Microsoft Leaving MSNBC TV Partnership

pnewhook writes to tell us The New York Times is reporting that Microsoft and NBC have announced that they will be dissolving their joint cable TV news channel, MSNBC, with NBC retaining control. From the article: "NBC has completed a deal to assume majority control of the channel immediately, with an 82 percent stake, and it will become the sole owner within two years, NBC executives said yesterday. The two companies did not disclose financial terms of the deal. But the partners will continue their 50-50 ownership of the MSNBC Web site, which, partly as a consequence of its affiliation with Microsoft, is the most-used news site on the Internet."

Comments

Over a barrel?

[Tufriast]

I guess NBC got tired of M$'s demanding ways. Either that, or M$ wasn't really doing anything with the TV division...and they just were using it for marketing.
Try the Guardian for better news, or the BBC. The Brits got one thing right in my opinion: good *newsworthy* journalism. (And yeah, I'm ignoring their tabloid division...lol.)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/ http://news.bbc.co.uk/

Re:Over a barrel?

[dubsyngin]

actual link to the BBC Story bbc story

Re:Over a barrel?

[cbiltcliffe]

How much do you want to bet that in a year or two we'll see a Microsoft owned and run TV channel? Probably full of "studies" and "news stories" about how much Windows saved some company, too...

This just in: Microsoft Windows saved Joe's Sushi Emporium $28 million dollars over 1 month!

Re:Over a barrel?

[IgnoramusMaximus]

Those that prefer a left slant are watching CNN

Every time I see someone calling CNN "left-slanted", "left-biased" etc, I can't help but laugh at the success of the brainwashing of the American TV audience. "Left" biased?! Mother Jones or CounterPunch are examples of a "left-biased" media not CNN. CNN to many of us Canadians looks like a bastion of inane apologisms for the ruling elites (regardless of which side they are on), generic, incompetent disinformation (mostly right leaning) combined with massive amounts of brainless "infotainment". In short, CNN is a pathetic result of trying to appear "unbiased" while pandering to the lowest common denominator. As opposed to FOX which tries hard to pander to the lowest elements of the right-wing crowds and thus tries to inflame and profit from "us vs them" psychosis, persecution complexes, medieval theocratic throwbacks etc, and yet it loudly proclaims to be "unbiased" and "no spin". While offering nothing but.

In general it appears that the enemies of the liberal phillosophies managed to shift the lanugage so that "left" is now renamed "extreme loony left", "center" to "left" and everything else "conservative". It is an interesting -- albait sad -- Orwellian language war to watch for us outsiders.

Re:Over a barrel?

[snilloc]

As I perceived it, Fox News was GREAT when it first came out, then degraded after only a few years. Now the only things worth watching on Fox News are "Special Report w/ Brit Hume" (the 6-7pm news show) and "Fox News Sunday" (which also airs on Fox affiliates).

For a long time, CNN was the only game in town. Now it seems to have drifted significantly leftward. I accidentally watched half an hour of CNN recently and found myself wanting to interject after each partial-fact was announced. But if there's anything CNN isn't, it's "right leaning".

MSNBC seems to take good talent and good shows and make them into crap. "Hardball" was once the best show of its genre because it had a large devotion to analysis. Now it's a shouting match like all the others. "The Situation w/ Tucker Carlson" was at least entertaining and engaging (a friendly "Air-America" host usually debates Tucker for a significant percentage of the show), but they moved it to the 11pm slot where I can't really justify staying up to watch it.

I reflexively change the channel any time I see the following people on a show: Andrea Mitchell (MS/NBC reporter), Sen. Barbara Boxer, Cindy Sheehan, Sen. Harry Reid, Rep. Nancy Pelosi. Those people are all insane and should be given large quantities of psychoactive drugs.

None of the network nightly newscasts are worth a damn. Some of the better shows are the weekly ones: Meet the Press, Washington Week (PBS), Fox News Sunday, McLaughlan Group, and as an honarable mention, the Chris Matthews Show.

Thank God for the internet.

Re:Over a barrel?

[IgnoramusMaximus]

For a long time, CNN was the only game in town. Now it seems to have drifted significantly leftward

I would disagree. I think it drifted downward which to a leftie appears to be to the "right" and to a conservative appears to be "left". In actuality they just suck.

