circumspect Abrams, is clearly telegenic, left-of-center and proud, able to lend a sharp sense of humor to her tweaks of the current administration. She’s seemed ready for her own desk for some time. Giving her a soapbox sets up MSNBC as more effectively calibrated to do battle with conservative hosts on Fox News. Her hiring also marks a first for a woman entering the boys’ club of cable chat.
Another first: According to the Washington Post, Maddow, 35, lives with her girlfriend, Susan Mikula, in Manhattan and Northampton, Mass., and “may be the first openly gay woman to host a prime-time (political) program.”
The magazine The Nation, in a rave review christening her the “star of the season,” called Maddow “a Ph.D. Rhodes scholar lesbian policy wonk who started as a prison AIDS activist.”
Smart, articulate and forceful on the air, with views you don’t hear from the male policy wonks, Maddow is a radio host on Air America. Olbermann has been singing her praises on and off the air for months. Phil Griffin, the president of MSNBC, believes with Maddow’s addition, the network’s lineup makes sense.
Not so fast. The MSNBC lineup makes sense only if you live in the Eastern time zone. Otherwise, the parade of “Lockup” titillating prison “documentaries,” and sex trade “specials,” using those terms loosely, continue to confound.
Time to clean up the prime- time act — for all time zones.
Why, particularly in an election year, is the cable network that fancies itself “the place for politics” continuing to serve “Lockup,” (at 9 and 10 weeknights locally, seemingly all night Saturdays), a redundant series about violence in prisons, gang violence in prisons, violence in maximum security prisons, violence behind bars in less-secure prisons, ad nauseam?
Of course “Sex Slaves in America,” airing at 4 p.m. Saturday locally, doesn’t do much to bolster the “place for politics” brand identity, either.
Now that MSNBC is moving toward a more coherent lineup, it needs a more-coherent image. At some point, MSNBC needs to start acting like a real network.
More convention plans
“Snapshots From the DNC,” a half-hour airing nightly at 9:30 p.m. on Channel 12 immediately following convention coverage (in collaboration with KCNC-Channel 4), will cover convention events and behind-the-scenes stories.
Cable’s Lifetime Network will park their “Every Woman Counts” tour bus in Highland Square during the convention. Women (the network’s target audience) are invited to stop by and upload video stating what they would do if they were president. Highland Square will offer a free shuttle to the area from downtown. The shuttle will make hourly pickups from several downtown hotels (see schedule at ).
BET’s “106 & Park,” the network’s most popular show, will broadcast from the Community College of Aurora throughout the convention.
And let’s not forget C-SPAN has a new online feature for this year’s conventions: Convention Hub at the network’s website will make embeddable C-SPAN convention video available for online use.
Joanne Ostrow: 303-954-1830 or jostrow@denverpost.com
