Tamron Hall is one of the anchors on the MSNBC. Image: MSNBC

This May, the ratings plunge at MSNBC caused the news station to drop from its second place standing behind Fox News into fourth place.

Fox held on to the top spot with an average daily 1.246 million viewers, while HLN, which covered the Jodi Arias case extensively, bolted up to second place, giving it the best May it’s ever had. CNN continued its upward trajectory, with an especially good showing from the adults-ages-25-to-54 group, which increased in viewership by 92 percent to 161,000 people.

But MSNBC had a poor showing, even from favorites like Chris Hayes, who had the debut of his show All In With Chris Hayes, and Rachel Maddow, who’s 9pm program had its lowest raged month since September 2008, according to The Hollywood Reporter. MSNBC is a favorite among African Americans, owing in large part to the diversity in its line up. But that wasn’t enough. So what gives?

Phil Griffin, president of the channel, explains its 20 percent drop by looking at its brand. They don’t really do breaking news. “We’re not the place for that,” The New York Times quotes him saying. MSNBC’s tagline, notes the Times, is “The Place for Politics,” and since it re-imagined itself as a network for the liberal take on political news about a decade ago, there has been success.

But since the inauguration, it’s been breaking news that’s making news. From tornadoes in Oklahoma and wildfires in California, to the attacks at the Boston Marathon, to things like the Arias case and sporting tournaments, other news has taken center stage.

Or, as one former news producer says, “People are just sick of politics.”

MSNBC’s Griffin notes that Fox is actually way down, and there’s a natural ebb and flow to the ratings for the different networks. But the network can’t stand to lose big ratings (and big money) month after month if the ratings stay low. The question then becomes do they shift some to make up ground, or do they stay the course until politics becomes big news again.

Are you still steadfastly tuning in to MSNBC? Or have you moved on to other things.

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Could TV get any less diverse? It seems so.

Research from Media Matters finds that evening cable news guests were overwhelmingly white and male in the month of April. During that month, 76 percent of the 1,677 guests on CNN were men. And women did not make up more than 33 percent of guests on any network, reports the organization. Often called out for its racially insensitive  reporting, Fox News had the largest proportion of white guests — 83 percent. Despite the lack of diversity across the board, African Americans were the largest non-white group on all networks, representing 19 percent, 10 percent, and five percent of guests on MSNBC, Fox, and CNN, respectively.

White women, who represent 32 percent of the population, were only 21 percent of guests on cable, found the study. (White males make up only 31 percent of the U.S. population.) And non-white women who make up 19 percent of the population, were only eight percent of all guests on cable. Only 13 percent of guests on cable were non-white men yet they make up 18 percent of the population.

As far as having women on, out of 109 on CNN’s Outfront guests during the month of April, an overwhelming 81 percent were men. And, no evening show on CNN hosted women more than 29 percent of the time. Out of 128 guests who appeared on the CNN program On the Record guests in April, only 22 were women. This represented the smallest proportion of women on any evening cable news show studied. Surprisingly, The O’Reilly Factor and Hannity hosted women more often than On the Record or Special Report with Bret Baier. However, men still dominated guest lineups at 64 and 66 percent, respectively.

Over at MSNBC, they hosted more women than all of the other cable networks. On that network, All In with Chris Hayes and The Rachel Maddow Show had a higher proportion of women than any of the other programs. However, Hardball with Chris Matthews hosted women only 21 percent of the time. Although The Rachel Maddow Show had a higher percentage of women, most of its guests were white. Out of 65 total guests, only seven were non-white.

By contrast, All In With Chris Hayes not only hosted the largest proportion of women it also had  the largest proportion of non-white guests — 41 percent. All In also had the lowest proportion of white men making it the only evening cable news program to obtain such diversity.

Long story short, cable news needs to do better to represent varying perspectives. You can’t speak to everyone when everyone isn’t represented on the screen.

Paul Bruinooge/PatrickMcMullan.com/Sipa USA (Sipa via AP Images)

Her new production company, Starfish Media Group, was only announced a few days ago, but already, CNN anchor Soledad O’Brien says she’s gotten four documentary pitches. Starfish doesn’t actually launch until June. And O’Brien is seated in the anchor chair at CNN until May or June.

O’Brien told The Huffington Post that the situation was a “win-win” for everyone.

“We did not get a lot of promotion. We did not get a lot of marketing. We weren’t fully staffed,” she said of her show Starting Point. Still, she maintains that the show did “a really good job.” At the moment, she has no plans to continue as an anchor once the gig at CNN is over. Starfish will be producing three documentaries in 2014 including one more installment of the “Black in America” series.

According to TVNewser, O’Brien doesn’t have a bad word to say about Jeff Zucker, CNN’s new president and the man responsible for putting Chris Cuomo and Erin Burnett in the network’s morning lineup. Moreover, she agrees that the network “positively needed to be changed.”