But if there's anything CNN isn't, it's "right leaning".

See above. To me they appear "rightward leaning" (but that is because of where I am in the relation to them on this crude left-right spectrum). But objectively speaking, I am prepared to accept that it is mostly because they just cant keep their lies and disinformation straight and I tend to notice the "right-leaning" bullshit more then the other kind. As I said earlier, this is most likely the result of their pathetic attempts to pander to the lowest common denominator, the knuckle dragger viewing audience. Subsequently they appear completely far-out to any thinking person, be it on the left or right.

None of the network nightly newscasts are worth a damn

I have to agree with you there. The problem seems to be systemic. I blame it on the owners of the networks who seem to seek either easy profits (by lowering the bar) or have some hidden agendas on the menu, amongst which stupifying of the American audience features prominently.

Thank God for the internet.

I concur (although, being an Atheist, I would formulate that sentiment differently). The internet is the last bastion of democracy at this point. That is why I am so concerned about the efforts of MPAAs/RIAAs and other "intellectual property" greed-mongers to lock it completely down, ostensibly for profit, but anyone with half a brain can tell where it would end up from the political perspective.

Re:Over a barrel?

[IgnoramusMaximus]

The headline was "War on the Middle Class". That's left biased, don't you think?

How so? Can you explain? I would think its simply stupid. A "war" is not waged here, there are no bullets flying or tanks rolling. Next, who exactly is waging this "war"? Depending on the answer on this question you could try to ascertain his bias. But seeing Dobbs drivel a few times before I would assume he was moaning about nebulous "corporate crooks". That is, in his view, the whole economic policy of globalisation is fine and dandy but the job exporting is a result of "unpatriotic", "crooked" companies who take advantage of US tax breaks and then export jobs. This is not a "lefty" stance. A leftist would consider the whole concept of multi-nationals and urestricted free trade to be lunatic and thus all such activities perpetrated by these companies would be simply included in it. Lou on the other hand is a conservative who is trying to be a populist and therefore he looks for "crimes" that are commited by these companies, instead at the whole systemic disaster which the WTO-friendly trade policies are. He is appealing to "patriotism" instead to looking at the economic mechanisms put in place not only by Bush administration but a while host of others before them, starting with Regan (and yes, that includes Clinton).

In short, Lou is just an incompetent ass who is desperately looking for ratings, while his personal views are far closer to that of "conservatives" then the US "liberals".

Re:Over a barrel?

[IgnoramusMaximus]

That study is positively bonkers.

From the article:

Groseclose and Milyo then directed 21 research assistants -- most of them college students -- to scour U.S. media coverage of the past 10 years. They tallied the number of times each media outlet referred to think tanks and policy groups, such as the left-leaning NAACP or the right-leaning Heritage Foundation.

This would create massive "bias" towards the "left" as soon as ACLU (which I guarantee you was counted as "far left") enters the fray. It is an extremely active organisation, involved in a multitude of high profile lawsuits over the years and it alone, by the virtue of all of the news programs being forced to mention them, would, by this insane criteria, create "left bias".

The actual measuring stick is far harder and a matter of interpretation as the example of the so called Main Stream Media shows clearly, most liberals believe it to be slanted right and most conservatives the exact oposite.

What this whole hoopla misses is that the true reporters' job is quite different. They are not supposed to offer any commentary, by any think tanks, left, right, polka-dotted or any other kind. Their only masters are verifiability and accuracy. The rest is up to the think tanks and talking heads to deal with themselves on their respective obscure soapboxes, somewhere else. The reporter's job is to investigate and report anything of any consequence. They are in fact our, the voter's, "Intelligence Service". They are supposed to relentlessly spy on our behalf, particularly on the activities of our elected officials, regardless of party or affiliation.

For example, if the stupid news media were doing their job, the WMD Iraq fiasco would never happen. The Bush administration WMD rationale would have been shot down and deflated looong before any military action started and he would have to either get a new, more compelling, rationale or back off. That is the true measure of the media bias. In this particular case most media were cowed and submissive to the thundering "patriotic" rhetoric of the Bush administration and by doing so reinforced the jingoistic, uncritical march to war. Real newsmen would not be so easily "embeded" into the machinations of a few politicians, no matter how intimidating or popular.

used like the whore it is

[blueadept1]

is the most-used news site on the Internet.

