If you look at his ratings, MSNBC’s Ed Schultz deserves the primetime slot he is inheriting tonight. But when we talked to him two weeks ago for this week’s MediaBeat, there was no indication it would happen this early in his MSNBC run, or this suddenly.

In the first part of our interview, Schultz talks about the kind of talk that has helped make his show the #2 cable news program in its time period, but has also gotten him in some hot water with the bosses: “I will admit that sometimes my show gets to bar talk, but that’s how people talk.”