Both Joy Reid and Ronan Farrow debuted their new MSNBC programs on Monday, but only one of the new talk shows received heavy attention from the media.
Farrow’s show was the center of publicity all the way up until the air date, and the web immediately responded with tons of reviews and raves.
Reid’s show, on the other hand, didn’t see the same media attention.
Her new show, titled “The Reid Report,” was largely overlooked, although she has more credentials and experience than her younger counterpart.
Speculations of racism or sexism have hit the web, but there are many other factors to consider.
One factor is the age of the talk show hosts.
Farrow, 26, is a much younger host and even made it to the top of Forbes “30 Under 30” most influential people in law and policy.
Much of the media coverage about Farrow concerned his age – he’s one of the youngest hosts on any of the cable news networks.
An even greater factor than age, however, is scandal.
Nothing serves as better promotion than a good controversy these days, and Farrow has it while Reid has been out of the media spotlight.
Farrow recently took to Twitter to accuse his father, Woody Allen, of molesting his sister, Dylan.
The Twitter accusations were then followed up by an open letter from Dylan, who supported such claims.
While Allen has since denied the claims and no charges have ever been filed, it’s still enough to create extra buzz around Farrow’s every move.
Meanwhile, Reid has no controversy surrounding her and she has a good amount of experience in the broadcast realm – something Farrow certainly can’t boast.
The young host has no broadcast experience; MSNBC President Phil Griffin gave him the position merely because he liked his tweets.
“I started following him on Twitter and loved the way he talked about things,” Griffin said. “Within 20 minutes I wanted to hire him. He’s got it.”
Although the media attention certainly didn’t provide an even playing field, for whatever reason, both hosts had similar performances and neither of them were impressive.
“Ronan Farrow Daily” earned the lowest number of viewers for MSNBC on Monday, and finished in fourth place among the key demographic behind Fox, HLN and CNN.
His total viewership hit 216k, which tied him with CNN but still placed him behind Fox and HLN.
Reid saw similar stats with “The Reid Report,” also ranking fourth place among the key demographic.