Probably because every second person has it set as their *recommended* homepage as a result of installing MSN 150 times over the past 3 years. Now all we need is slashdot messenger... yes, that's it, create a further divide in IM... muahaha!

Most used news site on the Internet?

[elvum]

The MSNBC Web site... is the most-used news site on the Internet.

Sez who? Alexa.com puts it orders of magnitude below the BBC News website, for example.

Re:Most used news site on the Internet?

[badasscat]

Sez who? Alexa.com puts it orders of magnitude below the BBC News website, for example.

Alexa is ranking bbc.co.uk, not the news site specifically. Alexa only distinguishes TLD's.

It would be the same thing if MSNBC numbers were counted as a part of the NBC web site, but they're not. MSNBC gets counted individually (because there is an "msnbc.com" TLD) and also as part of MSN's results (because MSNBC redirects to msnbc.msn.com).

The question is how many people get MSNBC news through MSN vs. manually typing in "www.msnbc.com" (or typing "msnbc" and hitting ctrl-enter). Myself, I type it in, but I suspect most people are just going to MSN.

So it's impossible to compare msnbc.com's numbers with news.bbc.co.uk's numbers because they're counted totally differently by Alexa. MSN itself has a much higher readership than the BBC as a whole, but you don't know what percentage of the users of each actually read the news on those sites.

btw, just related to the whole BBC issue - I find their news both as biased as anyone else and often pretty uninformed. The fact that they're biased more towards a European viewpoint, which may or may not better match the bias of most of the posters here, does not change anything. I also don't see any point whatsoever in linking to them for local stories in the United States, as I see happen often here - they are writing completely devoid of context. It is, specifically, incredibly annoying to me as a New Yorker when I see anyone link to them for a story about this city, because they always completely ignore the background issues at play, and are always writing with a skewed, bemused viewpoint that suggests "this isn't the way we do things in London!"

I would prefer it if article submitters would link to news sources with a better handle on the context of the stories they're reporting.

being a 'Brit'

[Skiron]

That is a terrible term. I am English. There are Welsh, Scottish and Irish people... a 'Brit' is unknown here.

Anyway, as to the BBC. It is terribly bias toward 'correctness' and really sometimes reports really bad information - "Cyclist dies after colliding with car" - of course, really the car hit the cyclist... etc. etc.

The BBC news site is perhaps the best around (the best of the worse), but it is very far from being perfect and 'unbiased', as it still is a mouthpiece for the Government, and thus, has to follow Government rules on what it can, and what it cannot, say (or report) correctly.

Re:being a 'Brit'

[MoonBuggy]

What's the problem with Brit? You don't (often) hear Americans complaining that they're actually from a particular state, why's it any different for us? Hell, I'm happy enough to be grouped in as European to be honest (although the rest of Europe may not be so happy with that), it's not like it really matters exactly where you're from.

As for the BBC, I agree they aren't perfect, but they're also a far cry from being a 'mouthpiece for the government'. If they're guilty of anything it's the overall 'softening' to come into line with the likes of ITN - they're nowhere near as bad as that yet, but they're showing signs of definite dumbing down; that said, I'd rather a station like the BBC had mass appeal and kept the facts pretty much straight rather than going for super-detail and driving all it's viewers to Sky News or Channel 5.

Re:being a 'Brit'

[oberondarksoul]

The BBC is hardly a 'mouthpiece for the Government' - while it receives funding in the form of the licence fee it has a duty to be impartial and not simply tell the news as the Government wants it.

As for the 'Brit' term, I have no problem with it - I'm English, and British. Being called either is fine with me. "English" just denotes me as being from a specific country within the UK, whereas British indicates I'm from the country as a whole. I don't see the controversy - it's not like calling a Scot an Englishman.

Re:being a 'Brit'

[xs650]

That's a relief, I thought they were calling us wanks.

