MSNBC Chief Vows To Target Young Progressives

Phil Griffin

MSNBC president Phil Griffin, whose CableTV news network is the only one among the big three to lose primetime viewers this season, told staffers he would look to turn things around by continuing a push in 2015 for younger viewers.

Griffin, according to The NY Post, also promised “to get on the road — and outside of Washington” to broaden the network’s coverage.

“It’s no secret that 2014 was a difficult year for the entire cable news industry and especially for msnbc,” Griffin wrote in a memo to staff.

“We have a long history of finding and nurturing great talent — and with an eye toward 2016 — we continued to build our next generation of top-notch journalists,” Griffin wrote.

The memo then singled out such twenty-something hosts as Ronan Farrow, Kasie Hunt and Alex-Seitz Wald.

It also touted Shift, MSNBC’s just-launched streaming news service, which “is already allowing us to reach new, younger audiences.”

MSNBC’s push to embrace youth makes sense for the only cable news network to see its prime time audience erode in the current season, as measured by Nielsen.

Its 548,000 primetime viewers aged 2 and older — down 18 percent from the comparable season a year ago — ranked third to No. 2 CNN’s 560,00 (up 15 percent) and Fox News Channel’s 1,845,00 (up 1 percent).

MSNBC’s ratings slide suggests that Griffin’s making the network “the place to go for progressives” has outlived its usefulness as an audience builder.

A Pew Research study last year identified MSNBC as the most opinionated news network, with factual reporting accounting for just 15 percent of its content.

Read More Now