MSNBC and Deep Impact, also "Impact" for Presidential Election 2024 plus Ukraine - Russia

This is story 25-26 years of hard work finally payoff, resolve chaotic internal from zero in 90s, channeling, coincidence a movie 25 years ago.

10.30pm DC

We don’t make disaster flicks like we used to, despite all the disasters we’re dealing with. 1st ever hurricane in South California in last 84 years, and then hammered by earthquake (then: Hurriquake). 37 million hectares of forest in Canada wipe out by fire. Hottest ever Earth (July 2023). Climate change more real nowadays. Pop culture is saturated with nostalgia for the ’90s, but you wouldn’t think of them as good times based on the frequency of blockbusters about something trying to wipe humanity out. Armageddon and Independence Day can and should be considered classics of the genre, but one film doesn’t get the credit it deserves when we discuss this entertaining and cathartic era of Hollywood. And unsurprisingly, channeling about a lot of issues, not only Extinction Level Event.

Nothing in Deep Impact is unique. "Deep Impact" from 1998 is currently the top 5 movie in Germany. Like its summer competitor Armageddon, it’s about how humanity — as represented almost exclusively by America — deals with the knowledge that a massive space rock is racing toward our planet to kill us all.

Unless Armageddon, Deep Impact didn’t have a killer soundtrack and a sexy love story. In 1998, Morgan Freeman to be POTUS and James Oliver Cromwell to be Secretary of Treasury on Deep Impact, in 2000 / 2001, Cromwell to be POTUS and Freeman to be CIA Director in (Jack Ryan/CIA Cinematic Universe) The Sum of All Fears. Both movies (Deep Impact and The Sum of All Fears) channeling at least two issues: Russia and (expertise on) Nuclear. Even, in at least 3 seconds, Deep Impact mentioned Manhattan Project - Los Alamo, and, of course, if we talk about Manhattan Project - Los Alamo, related with Oppenheimer Movie - related nuclear weapon / nuclear bomb issues, the movie (last month), which, again, 25 years after Deep Impact.

(President Tom Beck — played by Morgan Freeman, "DEEP IMPACT”: Russia have the technology (nuclear) to make it go (longer journey in galaxy). Detail: Journey of spaceship [biggest ever, based on movie] The Messiah

(The Sum of All Fears. Highest-ranking / Senior Advisor Intel for President of Russia / FSB Director, Anatoli Grushkov/SPINNAKER, played by Michael Byrne, whispered to President, to more listening about Jack Ryan [played by Ben Affleck], so no more explosion-nuclear bomb such as in Baltimore). Prevent big(ger) war.

Jenny Lerner, the character played by Téa Leoni (Elizabeth Téa Pantaleoni), was originally intended to work for CNN. CNN rejected this because it would be "inappropriate". MSNBC agreed to be featured in the movie instead, seeing it as a way to gain exposure for the then newly created network. Month later, in real life, 1999, MSNBC began a partnership with The Washington Post that permitted more integrated coverage on the website. The msnbc.com website, a separate company, remained relatively successful, becoming the most-used online news site in 1997, 1998, and 1999. Leoni (in Deep Impact) shows the useful of msnbc website: to search “Extinction Level Event.”

MSNBC's ratings significantly increased during the impeachment of Bill Clinton, following a new "covering the Big Story" format that provided saturation coverage for the top stories.

25 Years after Deep Impact, coincidence, MSNBC was the most-watched cable news channel in total viewers during Thursday primetime as the Trump mugshot was released. The possibility that Trump will win next year’s presidential election has capitals across the globe on edge. Using quote by President Tom Beck (Deep Impact, played by Morgan Freeman), coincidence “very high rating” of MSNBC after 25 years of Deep Impact, is “because I believe the God, whomever you hold that to be, hears all prayers, May the Lord lift up his divine countenance upon you, and give you peace.”

MSNBC is an American basic cable and satellite news television channel that was created in 1996 by Microsoft and General Electric's NBC unit, which is now the Comcast-owned NBCUniversal.

As a Microsoft vice president, Patty Stonesifer, now CEO Washington Post, had managed the Microsoft news portion of the MSNBC merger, which included Slate.

