‘Morning Joe’ backlash is latest mess for NBC and Comcast executives

Analysis By Oliver Darcy, CNN

(CNN) — Cesar Conde has found himself — yet again — on the receiving end of a stinging on-air rebuke from his high-wattage MSNBC stars.

For the second time in only a few months, questions about the NBC News Group chairman’s leadership were raised in extraordinary fashion, with the “Morning Joe” team on Tuesday publicly expressing dismay that NBC brass had the day before pulled their broadcast from the air in wake of the assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump.

Joe Scarborough, speaking alongside co-hosts Mika Brzezinski and Willie Geist, offered viewers a peek behind the curtain into the conspicuous decision-making process that transpired over the weekend. Scarborough said that the “Morning Joe” team had been informed Sunday evening that all of MSNBC’s opinion-oriented dayside lineup would be pre-empted for a single NBC News feed covering the attempt on Trump’s life.

But, as Scarborough noted, “That did not happen.” Instead of high-profile NBC News anchors, such as Lester Holt and Savannah Guthrie, anchoring special coverage, MSNBC aired two hours of “MSNBC Reports” and two hours of its streaming service’s programming, NBC News Now. And oddly enough, no other MSNBC shows were pre-empted. Only “Morning Joe.”

“We don’t know why that was that didn’t happen. Our team was not given a good answer as to why that didn’t happen,” Scarborough said. “But it didn’t happen.”

Scarborough, who said the entire “Morning Joe” team was “very surprised” and “very disappointed” in the turn of events spurred by NBC brass, even went as far to offer network leadership an ultimatum.

“Next time we are told there is going to be a news feed replacing us, we will be in our chairs,” he said. “And the news feed will be us, or they can get somebody else to host the show.”

While the top-rated, largely unscripted show has long been a must-watch for politicos in the Acela Corridor, the program has taken on additional significance in recent weeks, airing major news-making live interviews with President Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi and others as the president battles to continue his campaign. Without “Morning Joe” airing on Monday, viewers rebelled against MSNBC, opting to change the channel, Nielsen data indicated. During the four-hour block, the total audience was down 40%, and the demo plunged nearly 50%, compared to this year’s average.

Spokespeople for NBC News Group and MSNBC did not directly respond to Scarborough’s Tuesday remarks. But the flare up represented another embarrassing moment for Conde in which behind-the-scenes tension between MSNBC and NBC News Group found its way into the public view. It also raised questions about the progressive news network’s editorial decisions and independence, particularly as Trump and his allies target its parent company, Comcast.

The move to bench the “Morning Joe” crew, after all, didn’t happen in a vacuum. Over the course of the last year, Trump has assailed Brian Roberts, the Comcast chairman, applying pressure on him over his distaste for coverage from MSNBC. In November, Trump called Roberts a “slime ball” and declared the government “should come down hard on them” and “make them pay” for their supposedly “illegal political activity.” 

“Much more to come, watch!” Trump wrote at the time, a not-so-veiled threat.

Those attacks on Comcast were revived in the immediate aftermath of the Trump assassination attempt. Trump’s allies leveled attacks against MSNBC, accusing the network in bad faith of radicalizing Trump’s critics and, thus, creating an environment that led to the shooting. (It should be noted that, at this time, authorities have not determined the shooter’s motive.) At the RNC this week, attacks on MSNBC have been in vogue, with GOP figures such as Donald Trump Jr. and Sarah Huckabee Sanders singling out the outlet and bashing it. 

Suffice to say, Roberts and the Comcast team, which will potentially have M&A business before the next presidential administration, probably do not wish to find themselves on Trump’s enemies list. A spokesperson for Comcast did not comment Tuesday when asked whether Roberts has weighed in on any of NBC News Group’s recent programming decisions. Regardless, it’s not difficult to imagine that he been irked by the situation at MSNBC, a small slice of the business at Comcast, that continues to cause headaches.

Which is why, perhaps, Comcast is involved in cleaning up the “Morning Joe” mess. I’m told that the company’s president, Mike Cavanagh, rescheduled meetings on Tuesday to grapple with the fallout stemming from the “Morning Joe” commentary.

While this particular episode will almost certainly blow over soon enough, the underlying issues are likely to remain. Without strong leadership atop NBCU News Group — leadership that is truly respected by staff — it’s hard to imagine that such eruptions from talent will miraculously come to a halt. If anything, the staff at 30 Rock might feel more empowered to speak out against network brass after the events of the last few months. And that can’t bode well for Conde, who must be standing on thinning ice as it becomes more evident he is struggling to manage the increasingly vocal personalities who, at least on paper, report to him.

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