Former MSNBC anchor Cenk Uygur, who was fired by the network this past summer, told an audience of bloggers that his ratings were great but that he was fired anyway. The record, however, paints a different picture.
As Mediaite reported in July when rumors surfaced that he was going to be replaced by Al Sharpton, Uygur’s ratings were consistently lower than those of Ed Schlutz, who had previously held that time slot and whom Uygur said his show outperformed.
Uygur’s firing didn’t have anything to to with his anti-establishment attitudes. MSNBC’s lineup is filled with hosts who consistently rail against Washington, especially if they are conservative and/or Republican. The problem was that his show wasn’t competitive and the network was looking for someone who could beat CNN.
Uygur, who spoke at the Blogworld/New Media Expo in Los Angeles, managed to attract an audience of just 10 people for his speech, which was somewhat reminiscent of his inability to attract an audience on MSNBC.
Don Irvine is the chairman of Accuracy in Media and its sister organization Accuracy in Academia. As the son of Reed Irvine, who launched AIM in 1969, he developed an understanding of media bias at an early age, and has been actively involved with AIM for over 30 years.