Last May Week 3rd-Week 4th, or 25 years after Deep Impact (aired May 8th, 1998), MSNBC’s Chris Hayes, Alex Wagner, and Lawrence O’Donnell all won their respective hours between 8 and 11 p.m. in both total viewers and in the key 25-54 age demographic.

MSNBC led prime time averages with 2.43 million total viewers, followed closely by Fox News’s 2.15 million. CNN landed in third place with 1.13 million total viewers — a major boost for the network.

In the demo, MSNBC won prime time with 342,000 viewers, beating CNN’s 256,000. Fox News landed third with 231,000 prime time demo viewers as the network continues to regain viewers lost after Tucker Carlson, who often led cable news in the demo, was fired.

Fox News still won the day in total day demo and total viewer averages.

With have experience on MSNBC merger, Patty is solid choice for Washington Post to boost revenue.

After Deep Impact, Téa Leoni to be Secretary of State in Madam Secretary. And yes, although divorced from David Duchovny, both Leoni and Duchovny at least connected each other in extra-terrestrial issue: Comet (Deep Impact; The X-Files). Again, on Madam Secretary, Leoni (Secretary of State Elizabeth McCord) sworn by Chief Justice Wilbourne, played by, yes, Morgan Freeman.

2023 is 25 years of Deep Impact. In Netflix Indonesia, Spain, Germany, and Italy, Deep Impact aired again.

(Don’t try this at home)

Reviewers couldn’t appreciate its subtle charms, especially compared to its sexier and more bombastic contemporaries. Deep Impact only get 6.2 in IMDB Rating, Armageddon get 6.7 as well. Unlike its premillennial Bruce Willis-led space counterpart Armageddon, Deep Impact is more about the slow-burn drama that unfolds down on terra firma while humanity’s eyes warily watch the quiet skies. After all, most of them aren’t expecting to make it out of the film’s colossal comet encounter alive.

But they’re there, and they shine even brighter in retrospect.

Broadly, ’90s sci-fi disaster flicks are stories of American institutional competence. The government and its military may suffer death and destruction, but they always get their crap together and deal with the threat. In Armageddon, NASA whips a team of working-class oil drillers into space shape. In Independence Day, American marine Steven Hiller (Will Smith) teams up with MIT-educated engineer David Levinson (Jeff Goldblum) to take down the aliens.

(Gus Partenza, picture a guy in LCD, played by Jon Favreau. After Deep Impact, he plays in several Star Wars spinoff.)

Jon Favreau’s track career

The cast, in fact, remains a big part of Deep Impact’s enduring appeal as the film commemorates its 25th anniversary. Aside from all the expected action and cosmic-scale drama, one of the delights in rewatching it today has to be the way the wider acting ensemble evokes a certain nostalgia for the period in which this movie was made. In Deep Impact, however, the U.S. competent government saviors are not the stars. As much as that title belongs to anyone in an ensemble film, it belongs to Tea Leoni’s Jenny Lerner, an MSNBC journalist, anchoring the gang as aspiring but beleaguered reporter who stumbles onto the truth of the comet before the President announces it to the world.

Jenny never helps solve the problem, although she is a big part of communicating it. And when the whole world watches as a team of NASA astronauts attempt to blow up the comet, she’s the anchor who watches with us. “We’ll stay with you through all of this,” she says, in a display of on-air camaraderie meant to inspire comfort in collective togetherness rather than collective fear and anger. This movie values the act of comfort in the face of disaster, and maybe America did at the time too. After devastated Hilary days ago, now U.S. (and Mexico, Puerto Rico, Cuba) under threat of Franklin and Idalia.

You can see why ‘90s-era critics, especially male ones, may not have known what to do with a protagonist like Jenny Lerner. She doesn’t shoot anyone or crunch numbers for NASA. She spends most of her time trying to prove herself in a sexist newsroom, listening to her lonely mother complain, and trying to pretend that she doesn’t care about her parents’ divorce. She is a single woman without romantic prospects or further ambitions.

