The New York Times’ Jacques Steinberg…

Rick Kaplan, who led MSNBC to some gains in viewers but was ultimately unable to raise its standing as the third-ranked cable news network, resigned abruptly yesterday afternoon.

Mr. Kaplan’s departure was announced by Steve Capus, president of NBC News, in an e-mail message to the staff of MSNBC and the network’s news division. Neither Mr. Capus’s message, nor one that was appended to it from Mr. Kaplan, gave any reason for his resignation from MSNBC, which has continued to lag behind Fox News, the ratings leader among cable news networks, and CNN. Mr. Kaplan was named president of MSNBC two and a half years ago.

An emailer wrote in asking me what I thought the winners and losers would be from Kaplan’s departure. I don’t think it’s possible to ascertain that at this point. There are rumors that Tammy Haddad is angling for the Good Morning America EP position. If that happens it opens up a hole in MSNBC’s political coverage and puts into question what happens with the 2006 mid term election coverage including the rumored return of Battleground America. But aside from that it’s too difficult to figure out who and what the winners and losers are, if any.

The winners and losers, if there are any, won’t be known until we know who is running MSNBC and what changes in course, if any, are being planned by 30 Rock.

I’m still vexxed by the announcement and what it really means. There are two schools of thought about this story.

The first school of thought is that Kaplan was fired but allowed to play this out in a more face saving manner which benefits both sides. The evidence for a firing would be that it was abrupt with no time built in for a transition. Even Erik Sorenson got kicked upstairs when he was removed as President of MSNBC. But if it was a firing, it would put NBC Corporate in a bad position since execs have publicly backed MSNBC with no less that Bob Wright giving the equivelent of a thumbs up on Your World last week. To fire Kaplan under this public backing of MSNBC would bring out charges that NBC was saying one thing but doing another. The graceful exit we witnessed today would therefore be a means of removing Kaplan without disrupting MSNBC’s perceived momentum.

The second school of thought, which is more disturbing to me, is that Kaplan saw where MSNBC was going to go under this rumored “new direction” NBC News is planning and wanted no part of it. Say what you will about Kaplan and his tenure at MSNBC but in the end he was a newsman with a long tenure in hard news going back to his days with ABC. Say, for example, that NBC News wants to gut daytime news with canned programming, as has been rumored on TMZ.com (I’m not saying that’s the direction they’re going to go…I’m just tossing out one scenario). Would a newsman like Kaplan want to be in charge of that? See what I’m getting at? Perhaps Kaplan’s departure is a sign of ominous things to come for people who watch MSNBC for news?

We won’t know really what instigated today’s events until we see what happens in the future; when we can look back and compare the Kaplan period with the post Kaplan period.

The New York Times’ Warren Hoge writes that as part of a speech assailing the U.S. for undermining the United Nations, UN Deputy Secretary General Mark Malloch Brown lumped Fox News in with the UN detractors… (via TVNewser)

In a highly unusual instance of a United Nations official singling out an individual country for criticism, Mr. Malloch Brown said that although the United States was constructively engaged with the United Nations in many areas, the American public was shielded from knowledge of that by Washington’s tolerance of what he called “too much unchecked U.N.-bashing and stereotyping.”

“Much of the public discourse that reaches the U.S. heartland has been largely abandoned to its loudest detractors such as Rush Limbaugh and Fox News,” he said.

Today on FNC Malloch Brown’s comments were discussed. Eric Shawn, who’s new book; “The U.N. Exposed : How the United Nations Sabotages America’s Security and Fails the World” had this to say…

Malloch Brown’s finger pointing comes as Kofi Annan’s much touted reform plan has been stalled in the general assembly and the UN budget could be in jeopardy by the end of the month. But the accusations expose deeper frustrations in the world body that is anything but United.

And John Gibson on The Big Story said this…

The American people are not the problem, the U.N is. Fox is not the problem, the U.N. is.
___________________
Mr. Malloch Brown is aware that the UN has a bad rap. It may be true that Fox and Rush Limbaugh have alerted the American people to these problems. But let’s get serious. Neither Fox nor Rush Limbaugh made these things up…. This is a flawed institution that has yet to prove itself to many in the American public…

The AP’s David Bauder…

Despite the overall strength of NBC News - and MSNBC’s success as an Internet news brand - it’s been an endless source of frustration for the company that the news channel has not been able to do better. Kaplan’s tenure was a period of relative stability for the network, which in the past has been criticized for whiplash-inducing quick format changes.

