NBC is going to change the name of its popular website MSNBC.com so that the public does not associate it with the liberal cable network MSNBC.
The cable network MSNBC unveiled this week “Lean Forward,” a new ad campaign which embraces its lefty agenda. At the same time, the mothership, NBC Universal and partner Microsoft ran the other way, taking the huge MSNBC website with them.
“They want to change the name of the website because they don’t want the NBC name even more associated with MSNBC,” says a network insider. “NBC News doesn’t want to be known as the left-leaning, the ‘forward leaning' outlet.”
The corporate brass decision to disassociate its brands was caused by the public’s confusing the uber-liberal cable TV outlet with the straight-news website of the same name, according to internal memos obtained by The New York Times.
The president of MSNBC.com, Charlie Tillinghast, wrote in one of the memos that “naming them the same thing is brand insanity.”
MSNBC.com gets over 50 million users a month, making it the third biggest news website, after CNN.com and Yahoo.
The NBC executives’ decision to change is a risky marketing maneuver and says a lot about how much the network brass abhor association with the liberal cable outlet.
“The websites for these cable channels are much more aligned with what people want,” says one media strategist. “They are more popular, they just give people what they want, when they want it. Caring more about the user than themselves.”
The MSNBC cable channel makes no attempt to give balance political news. The network’s shows are anchored by hyper-liberals—Keith Olbermann, Rachel Maddow, Ed Schultz, Chris Matthews and Lawrence O’Donnell.
The NBC network correspondents and producers, who attempt to be straightforward reporters, say they are embarrassed to be associated with the liberal cable outlet and fear being “tainted” by association with it.
Fox is by far the cable news ratings leader, but MSNBC is second, beating CNN in prime time. However only 50% of the public knows the MSNBC brand, compared to 96% recognition of the CNN brand.
“It’s a niche world out there but we’re going to own this world and ‘Lean Forward’ is going to be the lens by which we own it,” said MSNBC President Phil Griffin.
The “Lean Forward” campaign is Griffin’s baby; it will include bus and train signs, print advertising and 60-second commercials directed by radical movie director e Lee.
The multi-million dollar campaign is the biggest and costliest in the cable network’s history and is planned for two and a half years, concluding at the end of President Obama’s term in the White House.
MSNBC and the Obama White House has a mutual love-fest. In an official briefing, Deputy White House spokesman Bill Burton said that “Keith Olbermann or Rachel Maddow … keep our government honest and pushes and prods to make sure that folks are true to progressive values.”
The niche audience which Griffin is targeting is the small number of Americans who identify themselves as liberals. He is unabashed in describing his audience as East Coast, blue state, urban, elite.
Griffin said that the "Lean Forward" campaign targets “the entire East Coast corridor, where we know we have a large audience.” He said you’ll see the “Lean Forward” ads "at Grand Central Station... Penn Station, Philadelphia...in Washington because we know that’s a really important corridor.”
MSNBC isn’t even attempting to advertise outside of the insular world in which its anchors and producers live themselves. Basically, if you live anywhere outside of the D.C. to NYC corridor, MSNBC doesn’t expect you to watch.
However, the president of MSNBC.com is not happy with the limited audience targeted by the cable TV outlet. Tillinghast wrote that the “Lean Forward” campaign “only exacerbates the brand misalignment problem” and leaves the website an “impartial news product.”
“Fox is obviously more right of center but no one is running from the Fox name,” says a network insider of the MSNBC brand-name hot potato.
“It’s just so funny that MSNBC is now tainted. It’s the danger of picking a direction like that.”
http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=39332
A narc is commanded by his superiors to spy on himself.
And starts to film his own daily activities, employing artful editing as unobtrusively as possible
Theme is schizophrenia. NBC is distancing itself from its own name.
Last edited by Winehole23; 10-14-2010 at 08:40 AM.
I'll just put this here... to break the WH chain...
edit: WH, you have encouraged me to read more philip k ...
Last edited by Bender; 10-14-2010 at 10:23 AM.
It doesn't really matter which one you start with. He basically wrote the same book over and over again.
I've read a ton of classic sci-fi back in my teenage years, 1970s... but not any of his if I remember. I mostly stayed with Heinlein, and a couple others.
so why is p k considered classic stuff?
PKD weaves a highly psychedelic yarn and his comic abilities are underrated. His style is nothing to write home about, but his imagination is impressive.
Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldtritch, UBIK, Flow My Tears The Policeman Said, A Scanner Darkly and the Valis books, pretty much in that order for me. PKD also wrote a "straight" novel called Confessions of a Crap Artist that I think is underappreciated.
was a better book than it was a movie, IMO.Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
Take a shot whenever you read "liberal" with some superlative in front of it.
God, no kidding... "hyper-liberal," "uber-liberal".... Not to mention "radical movie director e Lee."
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