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For execution of Donahue, General Electric supplied the current

Date published: 3/5/2003

WASHINGTON--Monopolist Microsoft and oligopolist General Electric--the co-owners of MSNBC--took their highest rated show off the air and sent Phil Donahue away on Feb. 25. After choosing Donahue to host his own 8 p.m. daily show only six months ago, the corporate managers micromanaged, mismanaged, and refused to let Phil Donahue be Phil Donahue.

About the only freedom Donahue had was the freedom to say what he thinks. Beyond that, he was often told what kinds of subjects to showcase and what kind of guests to have. And he was often chided for being too tough on some guests--shades of Fox's Bill O'Reilly, his competition for that hour, and the spitting, screeching, viper-like Sean Hannity.

In the past few months, the corporate "suits" even told Donahue that he had to have more conservative or right-wing guests than liberals on the same hour show. Still, Donahue persevered. His ratings were slowly increasing, despite the regular lacerations that the top brass inflicted on a show that was supposed to be the liberal counterpart of the right-wing, bellicose Fox fare stitched together by Rupert Murdoch's media empire.

MSNBC, which was receiving ratings of about 440,000 viewers for Donahue, was aiming for 1,000,000 people. Were they interested in one million predominately liberal viewers attracted to the legendary talk-show host who, starting in the '60s, broke apart on morning television the biases or taboos against women, minorities, gays and lesbians, downtrodden workers, and consumer and environmental rights? Doubtful.

For if they were, some of their promotional budgets would have gone for reaching liberal audiences of the kind who read Utne Reader magazine and Mother Jones, or who watch various PBS outlets and other serious programming.

What emerged was quite different than that described by Steve Friedman, former producer of NBC's "Today" and the CBS "Early Show," who told a reporter:

"I think MSNBC felt the way to beat Fox was to do a liberal version of what Fox was doing, and Phil was a good person to do that. I don't know if they were really committed to that."

They were not. Instead, the top brass allowed other pulls to shatter the identity and consistency of the show--which, by the way, would have always provided for contrary views to those held by Phil.

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Date published: 3/5/2003