O’Brien may not have anything bad to say about the network, but The National Association of Hispanic Journalists (NAHJ) and the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ) both have a lot to say to Zucker about the low level of diversity at the network. Gregory H. Lee Jr., the president of the NABJ, is said to be speaking with the CNN board.

Zucker spoke to the National Association of Black Journalists yesterday, just days after O’Brien made her departure known. The NAHJ, also citing O’Brien’s departure, noted that Zoraida Sambolin, host of Early Start from 5am to 7am, is the only Latina in the daytime and evening schedule.

“NAHJ urges CNN to take judicious positive steps in diversifying its lineup and filling this void with the hiring of Latino talent for its English-language network. Diversity must be of the utmost importance as CNN looks to successfully grow its network’s brand,” the organization said.

MSNBC was recently rewarded with elevated ratings from black audiences, owing in part to the diversity in its anchor lineup. Diversity in the news isn’t an option, but a necessity.

The 2009 inauguration of President Barack Obama
(Ryan Rodrick Beiler / Shutterstock.com)

If you can’t make it to the Presidential Inauguration, tune into BET. BET and CENTRIC With LIVE BET will feature Inauguration news and MLK dedicated specials. This special programming began over the weekend with airings of films like Queen and Roots, and today the cable network will air live coverage of the 57th Presidential Inauguration of President Barack Obama titled “From King to President: America Celebrates” that starts at 11am ET.

According to a press release, BET News will provide extensive on-air and online coverage of the Inauguration of the 44th President of the United States, as well as celebrate the Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday. Award-winning journalists Ed Gordon and Cynne Simpson will anchor coverage of the Inauguration and will include a discussion with renowned civil rights activists, political pundits and pop culture experts from the roof of the Newseum in Washington, DC.

BET News will also be on the spot with contributors reporting from the U.S. Capitol and along the Inauguration parade. The coverage will also include interviews from the inauguration with Civil Rights activist Myrlie Evers-Williams, the first laywoman to give an invocation at a presidential inauguration; national African American vote director for Obama for America, Stefanie Brown James; Commander in Chic author Mikki Taylor; and Martin Luther King, Jr.’s daughter Elder Bernice A. King.

It doesn’t stop there. BET Networks will also host an Inaugural Ball on Monday, January 21 at the Smithsonian American Art Museum.

If you’re looking to channel surf throughout the day, there will be no shortage of inauguration coverage. A quick look at the dial shows that CBS and NBC along with CNN, MSNBC, PBS, and a number of other stations will also be airing inauguration coverage throughout the day.

PatrickMcMullan.com via AP Images

African Americans are changing their TV viewing habits. As we reported recently, more blacks are tuning in to cable  TV. And that includes cable news channels. Case in point, the newly released ratings for MSNBC. The channel has recently seen a 60.5 percent black audience increase in 2012.

One of the reasons blacks viewers are tuning in is the network’s “progressive leaning approach to the news and wide array of Black hosts and pundits likely helped cause the increase,” writes Ebony. The channel already had a significant number of viewers who were African American, and this only adds to its dominance with black viewers. Compare this with CNN, which saw an increase of  23.7% of black viewers. And Fox News, not surprisingly, had a decrease in its black audience numbers. (Fox News’ Hannity actually shed about half of its viewers after the election some think because the show was so wrong about how the voting was going to go.)

Andrew Toth/PatrickMcMullan.com/Sipa USA (Sipa via AP Images)

MSNBC has an array of black hosts and pundits, including Toure, Melissa Harris-Perry, Tamron Hall, Joy-Ann Reid, Karen Finney, Michael Steele, Rev. Al Sharpton, Eugene Robinson, Jonathan Capehart, and Goldie Taylor.

“I think we made a commitment, we decided, that in order for this channel to succeed, that we had to reflect the country. This meant that we had to be part of the country in ways that the other channels weren’t,” remarked MSNBC president Phil Griffith recently, as reported by Ebony.

“We have a diverse on-air group of people, because that matters, and people want to know that we reflect their world. And it’s not just a single show – it’s across the board. You look at the guests every hour and we make sure that we have women, African Americans, everything, and I think to spend a day watching MSNBC is to see America as we have seen it.”

AP

I remember it like it was yesterday. 2008 was the first time I would ever get to vote in a presidential election, and it was my first time voting in general. I remember thinking how blessed we were as a people to have come so far as to finally have a black candidate make it so far in the presidential race, and for him to actually win? Man, oh man. My roommate and I were in our apartment with our “I voted” stickers stuck to our chests balling on the floor in the fetal position after we heard the news, but we were ecstatic! An African-American president! My vote really mattered–now if only my brother and my grandmother could have been around to see THIS. Yeah, that day was a great day.

