re: #5 ObserverArt

From this WaPo article on Megyn Kelly posted in the last thread. A revelation as to what NBC News head Andy Lack was thinking when he hired her. Ugh!

Lack is an idiot. A highly paid idiot.

Reminder: Andy Lack is the one who wanted desperately to can Maddow, O’Donnell and Chris Hayes, but was stymied by their huge ratings.

From last year:

NBC’s Andy Lack Should Resign Immediately (Updated)

You may remember Lack as the man in charge when Melissa Harris-Perry’s show was abruptly canceled after she criticized both MSNBC’s treatment of her show and of her as a Black woman at the network. Or you may remember him as the man in charge of the network that killed Ronan Farrow’s explosive story about Harvey Weinstein’s alleged history of raping, abusing, and sexually harassing untold numbers of women (later published by the New Yorker). You may remember Lack as the guy who downplays The Last Word With Lawrence O’Donnell, even though it draws the second-largest audience at MSNBC after Rachel Maddow.

and

With Trump In The White House, MSNBC Is Resisting The Resistance
For a TV executive, Andy Lack has an unusual problem: sky-high ratings.

Lack has targeted the network’s progressive programming since arriving at the network in spring 2015. He started with the daytime shows: Shows from Alex Wagner, Joy Reid and Ronan Farrow, as well as “The Cycle,” were canceled and replaced by straight news. (At the end of 2015, my own contract with MSNBC, which ran for three years, was not renewed; I had no interaction with Lack.) Lack brought in Chuck Todd to host a 5 p.m. show. He canceled Al Sharpton’s 6 p.m. show, and ran one from Bloomberg’s Mark Halperin and John Heilemann in its place.

The Halperin-Heilemann program, which has since been canceled, was a hard-to-watch ratings disaster. Lack moved Van Susteren, formerly of Fox News, into the slot. That show has also been a ratings wreck. Across the board, shows that Lack has put his stamp on and moved to the center or to the right have not performed as well as the ones he has left alone, despite MSNBC’s ability to get the media-industry press to write flattering stories about the network’s “dayside turnaround.”

“Every hour that Andy has not touched are the strongest hours on the network. Everything he has touched is lower rated,” said one well-placed insider.