MSNBC Program
In July 2002, Phil Donahue returned to television to host a show called Donahue on MSNBC. On February 25, 2003, MSNBC canceled the show, citing low viewership. According to the New York Times despite being heavily promoted by MSNBC and having a debuting audience of 660,000 only three weeks into the show, viewership had fallen to 390,000 viewers. By the end of 2002, Donahue’s audience was down to 379,000. Although his ratings were less than 1/6 Bill O'Reilly, whose The O'Reilly Factor shared the same time slot, Donahue was the highest rated show on MSNBC at the time it was canceled, managing to beat out Chris Matthews' "Hardball" in the ratings. Soon after the show's cancellation AllYourTV.com reported it had received a copy of an internal NBC memo that stated Donahue should be fired because he would be a "difficult public face for NBC in a time of war". In 2005 Norman Solomon's book Made Love, Got War: Close Encounters with America's Warfare State came to the same conclusion.
Read more about this topic: Phil Donahue
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