Re:being a 'Brit'

[QuatermassX]

I'm not a Brit, but my girlfriend (who is, from Kent) usually prefers "British" to "English" when she's talking with Americans or someone from the EU ... although will more readily self-identify as "English" when talking to someone from, say, Scotland. Hmmm ... of course, if I decide to become a citizen, I'd be "British" ... or would I be an "AmeriBrit"? ;-)

And just to chime in: although I love the print and web edition of The Guardian (clean, crisp layout, great content is even more an attraction then the "Berliner" format they keeping boasting about). I'm not overly fond of the way information is organised on the BBC's site and subsites, but they are fascinating to page through endlessly.

And, aside from that damn Java headlines thing on the front page, I do tend to give The Telegraph's site marks over The Times (which used to be only partially accessible from outside Britain) and Independent (and damn their crappy "portfolio" pay to read nonsense - wonder where the NYT got the idea) sites. Although the Telegraph's Opinion page is silly Tory at times, their features reporting is superb.

Re:being a 'Brit'

[Wyatt Earp]

"'Britain' isn't a country", really?

Huh, conventional long form: United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland; note - Great Britain includes England, Scotland, and Wales http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/ uk.html

http://www.visitbritain.com/default.aspx

Calling someone from the United Kingdom's main island, Great Britain, a Brit is like calling someone from the United States of America an American.

You want to be called by your State name, English or other, then let us know where you are from and please ask everyone from the United States of America what State, Commonwealth, Protectorate, District, Indian Reservation, Incorporated Territory or Unincorperated Territory they are from and refer to us properly too. I'm a South Dakotan from the Cheyenne River Indian Reservation.

Re:being a 'Brit'

[HD Webdev]

That is a terrible term. I am English. There are Welsh, Scottish and Irish people... a 'Brit' is unknown here.

US Yanks will try to be a bit more careful in the future.

Media and computers don't seem to mix

[hackstraw]

Despite the market demand for computer media and success of the cable industry and broadband internet over cable, with the AOL/Time Warner issues and now the NBC and MS issues, it appears as though the media are still content being rich like they are now (who wouldn't??). But their strangle hold on the content and their inability to change is still evident, and the only people that are really slightly inconvenienced by their actions are their paying customers. Their non-paying counterparts are just inconvenienced. FYI, convenience sells (see iTunes, "fast" food, and convenience stores for an example).

AOL/Time Warner should have been a complete success. Time Warner owns stuff like HBO, and if they adopted something similar to the subscription model like "premium" channels it would have been a remarkable success. Content (Time Warner) and the control of the distribution channel (AOL) is ironically what they want, but can't seem to understand their own business very well. Look at the success of the porn industry with almost the same product, but they do not have a lock on the pipe like AOL/Time Warner did.

Personally, I never understood the NBC and MS union or what their goals were, but apparently neither did they.

A little story and a parallel to history

[argoff]

It was said that during the Mexican American war, that the Mexican armies had superior equiptment, training, and size to the US armies of the time. But the funny thing was that they lost badly because, it is said, that each general was so greedy for power and control - that they refused to work together with any of the other gnereals, thus fragmenting their forces and ensuring their loss.

In a way, it seems, that the same is true of the content cartels of today. They are so into controlling people to gain a monopoly on content distribution - that they can't possibly bring themselves to work with or to trust each other. Meanwhile Linux, and free and open source alternatives to media, contnet, and opperating systems are moving forward as a unified front.

I think both MS and NBC are going to get what's comming to them, and now considering the recnet X-box arrests where people were given hard time for merely copying content, and then charged with totally unrelated DMCA violations. (Two overkills with one stone) I will be all the more relieved to see Microsoft and the copyright cartel burn in financial hell when their time comes due. I really hope people don't get or return their X-boxes this season, if for anything - in the name of Christmas spirit.

MS is damn lucky Office and Windows are popular.

[SensitiveMale]

Because they have lost money on 99% of their other ventures.

If Office and Windows wasn't keeping them afloat, MS would have gone bankrupt a long time ago.

Wait...

[RedNovember]

So the MS in NBC stood for "Microsoft"? I always thought it was "More Stupid NBC"...

Come to think of it, there's not much difference there...

Re:Wait...

[tdubya]

maybe create an oribinal response next time rather than pulling it out a can... the only thing "more stupid" was your remark.

