Beyond those supercharged narratives, Griffin adds, "You then have as a backdrop all these real issues that the country is totally caught up in - the economy, America's place in the world, war, race and the dollar. They are all going on at the same time, and people are deeply concerned. As a result, they want sound information from serious journalists and institutions that they can trust."
Gregory is the embodiment of MSNBC's response to the viewer appetite, Griffin says. As an NBC News star, he brings the credibility of that long-established brand to the cable channel, and he has made his reputation by gathering information, not championing an ideology.
Gregory's new show, Race for the White House, made its debut last week opposite Brit Hume's Special Report (Fox News) and Wolf Blitzer's Situation Room (CNN).
Preliminary ratings for its first three days show a 53 percent increase, with the audience growing from about 400,000 viewers for Carlson to 610,000 for Gregory - a big gain in the world of cable TV news. In addition to Race for the White House, MSNBC will launch yet another new weekday show featuring a veteran NBC News journalist, The Andrea Mitchell Hour, tomorrow at 1 p.m., according to Griffin.
"I'm not really a purveyor of opinion - don't want to be," says Gregory of his nightly role on MSNBC. "I'm trying to straddle both worlds on the network and the cable side, and we're trying to put together a show that reflects all the interest and energy that people have in this story."
Gregory's journalistic approach to anchoring a cable TV show is one that has long been featured on rival CNN in the person of another former White House correspondent, Wolf Blitzer.
In fact, some analysts attribute the changing cable landscape as much to CNN's approach to covering the election as to the candidates and issues themselves. The Time Warner-owned channel has seen ratings soar in recent months for debates and election-night coverage.
Since taking over as president of CNN in late 2004, Jonathan Klein has staked his job on moving the channel away from a cacophony of shrill talking heads to a lineup featuring several shows built on fact-based, traditional journalism. One of his first acts was to cancel the widely reviled Crossfire show that featured such ideologues as Pat Buchanan and James Carville.
He has kept CNN on that path, even as Fox and MSNBC scored big ratings with Bill O'Reilly on the right and Keith Olbermann on the left, respectively.
