Leaked Memo from On High to NBC and MSNBC

[kpete]

Leaked Memo from On High to NBC and MSNBC
By: Peterr Saturday February 21, 2009 9:01 am

(The following memo was provided to me by an unnamed senior official in the NBC/Universal media family of networks. I promised anonymity in exchange for the exclusive rights to the memo.

Any rebroadcast, reproduction, or other use of the pictures and accounts of this memo without the express written consent of Major League Baseball is strictly prohibited.

Oh, wait a minute . . . wrong disclaimer. Never mind -- if you want to link to it, you have my permission.

Just read the memo. --Peterr)

MEMO

From: The Powers That Be at NBC/Universal

To: Executive Minions of TPTB at NBC News and MSNBC

CC: Executive Minions of TPTB at CNBC

Re: Corporate Use of the Rick Santelli rant from the trading desk

It is good to see that you folks at NBC News and MSNBC are finally getting with the program to boost the ratings of CNBC. In this time of financial uncertainty, it is imperative that CNBC's ratings and market share grow, even as the financial position of many of our advertising customers declines.

To that end, we applaud your use of Erin Burnett as a regular on Morning Joe at MSNBC. Similarly, NBC has done well to bring in Ms. Burnett and her colleague Maria Bartiromo for occasional guest appearances on The Today Show and the NBC News with Brian Williams.

We are especially glad, however, at your quick thinking to make broad use of what we assume was an unplanned outburst* by Rick Santelli in Chicago to boost the CNBC profile across the NBC/Universal stable of networks. Brian Williams led with Santelli, Mike Barnicle (a sub, no less!) featured it on Hardball at MSNBC, and CNBC kept pushing Santelli all day long.

We cannot wait to see what effect this has on our ratings, across the board but especially at CNBC. These have been wonderful unpaid commercials for CNBC! We don't care whether the stimulus plan works or not, or whether the housing sector proposal works or not, or even whether our reporting on these matters is on target -- what matters is that everyone tunes in to CNBC to get their financial news.

We fully expect that this trend will continue. We want to continue to see the CNBC money folks on the other networks, to build the brand. It is especially helpful if the money folks are either attractive women or loud white men. We trust that we will see Santelli's clip on The Today Show in the morning, probably with someone like Ms. Burnett to "interpret" it for the light news/fluff news viewers.

Congratulations on a job well done!

______

* A note from the legal department here: If this was a planned and scripted outburst, keep it to yourselves. We don't want to know about it.

http://firedoglake.com/2009/02/21/leaked-memo-from-on-high-to-nbc-and-msnbc/

[dkf]

1. I have to admit I don't know why Rick Santelli is the poster boy

for ranting on CNBC. Lately, they've been all doing it!

I like Dylan Rattigan's rants. He's been railing more at Wall Street than the rest of the crew. And he's really cute.

Melissa, Dennis and Charlie Gasparino drive me nuts with their constant defense of executive pay. ARRgh.

[fascisthunter]

2. media manipulation of the public

irregardless of consequences to their own country. How disgusting...

[gratuitous]

3. Rick Santelli knows his audience

Notice how brave and forward he was in front of a room full of fellow no-work gazillionaires? You think he'd have the guts to try this in Flint, Michgan or Ft. Myers, Florida, or south central LA?

Are you listening, Mr. Santelli?

[MadBadger]

4. The "From" and "To" make me wonder if this memo is real.

[FLAprogressive]

5. the real contact info was probably redacted.....

[Uncle Joe]

6. Yep, had it been real, the letter would've been from

"The Powers That Pee" because they believe in trickle down economics.

[kstewart33]

7. What a joke. No way is this a real memo.

It reads like a right wing hack wrote it. This is not the way corporate memos are written, guys. Too casual, too conversational, too un-business speak.

[Parker CA]

8. Slim to none chance that this is real. n/t.

[Berry Cool]

9. I don't need to be beaten over the head to know a parody when I see one.

However, to be fair, they should note that for the first time, Santelli actually got Keith Olbermann to break rank and put him on his "Worst Persons in the World" list.

[malaise]

10. CNBC has long opted for ratings over credibility

One of these days they will receive a law suit from citizens burned by the corporate hacks although anyone who believes a word they spew deserves to lose money.

GEM$NBC is a barrel of contradictions, all in the name of ratings. :puke: