MSNBC to End “The Ed Show,” Wisconsin Dems to be Hardest Hit

My con­do­lences to John Nichols, Mike Tate, Lena Tay­lor, and “media adviser to the party” Graeme Zielin­ski, who will be los­ing their usual cable TV stomp­ing grounds to that free mar­ket crea­ture known as rat­ings and an inter­nal desire by MSNBC for “younger, cheaper talent.”

(We now await for Wis­con­sin lib­eral blog­gers to claim that Ed Schultz’s woes are a con­spir­acy, because, well, they all are, aren’t them?)

Sucks to be them.

MSNBC host Ed Schultz announced tonight that, as of April, he will no longer host his week­night prime­time show. But Schultz will stay with the net­work, host­ing a two-hour pro­gram on Sat­ur­day and Sun­day nights, he said.

“And in the big fin­ish tonight, a big per­sonal and pro­fes­sional announce­ment. MSNBC will be expand­ing its week­end pro­gram­ming and this opens a big oppor­tu­nity for ‘The Ed Show’ and my brand,” he said. “I will be leav­ing this time slot at 8 PM ET and mov­ing to Sat­ur­day and Sun­day from 5 to 7 PM.”

In a state­ment, MSNBC pres­i­dent Phil Grif­fin said he was “thrilled for Ed and happy to be expand­ing our week­end pro­gram­ming,” adding that he was “look­ing for­ward to hav­ing Ed’s pow­er­ful voice on our net­work for a long time.”

Schultz, a for­mer sports­caster and cur­rent talk-radio host, has hosted MSNBC’s “The Ed Show” since 2009, where he became well known for his pro-union advo­cacy dur­ing Wisconsin’s spe­cial elec­tion, among other causes. His new show will air on week­end nights from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m.

MSNBC plans to announce Schultz’s replace­ment tomor­row, net­work spokesper­son Lau­ren Skowron­ski told POLITICO.

Spec­u­la­tion is that MSNBC will name Wash­ing­ton Post blog­ger Ezra Klein to the time slot.   Not that I watch the chan­nel, but I’ve been told that MSNBC has been groom­ing Klein for TV by hav­ing him guest host “The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell” from time to time so he’d get his feet wet.

But don’t worry lib­er­als of Wis­con­sin, Schultz thought of you deeply in his final clos­ing of tonight’s show.

Schultz described his new move as an oppor­tu­nity to get out among the peo­ple, but pledged to con­tinue host­ing his radio show.

“I want to get out with the peo­ple, like I did in Wis­con­sin,” he con­tin­ued. “I want to get out and tell their sto­ries all over the coun­try. This show has been a show that has been a voice for the voiceless.”

“Out with the peo­ple, like I did in Wisconsin…”

Really Ed, was that like in 2011 when you tried to save DPW’s face when they didn’t take the state sen­ate, or like in 2012, when live from Madi­son we all watched you melt­down as the recall was called for Scott Walker live dur­ing your own program?

Enjoy the week­ends Ed.

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