MSNBC

The Los Angeles Times looks at Ed Schultz‘s quest to present himself as “the one true advocate of the working man.” MSNBC president Phil Griffin calls Schultz “a guy who understands how to connect with real people”:

Griffin hired Schultz after running into him at a White House news conference. In what Griffin calls a “tornado of a meeting,” Schultz pitched a show to Griffin, who had never thought of hiring the then-radio host.

Since Schultz went on the air in 2009, Griffin has twice moved the show to better time slots — first from 6 p.m. to 10 p.m., and then in October to 8 p.m., in prime time, the spot once anchored by MSNBC star Keith Olbermann.

“Right now, Ed will succeed because he’s in the bull’s eye of so many issues,” he said.

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A day after Pat Buchanan and MSNBC parted ways, Buchanan found support from his colleagues, at both MSNBC and Fox News. While Buchanan was a guest on Fox News Friday night, earlier in the day MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough along with Mika Brzezinski spoke out on the matter: “Because we believe that sunlight is the best disinfectant, Mika and I strongly disagree with this outcome. We understand that the parting was amicable. Still, we will miss Pat.”

That statement didn’t come on Scarborough’s MSNBC show but rather on his Politico blog.

Buchanan went on “Hannity” Friday night and singled out Media Matters saying they were behind his being taken off the air last fall. “They’re engaged in a blacklist,” Buchanan said.

“This is Un-American what is going on right now,” Buchanan says.

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MSNBC has produced a very special “Lean Forward” ad featuring “PoliticsNation” host Al Sharpton. The ad features Sharpton talking about something that is bringing America together:

“Americans have hope again, there is real change in the air!” Sharpton exclaims.

Of course, he is referring to new York Knicks point guard Jeremy Lin, who has been taking the basketball world by storm. Now MSNBC is ready to “Lin Forward.”

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This isn’t the first time MSNBC has taken advantage of someone that was hot and turned them into a “Lean Forward” ad. Last year MSNBC hired Ted Williams, the homeless man “with a golden voice” to do voiceover work on the ad campaign.

MSNBC and longtime political analyst Pat Buchanan are parting ways.

“After ten years, we’ve decided to part ways with Pat Buchanan. We wish him well,” said MSNBC in a statement Thursday evening.

Buchanan elaborated in an column with the title “Blacklisted, But Not Beaten”:

In the 10 years I have been at MSNBC, the network has taken heat for what I have written, and faithfully honored our contract. Yet my four-months’ absence from MSNBC and now my departure represent an undeniable victory for the blacklisters.

Buchanan hasn’t been on MSNBC in months. He first took time off from the network to promote his book, but some controversial sections of the book drew the ire of a number of interest groups, many of which called for Buchanan to be fired.

Fox News contributor Tucker Carlson got some plum airtime this morning to talk about his site’s weeklong series into Media Matters, which Fox & Friends anchor Steve Doocy calls, “the liberal blog dedicated to destroying Fox News.” In his first story on Daily Caller, Carlson reports, “The group operates in regular coordination with the highest levels of the Obama White House.”

Carlson spoke to current and former Media Matters staffers for his report. One former employee told him, “We pretty write their primetime” speaking of MSNBC. Carlson says the former staffer added: “We call Phil Griffin, the head of MSNBC, he takes our call.” Carlson spent three years at MSNBC, including as a host in primetime. As the network started a shift to the left, his show was canceled and his contract was allowed to expire. Carlson, who earlier in his career co-hosted “Crossfire” on CNN, joined Fox News in 2009. He launched Daily Caller in January, 2010.

Soon-to-be MSNBC host Melissa Harris-Perry gets profiled by The New York Times‘ Brian Stelter and the Tampa Bay Times Eric Deggans.

The profiles note that Harris-Perry is an unusual host for a number of reasons, not the list of which is that she is a sitting, tenured professor at Tulane University… a job she will continue to hold as she hosts her shows on the weekend.

Stelter notes that Harris-Perry is hoping to have guests that are not household names on her program, a familiar claim, and one that rarely lasts long:

With more hours of political talk comes more on-air time for guests of diverse backgrounds. During a Feb. 3 visit to Ms. Harris-Perry’s windowless office at Rockefeller Center, a whiteboard bearing unfamiliar names gave evidence of that. In an interview that day, she recounted numerous times when she had watched political strategists on TV and wondered why political scientists had not been booked instead.

“Part of the way I end up here is, I think the ivory tower has a ton of brilliant information that doesn’t show up for ordinary people,” she said. She has studied media stereotypes in the past, including for a book about black political thought.

Deggans meanwhile has MSNBC president Phil Griffin talking about the place of journalists versus commentators, and Griffin indicates that–at least when it comes to developing new shows–personality is what matters:

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Donald Trump and MSNBC host Lawrence O’Donnell are at it again.

The latest brouhaha started when Trump was asked by CNN’s Ashleigh Banfield this week which cabinet position he would want in a hypothetical Romney administration. On Wednesday’s “The Last Word,” O’Donnell scoffed at the notion that Trump would even be nominated: “Romney knows you’re a buffoon, an unconfirmable joke,” O’Donnell said.

Trump fired back on Twitter yesterday, using his 140 characters (and then some) to excoriate O’Donnell as “a poor man’s Ed Schultz.”

Lawrence O’Donnell will soon have another cancelled show to go along with his three cancelled TV series, “Mister Sterling”, “The Kill Point” and “First Monday” … Without clips of me, his show would be completely dead and he knows it. As I have said many times before @Lawrence is the dumbest man on television. He is only angry because I would never have wasted my time doing his completely irrelevant show.

O’Donnell’s response:

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On his show tonight, MSNBC’s Ed Schultz promises to tackle the Twit-scuffle he found himself in this afternoon with Fox News Channel’s Sean Hannity.

Last night, Hannity was talking with Frank Luntz about Pres. Obama’s electability, and how the campaign will use the killing of Osama bin Laden to its advantage. But Hannity added this: “But it wouldn’t have happened if he had his way and that can be proven, as well, on tape.”

That, led to this, on Twitter:

> Update: After the jump, Schultz’s segment from Wednesday night…

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Hey, did you hear? NBC has a new musical drama series about putting on a Broadway musical!

Odds are, if you watched the Super Bowl on Sunday, you saw a lot of promos for “Smash,” the series in question. It debuted Monday night to solid ratings, and apparently NBCUniversal isn’t done promoting it in-house yet.

MSNBC is “The Place for Politics,” but during the 1 PM hour today it became “The Place for Promotion,” when Chris Matthews (in for Andrea Mitchell) interviewed “Smash” star Anjelica Huston:

MSNBC host Rachel Maddow has won the John Steinbeck Award, Galleycat reports. She is the third female recipient and the first recipient under the age of 40.

The award is given “to writers and artists whose work captures the spirit of Steinbeck’s empathy, commitment to democratic values, and belief in the dignity of people who by circumstance are pushed to the fringes.”

“Listening to Rachel Maddow is like listening to Walter Cronkite,” Steinbeck’s son, Thomas, said in a statement. “We have that kind of trust in her.”