Media Center

[TheUncleD]

Microsofts original idea was to tie in the media center to this. I had the 'not so' pleasurable opportunity to sit next to the head of the Media center department on an airplane ride once who told me the network was supposed to be used in conjunction with their M$ Media Center software for channel controls and additional advertising for M$ Products. I'm not a huge fan of NBC or M$'s Media Center products which have proven to do nothing extra-special (s-video out/in) boog whoopdiedoo. I think its a flop mainly. On some interesting facts, Media Center project employs 400 or so M$ employees and was in beta until last year.

Re:Media Center

[93 Escort Wagon]

I am not a big MS fan, but ENOUGH with this infantile use of dollar signs already!!

Or at least be equal opportunity about it: E.g., Appl€, or perhaps ¥ellow Dog Linux! How about $u$€ and R€d Hat?

Re:Microsoft Increasingly Irrelevant

[dioscaido]

Yeah, the Xbox 360 is going horribly. I love it how I can walk into the local Best Buy and there are mountains of xbox 360's just waiting there. And the media is just ignoring the console altogether. I feel bad for MS. /sarcasm

Re:Microsoft Increasingly Irrelevant - 360 as STB

[bshensky]

If you think the xbox is a gaming platform, then you clearly have your head on a collision course with your nearest rectal cavity.

The xbox is the manifest destiny of Microsoft - the acknowledgement that long term viability of their software - if only in the consumer market - is largely dependent on corresponding hardware...an appliance. In a world where Open Source has commoditized the OS to long-term irrelevancy, the Xbox 360 becomes M$'s iPod, destined to become the centerpiece of the digital home. And nary a game will need to be played for the 360 to fulfill that role.

It's Windows Media Center that is the maligned stepchild of this vision - a PC that poorly emulates a Tivo? The PC can never fill the role of Appliance in the minds of the market - it's just to generic of a unit to take on an appliance mentality or motif. No, if M$ executes correctly, the xbox becomes a head-end to IP-delivered media network content - Windows Media Center and your TV capture card together act as a headless Tivo "stop-gap" until IP media shows at the door.

I believe all this to be true after I (a) built a MythTV box and interfaced it to my local Comcast coaxial feed, (b) installed MythXBMC on my xbox, and (c) subscribed to countless RSS video feeds on XBMC. I now have IP-delivered cable TV and internet video coming to every xbox "set top box" and computer in the house. It's truly amazing.

To that end, I believe Myth, Slingbox, Sage, BeyondTV and the like are pioneers of the modern age - a bit ahead of their time due to an insufficient support network, ironically, a bit like MSNBC.

I say the rule goes: We don't see convergence until our parents see convergence. Even as they meander past the in-store kiosks, our parents are just now witnessing the enormous potential of the xbox 360 - and I don't mean the game-playing.

If MSNBC was a failure for M$, it is because broadcast TV itself is anachronistic to the next-generation media networks in which M$ hopes to thrive. If M$ gets out now, it saves millions per year until the "new" IP-delivered non-linear content (delivered to your local xbox 360) becomes ubiquitous. Maybe then Ballmer will knock on NBC's door whispering "hey, remember me?"

Any wonder why Cisco - yes, Cisco - purchased set-top-box manufacturer General Instruments this year? Cisco providing a game console? I don't think so. I see a future where xboxen win the appliance war against Cisco.

New name:

[Catbeller]

GOP-TV.

Re:New name:

[ciroknight]

I always thought that was FOX though; the F is only a letter away from G, and the X is simply a clever ploy to hide the obvious P that should be there.

Re:Happy Chrismas!!

[JWeinraub]

I would be very happy to pay £110.00 a year if it meant I can the full BBC without the editing they do to the shows when they replay them on the discovery channel.

NYT Sour Grapes?

[Anonymous Freak]

But the partners will continue their 50-50 ownership of the MSNBC Web site, which, partly as a consequence of its affiliation with Microsoft, is the most-used news site on the Internet.

Emphasis mine

Wow. They made a point of pointing out that MSNBC.com is only #1 because it's Microsoft. Sounds like sour grapes to me. New York Times is just pissed that THEY'RE not number one. (Well, if they were to get rid of the stupid registration requirement just to read a frickin' story, they might be.)