Since NBC’s Chuck Todd debuted as “Meet the Press” host in early September, replacing David Gregory, he has had exactly one notable guest: President Obama, on Todd’s debut.
Other big “gets” went elsewhere or granted their first interviews to another host instead.
After a grand jury in November declined to indict police officer Darren Wilson for the killing of Michael Brown, Wilson sat down with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos.
After a separate grand jury also decided in December not to indict an officer who killed Eric Garner, Garner’s widow did participate in a “Meet the Press” interview, but only days after having granted one to MSNBC’s Al Sharpton.
For the Sunday following the November midterm elections, President Obama would have been a big interview for “Meet the Press.” But he opted to appear on CBS’s “Face the Nation.” So did Obama’s predecessor, George W. Bush.
“Meet the Press’s” latest (and highly promoted), big upcoming interview is with former Vice President Dick Cheney. But that, too, comes four days after Cheney was already interviewed on the same topic (a congressional report on extreme interrogation methods used by the CIA in the wake of the 9/11 attacks) by Fox News’s Bret Baier.
The show, as of late, seems to have lost its traditional prestige as the place where sought-after guests most wanted to be booked first and exclusively.
That likely has to do with its much-reported slippage from first in the ratings to third, behind the other two network Sunday shows. It also may have something to with the show’s failure to find a host to match the popularity of the late Tim Russert, who chaired the show for 16 years.
“‘Meet the Press’ is not what it once was,” former press secretary Kurt Bardella was quoted as saying to Republican Rep. Darrell Issa in This Town (2013), by New York Times magazine reporter Mark Leibovich. Bardella goes on to make a half-hearted joke that it’s because Russert is no longer the host (his remark was made when David Gregory was the host).
Leibovich wrote in his media and politics insider book: “You needed to be on ‘Meet the Press’ to be bestowed with a top-line standing in what [essayist] Joan Didion called ‘that handful of insiders who invent, year in and year out, the narrative of public life.'”
But present inability of “Meet the Press” to lock big guests has as much to do with its hosts as it has to do with the ever-changing media landscape. “Sunday shows aren’t what they once were — ‘Meet the Press’ included — for reasons that people have exhaustively documented,” Leibovich told the Washington Examiner.
It’s true that across the board, ratings for the Sunday news shows have fallen. With the proliferation of online news websites and cable news, Americans don’t wait for Sunday to hear from the latest newsmakers.
There’s also the opportunity for guests to now choose a sit-down with a host and a host’s audience that is most sympathetic to his or her views.
A Capitol Hill veteran, who now works as a scheduler to a Democratic congressman, said his boss would rather appear on MSNBC than “Meet the Press.”
“I know my boss would much rather go on a show like Ed Schultz (‘The Ed Show’) than ‘Meet the Press’ when given the choice, because of the audience [being more liberal],” he said.
But changes have uniquely affected “Meet the Press” and its inability to lock in exclusives with high-profile guests. Otherwise, though ratings may have slid, the show would have remained on top and its prestige intact.
Evan McMurry, an editor at the media news site Mediaite and avid watcher of the Sunday morning news shows, suggested that the current format of the show — it now regularly includes familiar faces from MSNBC — and the declining ratings have both taken a toll on the show’s status.
“I’d point to the inclusion of panelists like Joe Scarborough from the cable world,” McMurry told the Examiner. “Some recent episodes of ‘Meet the Press’ have been MSNBC panels in everything but name. We already have five mornings a week of [‘Morning Joe’ host] Joe Scarborough hectoring other pundits; why add a sixth?”
