I really, really tried to watch Greta Van Susteren's show on MSNBC but Fox News doesn't translate well on MSNBC, at least not to this viewer.
Fortunately, the experiment has ended. Greta was told that her show was canceled today, and MSNBC announced that Ari Melber will be filling that slot.
In a statement, Phil Griffin announced Greta's departure with a perfunctory "good luck" message.
He then announced that Ari Melber will become the permanent host in the 6pm hour next month.
Vanity Fair suggests that Greta was sacrificed in order for them to concentrate more on getting Megyn Kelly to "break out."
Last month, in a New York Times profile about the network’s ascendancy in the age of Trump, NBC News chairman Andrew Lack seemed to hint that there was trouble brewing for the show. “It’s not breaking out,” he said. “Everybody wants every new show to break out Day 1. I think it takes time. He added: “I’ve got a lot of patience.”
That patience ran out, however, at the same time as Lack and executives at NBC have been putting out fires with Van Susteren’s former Fox News colleague, Megyn Kelly, who has hit repeated bumps in the road since her Sunday evening show premiered earlier this month. The network has had success with other conservatives, including Joe Scarborough on Morning Joe and with the recent premier of Nicolle Wallace at 4 p.m. But Van Susteren's slightly wonky right-centrism didn’t catch. It is unclear whether she made sense outside of Fox News in 2017, and whether a star at that network can shine anywhere other than the very particular universe that Roger Ailes and Rupert Murdoch created. For now, NBC is still betting that Kelly's star will. Her morning show is set to debut in September.
Welcome, Ari Melber, to the 6pm hour!
