Why MSNBC Won't Be the Liberal Fox News

What on earth is going on at MSNBC? Politico, Variety and The Wall Street Journal all have stories today about how personal friction between Keith Olbermann, Chris Matthews and Joe Scarborough has increasingly been spilling over onto the screen. "They have to just grow up," says Connie Chung. Or, you know, whip out a measuring tape and get it over with.

I've been thinking a lot about MSNBC since last week, when the liberal blogosphere jumped all over me for saying that the No. 3 cable news channel might be imperiling its long-term interests by identifying itself too closely with a specific segment of the left. The obvious rejoinder, which I heard from more than a few critics: If Fox News can get to No. 1 by catering to conservatives, why shouldn't MSNBC reprise the trick with liberals?

In fact, there's an answer to this, and it goes some way towards explaining the repeated displays of chest-thumping and teeth-baring we've seen on MSNBC's air this week.

First off, Fox isn't rooted in conservative politics so much as it's rooted in a certain sensibility: populist, patriotic, anti-elitist, loud, fast, aggressive. The politics are a corollary of the sensibility more than the other way around. Everything Fox does is informed by this sensibility; it's why Fox & Friends feels so of a piece with Hannity & Colmes, and why the network is able to vamp so comfortably during lulls in the political news cycle with culture-war and celebrity stories.

Moreover -- and this is key -- everything on Fox is subordinate to this sensibility. If Bill O'Reilly were to go off the reservation, Roger Ailes would just dump him and make a new O'Reilly from scratch.

At MSNBC, it's all different. There's no top-down governing sensibility; whatever sensibility there is has emerged willy-nilly. Because there's nothing bigger than the personalities, the personalities have expanded to fill the vacuum. Keith Olbermann knows he can't be easily replaced because what would you replace him with? He's an accident. There's no mold to refill. NBC hitched its wagon to his star, and now it's hostage to his whims. And if those whims include humiliating his co-anchors on-camera or refusing to share a stage with Tom Brokaw, what are you going to do?

When Rupert Murdoch decided to start a news network with a political slant, it was in the spirit of "If we build it, they will come." MSNBC's mantra, in contrast, has been "If they come, we'll build it." Politics aside, which is a better way to erect a lasting edifice?

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