Fueled by Trump opponents, popularity of Maddow rises
‘SNL’ skewers Ivanka Trump
NEW YORK, March 13, (Agencies): Rachel Maddow can trace the mood of her audience by looking at the ratings.
Her MSNBC show’s viewership sank like a stone in the weeks following Donald Trump’s election, as depressed liberals avoided politics, and bottomed out over the holidays. Slowly, they re-emerged, becoming active and interested again. Maddow’s audience has grown to the point where February was her show’s most-watched month since its 2008 launch.
Maddow has emerged as the favorite cable news host for presidential resistors in the opening days of the Trump administration, just as Fox News Channel’s Sean Hannity is one for supporters or Keith Olbermann was the go-to television host for liberals in George W. Bush’s second term. Trump fascination has helped cable news programs across the political spectrum defy the traditional post-presidential election slump, few as dramatically as Maddow’s.
Her show’s average audience of 2.3 million in February doubled its viewership over February 2016, in the midst of the presidential primaries, the Nielsen company said.
“I’m grateful for it,” Maddow said one recent afternoon. “It is nice for me that it is happening at a time when I feel we are doing some of our best work.”
Those two things — ratings success and Maddow’s pride in the work — don’t always intersect.
“We’re making aggressive editorial decisions in terms of how far we’re willing to get off of everyone else’s news cycle,” she said, “but it’s paying off because the news cycle more often than not is catching up with us after we do something.”
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Maddow has decided to cover the Trump administration like a silent movie, so the show could pay more attention to what is being done rather than what is being said. The central focus is on connect-the-dots reporting about Trump’s business interests and dealings with Russia.
Her show is a news cousin to HBO host John Oliver’s “Last Week Tonight” in its willingness to dive into complex subjects that don’t seem television-friendly, and follow the stories down different alleys. Maddow sounds long-winded when it doesn’t work. When it does, it’s like an absorbing novel stuffed with characters.
“It’s not like I am a teacher who is trying to extend the attention span of the American news viewer,” said Maddow, a Rhodes scholar. “I have no goal of trying to privilege complexity. It just so happens that I tend to think in 17-minute bursts.”
Maddow said she and her staff try to break news, like reporting on a Department of Homeland Security report on Trump’s immigration policy, and she was aggressive in bringing the Flint, Michigan, water crisis to a national audience. More often than not, she sees her role as explaining how things work. The program spent considerable time last week on a New Yorker magazine piece about foreign investments by Trump’s real estate company.
She’s determined not to get lost in the noise, particularly since she believes Trump is skillful at distracting the media with a new story — even an unflattering one — when he doesn’t like the attention being paid to another.
“I pray for the day when the most important thing about the Trump administration is that the president said something inappropriate on Twitter,” she said. “There are bigger and more valuable stories to be chasing than that.”
When some news organizations were upset at being barred from an informal press briefing held by White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer two weeks ago, Maddow understood why. But the story didn’t really interest her. Since she doesn’t trust much of what the administration says, Maddow wondered what these reporters were really missing by not being there.
Also:
The biting humor of “Saturday Night Live” took aim at another Trump this week — first daughter Ivanka.
The long-standing comedy show skewered President Donald Trump’s elder daughter with a faux perfume ad, starring actress Scarlett Johansson. The name of the perfume? Complicit.
As Johansson walks into an elegant party in a glittering evening dress, the narrator says: “A woman like her deserves a fragrance all her own. A scent made just for her. Because she’s beautiful. She’s powerful. She’s complicit.”
“She doesn’t crave the spotlight, but we see her. Oh, how we see her,” says the narrator as Johansson applies lipstick and sees Alec Baldwin playing Trump reflected back in the mirror. The narrator continues: “A feminist, an advocate, a champion for women, but like how?”
“Game of Thrones” is welcoming an unlikely guest star in Season 7: Ed Sheeran.
The news was announced Sunday at SXSW by “Game of Thrones” showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss on a panel with Maisie Williams and Sophie Turner.
“For years, we tried to get Ed Sheeran on the show to surprise Maisie, and this year we finally did it,” Benioff said during a panel at the Austin, Texas festival, nodding to Williams who is a big fan of the musician.
No other details on Sheeran’s character or storyline were revealed, but when Variety reached out to HBO for further clarification, a spokesperson for the network did confirm he’ll be guest-starring, simply saying, “He has a role. No more details.”