Flash forward four years later and all the glitz and celebration from that last election night are long gone. We’re just a few days from this year’s election, which will determine whether or not President Obama will have the opportunity to finish what he started with a second term or if Mitt Romney will be allowed to take his business expertise and 47 percent mentality into the white house to work for the people–some of the people of course. I can’t wait to vote. Not because I’m particularly excited about the election process anymore (But I’m proud to vote because I know what people went through so that I can), but I can’t wait because I’m tired as hell. I’m tired of being forced to watch political pundits and newspapers tell me the opposite information on the same day about alleged “new polls,” what independent voters think, what early voters are doing, and what folks in the swing states are all wondering. Don’t even get me started on the fickle folks who are being fought over like the last bit of food for claiming to be undecided.

The ads are annoying, the language used on the campaign trail is petty and I could barely get through the debates without wanting to scream “SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP!” And there’s something extremely maddening about knowing the lengths some people are going to in order to stifle the vote of the people, particularly, older minorities who don’t have particular forms of ID. And on a sidenote, if Mitt Romney doesn’t win then we’ll have wasted almost a whole damn year having to hear the opinions of an individual who might become an afterthought this time next year (I wish Sarah Palin would disappear gracefully already). My boyfriend now knows from my huffs and puffs and grunts that when I enter his home, I am not trying to watch Al Sharpton yell on MSNBC, Sean Hannity’s smug a** on Fox News, anybody on CNN and any other channels that are reporting on the election. I barely want to watch “The View” these days because I know Elizabeth Hasselbeck will say something out of the side of her neck to irk my nerves.

The Internet has allowed for election news and flip-flopping updates to be everywhere, and while I’m all for being informed to make a wise decision at the polls, I’ve honestly known how I was going to vote since before Republican’s nominated their candidate (I can’t run with people who aren’t down with protecting women’s rights, point blank period), therefore, being inundated with every new poll or projection to try and rattle my spirit and have a sista doubting everything is irritating. Remember that story about the Canadian station who found a way to block any info about Chris Brown and Nickelback from showing up on your computer? I could use that right about now…

But don’t get me wrong. As Diddy and friends said years ago, go out there and rock the vote. Take your friends and family and the fool down the street with you to the polls and exercise your rights. But I know I’m not alone in tiring of this political process. I’m especially tired of news that the polls are too close to call because I know folks want us to spend the weekend biting our nails and panicking about the “What ifs”, yet depending on the link you click on or the station you watch, somebody is already claiming to know who’s going to win. So who’s in denial here?

I know who I want to win and who I want to pack up their binders of women and go away, but at this point, I’m ready for whatever news I hear next Wednesday morning. All I can do is contribute my vote, pray on it, and hope that this time around it will make a difference once again. But for the next few days leading up to election day, I don’t want to be bothered with what the leaning pundits, the back and forth publications and even the folks on “The 700 Club” think about who’s going to come out the victor. Only God knows and that’s all right with me. I’m just hoping we can all come out with our sanity when the electoral votes and popular votes are all counted, because I can’t wait to move on with my life and be election-free and in peace.

(New York Times) — Last year, Comcast was lining up the Rev. Al Sharpton to lobby for its bid for NBCUniversal. This year, the cable news channel owned by NBCUniversal, MSNBC, is weighing whether to make him a daily television host.  The possible transition for Mr. Sharpton — from political influencer to television talent — highlights the complex relationships that can arise when cable news channels employ activists who take sides instead of journalists who don’t.  Mr. Sharpton, the president of the National Action Network, a civil rights organization, was one of the many activists and boldface names who agreed to support Comcast as it sought government approval for its takeover of NBCUniversal.

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(Wall Street Journal) – Time Warner Inc. is increasing the number of TV channels and programs it pipes over the Internet to people who have conventional pay-TV subscriptions, as the television business faces growing competition from Web-video services.  Starting Monday, the New York media giant plans to make live simulcasts of its CNN and HLN cable-news channels available on the Web to people who subscribe to participating TV distributors, including Comcast Corp., Dish Network Corp., and Verizon Communications Inc.  Subscribers can sign in to watch on CNN’s website or on Apple Inc. devices like the iPad. The simulcasts—which will mirror everything shown on TV, including ads—will be made available on other mobile devices in coming months, CNN said.  The plan is Time Warner’s latest effort to expand online access to its programming for cable- and satellite-TV subscribers. Earlier this year, its premium channel HBO added more than 1,400 hours of programming to its HBO Go service, which also is available only to subscribers of participating distributors, such as DirecTV Inc.

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(LA Times) — CNN’s newly announced prime-time news lineup has come under fire by the NAACP, which claims the slate continues a multi-network trend that excludes African Americans from prime-time slots as anchors and hosts.  ”As CNN announced their new schedule, a glaring omission was present — no African Americans were hosts or anchors in their prime time lineup,” NAACP President and Chief Executive Benjamin Todd Jealous said in a statement. “The NAACP is deeply concerned with the lack of African American journalists in prime time, both on cable and national network news shows.”

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