The Rick Kaplan scorecard: As ICN sees it of course…

Plusses
_______
- Expanded Weekend Live News from four to eight hours.
- Commitment to in depth subject discussion (The Ethical Edge, specials on Abu Ghraib and the 9/11 commission, etc…). Though not as much as I would have liked to see.
- Stabilized Primetime from the mess he inherited.
- Demo increases in primetime.

Minuses
________
- Crimetime in Primetime
- Maury and Connie
- Lack of success in launching new shows (Connected: Coast to Coast, Entertainment Hotlist, and At The Movies all cancelled. The Situation bounced to 11 pm one month after launch after struggling at 9pm debut hour…though we now know the other reason for that move was Rita Cosby’s primetime show stipulation in her contract. Live and Direct starts strong but fades and eventually swaps timeslots with Scarborough Country.)
- Headline News style programming from 12-3 (though it has gone away from that a ways since it premiered)
- Countdown repeat at 9am (delaying MSNBC’s morning news cast to 10 am)
- Lack of publicity for some specials. Sometimes not even Press Releases went out for a special.

Jury still out
_____________
The Most

Not Kaplan’s Fault
__________________
Making tough programming decisions based on having a reduced budget thanks to NBC Entertainment’s weak ratings and ad revenue. Some of those items in my minus column are no doubt partly the result of that.

TVNewser has Rick Kaplan’s goodbye memo and Steve Capus announcement. What really strikes me as bizarre is that MSNBC has gone up under Kaplan. Even Capus’ memo goes to great lengths to emphasize the growth MSNBC has had. Everyone from Capus to Zucker to Wright has said how pleased they are with MSNBC’s improvements. And despite all that Kaplan still leaves? What’s wrong with this picture?

Just a month ago he was talking on the radio about MSNBC’s future and where it was going. Now he’s not even a part of it.

UPDATE: Broadcasting & Cable’s Allison Romano floats Phil Griffin’s name as a possible successor…

MSNBC announced a new Ethical Edge special this weekend. I had seen it on the schedule yesterday but the schedule said it was a repeat of last month’s show.

The latest episode of “The Ethical Edge” considers the high-tech world we live in and dilemmas raised in the midst of constant electronic connection, this Sunday, June 11th at 6 pm ET. The one-hour special is hosted by MSNBC’s Chris Jansing, who is joined by the network’s “Ethical Edge” panelists Father Thomas Williams, Rabbi Edward Cohn and Professor Anita Allen.

This one-hour special tackles many ethical issues including:

· With this technology is there a breakdown of more intimate, personal communication? Have we lost the ability to share and speak face-to-face?
· What are the ethical dilemmas involved with user-driven content (i.e, myspace and friendster accounts) that is posted on the Internet?
· Do parents have an ethical responsibility to limit their children’s use of technology?
· When do high tech security systems become intrusive?
· What are the ethics involved in high-tech customer service? Should it really be so difficult to get a real live person on the phone?

CNN announced today that it will be expanding its M-Fr primetime programming to include the weekends with repeat airings of weekday shows…

Headline News will soon offer its successful Headline Prime line-up seven days a week, it was announced today by Ken Jautz, executive vice president, CNN Worldwide. In a first for the cable news network, Prime News with Erica Hill, Nancy Grace and Showbiz Tonight will air on Saturdays and Sundays, joining Glenn Beck in the weekend prime-time line-up. The schedule change takes effect on Saturday, June 17.

(more…)

CNN has been promoting tonight’s Anderson Cooper 360 interview with the parents of murder victimg Immette St. Guillen as an exclusive where they “break their silence”. Just one problem. Fox and Friends had Maureen and Alejandra St. Guillen on their program yesterday. While one could debate about the definition of “exclusive” with CNN having both parents as an exclusive when Fox and Friends had the mother and daughter on the day before but not both parents, on the matter of “breaking their silence”, clearly the mother broke her silence on Fox and Friends and not 360 tonight.