Former Fox News host Greta Van Susteren left the right-leaning network last year and announced in January that she had found a new home at MSNBC. The move was short-lived.
Thursday, Van Susteren announced she was “our at MSNBC”.
By some accounts, the network axed her:
Van Susteren, it would seem, isn’t ragey enough to draw enough attention on a network who banks on outrage for relevancy.
From Vanity Fair:
In an era where liberal anger is driving ratings, the former Fox anchor’s show never caught fire….But a few days shy of her six-month mark on air, Van Susteren’s business is finished on MSNBC, according to people familiar with the situation. The anchor, whose show struggled to gain traction even as the rest of her colleagues were buoyed by anti-Trump hysteria, has parted ways with the network. She will not appear on the show on Thursday evening. She will be permanently replaced by Ari Melber, the network’s chief legal correspondent and host of the The Point on weekends. He will continue to appear across NBC and MSNBC shows as he takes over the 6 p.m. slot next month. (MSNBC and NBC News declined to comment. Reached by phone Thursday afternoon, Van Susteren had no comment.)The decision comes as much of the rest of MSNBC has been enjoying a ratings resurgence, and, in some cases, dominance over Fox News. For the first time in 17 years, the network beat both Fox News and CNN in prime-time viewership on weeknights in May amongst the crucial 25-to-54 age demographic—a giant 118 percent leap from a year earlier. In the full second quarter, according to ratings released by Nielsen earlier this week, the network came in second behind Fox for total day viewers, but its growth from a year earlier outpaced both its rivals. Much of this growth is due to prime-time anchors like Rachel Maddow and Lawrence O’Donnell, whose nightly newscasts have tapped into a potent mix of liberal anxiety and schadenfreude over the Trump presidency. In the second quarter, Maddow’s show won the demo in prime-time, though Fox’s Tucker Carlson had the highest number of total viewers. Van Susteren’s show, however, fell behind its rivals in the 6 p.m. hour.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.”
Van Susteren was ferociously pro-Trump during her tenure at Fox News, so it’s not entirely surprising a borderline progressive parody channel wasn’t a good fit.
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