Shocker, another “journalist” failing at MSNBC…
NY Daily News: Ronan Farrow’s MSNBC talk show is facing cancellation amid poor ratings, sources exclusively tell Confidenti@l.
Farrow, 28 — the opinionated, blue-eyed son of actress Mia Farrow and either Woody Allen or Frank Sinatra (even Farrow’s not sure which) — has been a disaster for MSNBC. The channel took the frequent cable-show guest and handed him his own program, “Ronan Farrow Daily,” which premiered in late February.
“He sort of stinks on TV,” an MSNBC source told Confidenti@l. “He hasn’t turned out to be the superstar they were hoping for.”
The theory was that Farrow, a Rhodes scholar who graduated college when he was 15 and went on to score degrees from Yale and Oxford, would bring his 245,000 Twitter followers with him to television. “But that hasn’t happened,” the source said. “Just because someone is a boy genius-turned-Twitter star doesn’t mean they deserve their own TV show.”
Last Wednesday, Farrow drew an average of about 312,000 total viewers, which might be stellar for Twitter but “is rather measly for someone who is supposed to be a major national personality,” another source said.
Even worse: Wednesday’s show was 708th among all programming ranked by Nielsen, in both total viewers and the 18-to-49 age group advertisers covet. The midnight airing of “Baggage” on the Game Show Network came in ahead of it, at No. 707, and the 8 a.m. “Golden Girls” on the Hallmark Channel (No. 700) crushed it.
Farrow, who has also worked for the House Committee on Foreign Affairs and the Obama administration, has looked uncomfortable on camera and often stumbles over his words. His lack of TV experience was especially apparent last week during an appearance on NBC’s “Today” in which he seemed to have trouble linking sentences.
A source defending him said: “Half the time Ronan has been on the air, the missing plane has dominated daytime TV.”
Farrow is just the latest fiasco for MSNBC, following Keith Olbermann’s exit and the cancellation of Alec Baldwin’s talk show after his use of a homophobic slur during a run-in with a photographer.
In what may be a revealing slip, Farrow tweeted Sunday: “Waking up to another crushing day of not being Oprah.”
A rep for MSNBC issued a statement similar to what the network said before canceling Baldwin’s show: “This is simply not true. We’re happy with the debut of ‘Ronan Farrow Daily’ and the show’s progress this first month. MSNBC will continue to support Ronan and his team as they develop and grow the program.”
A rep for Farrow declined to comment.
DCG
