2016 Postmortem
Related: About this forumMTP Gregorian Rant Ceases, Now Its Meet the Toad
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/style-blog/wp/2014/08/14/report-chuck-todd-to-replace-david-gregory-as-host-of-meet-the-press/Here comes the new boss, same as...well you know.
The wingnut Sunday morning revival will plod on.
onecaliberal
(32,894 posts)With Upchuck Toad.
MADem
(135,425 posts)The thing is, it doesn't matter who they put into the seat, if they force the host to bow and scrape to suit the corporate sponsors the show will continue to be a joke.
The Toad will be hearing crickets before too long. He cannot fix the mess without a revamp of the structure of the show, that allows strangers to come on and ask hard questions.
davidpdx
(22,000 posts)malthaussen
(17,216 posts)davidpdx
(22,000 posts)66 dmhlt
(1,941 posts)Chan790
(20,176 posts)The problem with MtP is credibility, that problem starts with their refusal to look outside the "family" so to speak for candidates for the host chair...it doesn't quite end with the lack of quality of the people they put in that host chair; they seem to get guests by offering a pulpit. MtP host since the death of Tim Russert has been the epitome of the Peter Principle. They just keep promoting their own mediocre political journalists to the big job.
Get a real journalist that asks questions that guests don't want to answer and the public wants the answers to. Someone who cannot possibly be perceived as having a bias, possibly from outside the political news division. Someone with credibility as an investigative reporter.
If they insist on staying inside the NBC News family and wanting the big name, Lester Holt would have been a better choice than Chuck Todd. Everybody perceives Todd as both biased and not terribly smart...Holt comparatively comes off like the smartest person in the room, apolitical (I'm fairly certain he is not actually, but his ideology is a mystery. He doesn't even have an FEC donor-record) and holds a BA in government. (Todd's a dropout from GWU as a music and politics major.)
I'd watch MtP with Lester Holt. I'll probably not watch Chuck Todd unless he grows some intestinal fortitude for confrontation and develops some pluck.
Joe Bacon
(5,165 posts)kairos12
(12,872 posts)Blue Idaho
(5,057 posts)Gregory was a turd and Chuckles is a stooge but the real problem is the format and the obvious conservative bias. People aren't watching. To be fair they aren't watching any of these tired old propaganda outlets. America just isn't the "center right" nation we keep hearing about.
Frankly when that seedy old grouch John McCain and his little toadie Lindsay Graham showing up on each and every show every weekend you've pretty much hit the bottom of the programming barrel. Time to switch off the lights and lock the doors - it's over. It's really really over.
DFW
(54,436 posts)This does NOT include wannabe TV personalities. Even Russert made it all about him. A devout Catholic who from Sen. Pat Moynihan's Senate office who never forgave Bill Clinton for his sexual dalliance, Russert went on the attack ever since, and did it for the rest of his professional life. MTP became the Russert show. Russert is gone, but the new format is not.
The original format of MTP was to bring on a political personality and have three members of the print press whose papers were connected to issues concerning the VIP guest ask questions in a round robin fashion. If there ain't no press, they have no business calling it "Meet The Press." But it looks like the phony adverstising won't save the show. "Meet Chuck Todd" wouldn't get any viewers, but "Meet The Press" when it is nothing other than Meet Chuck Todd won't fare much better. Bring back the press, or let the show out of its misery and take it off the air.