Conduct Knockout Broadcast Interviews

Keith Olberman and Chris Matthews just got booted from MSNBC due to being dead last in Nielsen ratings during the political conventions.  They did not hide their very left wing views on air and they were too much for even MSNBC viewers that skew left anyway.  The lesson here is you need to match your target audience’s views, not yours.  MSNBC leans left viewerwise, so setting the issue of it being news aside, they went even further left and thus were out of sync with their viewers.  They would have fit Air America but not MSNBC.  MSNBC will probably not replace them with center or right wing people, but proably a somewhat left leaning anchor to have a better fit with their target viewers.

 Campbell Brown recently did a  bad hatchet job interview on her CNN show when she had a McCain adviser as a guest.  She came off poorly but that was not the end of the damage.  McCain was scheduled to be interviewed by Larry King on the same network, but McCain pulled out after  Campbell Brown botched her interview.  So CNN which would have gotten great ratings and made some nice ad money on the McCain interview lost it all due to the Campbell Brown foul up.  The lesson here is that you have to take your interviews very very seriously because they reflect on the entire network you are on and have far reaching repercussions.  As much as you may have personal feelings on a subject, your job is to get the facts without getting in the way.  Be professional in everything you do and say.