Last week MSNBC host Joy Reid got fired, one of many outcomes as a result of the network’s disastrous ratings collapse following the election of President Donald Trump. It was long overdue, as are several other steps the network should take. Following the news the President called attention to the failings of the Chairman/CEO of MSNBC’s parent company Comcast, as reported by The Wrap:
President Donald Trump mocked longtime MSNBC anchor Joy Reid for losing her show on Sunday, saying the “mentally obnoxious racist” should have been “canned” years ago.
The president also had digs ready for Comcast boss Brian Roberts (pictured above), Rachel Maddow, Al Sharpton and Alex Wagner, who is also set to lose her job as an MSNBC anchor, during a late night Truth Social post on Sunday.
“Lowlife Chairman of ‘Concast,’ Brian Roberts, the owner of Ratings Challenged NBC and MSDNC, has finally gotten the nerve up to fire one of the least talented people in television,” Trump said about Reid. “Based on her ratings, which were virtually non-existent, she should have been ‘canned’ long ago, along with everyone else who works there.”
Roberts has allowed the value of MSNBC and other networks including CNBC, USA Network and Oxygen to diminish to pennies on the dollar, to the point of wanting to spin off the formerly respectable cable staples into their own company. Collectively the channels have become a drag on the parent company’s bottom-line.
MSNBC is the most high-profile of the properties that are planned for divestment, and had Roberts exercised proper oversight, it could have remained a valuable contributor to Comcast’s portfolio. Instead he allowed partisan personalities with Trump Derangement Syndrome to dominate its programming, reporting hoax after hoax as truth, and destroying its credibility in the process. With its roots (and significant news gathering partnership) tied to the over-air NBC Network, the taint has splattered onto its more mainstream counterpart, devaluing that property also (although that will stay under Comcast’s umbrella). Meanwhile Fox Corporation makes money hand-over-fist from Fox News, so the routine whining about “cord-cutting” in the cable industry rings hollow.
In a couple of months NLPC will present a shareholder proposal at Comcast’s annual meeting that will call for Roberts’s power to be reduced by separating the roles of Chairman and CEO. Last year we sought greater disclosure on the part of the company’s leftist board to disclose members’ political and charitable donations before votes are held at the company’s annual meetings, but the Securities and Exchange Commission allowed Comcast to exclude our proposal. So instead we disclosed their campaign contributions ourselves, based on public records at the FEC, in our own filing with the SEC.
NLPC’s proposal won’t get the boot this year.