When the comet hits, Jenny gives up her seat on a helicopter out of Washington D.C. to a mom in her office. Then she finds her father on the beach, and they hold each other as the tsunami comes. Her last word, “Daddy,” is one of vulnerability. It has more in common with the ending of Star Wars: Rogue One than the triumph of Independence Day or Armageddon. Jon Favreau also played in Deep Impact, and after years, plays in several Star Wars spinoff (but not include Rogue One). Most of our heroes die, and while a team of mostly American astronauts prevents an extinction-level event, America’s Eastern seaboard is annihilated. Deep Impact tries to put a simple bow on it with a stirring speech from President Tom Beck (Morgan Freeman), but it doesn’t quite land. And, as a modern viewer, it doesn’t have to. The more complicated, quasi-depressing ending feels more relatable.

Deep Impact was directed by Mimi Leder, who would go on to executive produce The Leftovers, another story about how humans deal with events so big and out of our control that they seem biblical. Deep Impact has neither the ambition nor the space The Leftovers has to explore similar themes, but it’s refreshingly modern in its treatment of the emotional devastation of disaster. Unlike Independence Day or Armageddon, it stops to show that comfort in the face of devastation is worthwhile.

We shouldn’t make disaster films like we used to; we need new kinds of films for our new kinds of disasters. But it’s nice to revisit a movie from an era when people had different fears, especially when that movie posits that, sometimes, winning doesn’t look like saving the day and yourself. Sometimes it just looks like hugging someone you love at the end of it all.

25 Years after Deep Impact. The MSNBC panel was awaiting former president Donald Trump’s Fulton County Jail mug shot, when Rachel Maddow asked her audience to register the gravity of the moment. “I’m saying we should slow down here just for a second, because this is serious stuff for the nation, for who we are as a country,” she said last week, as MSNBC aired the photo—the first of any current or former United States president. “This is not something to take lightly. Our constitutional republic depends on the very basic concept of rule by law, not rule by man,” Maddow continued. It was fitting that Trump looked so angry in the mug shot; despite being the fourth indictment and arrest this year, it was Trump’s first. “He’s embodying…the avatar for the rage that he has traded off of to become president in the first place,” Joy Reid said.

But not every moment was that earnest on MSNBC that night. Over the course of the segment, which followed everything from Trump’s plane landing in Atlanta to his motorcade to and from the jailhouse, the MSNBC panel—Reid, Maddow, Chris Hayes, Lawrence O’Donnell, and Nicolle Wallace—oscillated between analysis, weighty reflection, and, well, schadenfreude. O’Donnell mused, was the “strawberry” hair color listed in the booking information Trump’s own description? Maddow cast a cheeky glance to her colleagues when she read his listed height: “six-foot-three.” Then came Trump’s weight—listed as 215 pounds—sending the table into hysterics.

MSNBC’s talking heads had been given the license to have a little fun. Even when Maddow and others were reflecting on the sheer weightiness of this newscycle—that even a former president can be held accountable under the criminal justice system—a viewer could tell: This panel was relishing every part of it. And, it seems, the viewers are relishing in it all too.

MSNBC has emerged as the network of choice for viewers looking for coverage of Trump’s criminal charges. The timing of Trump’s arrest in Georgia—Thursday night—didn’t correspond with Maddow’s regular Monday slot, but the network brought her on anyway; it was an evening ripe for the heavy hitters, after all.

The tactic seems to be working. The network has seen a bump in ratings recently, reportedly beating Fox News in prime-time ratings for a full week in May-June amid coverage of Trump’s second indictment, on charges related to classified documents. The network continued to bear the fruits of Trump’s legal woes earlier this month, which has been MSNBC’s most-watched in more than two years.

When Trump was indicted for the fourth time, over his efforts to overturn the 2020 election results in Georgia, MSNBC prevailed over Fox News for the top three spots in the cable lineup, Forbes reported, citing Nielson data. More viewers turned to MSNBC from 9 p.m. through 3 a.m. than Fox News and CNN combined. Maddow’s 9 p.m. program, which happened to feature a previously scheduled interview with Hillary Clinton, drew 3.9 million viewers, and was the number one show across all of television, including broadcast.

MSNBC beat Fox News in prime time again the next night. “While most of the country is experiencing some level of fatigue over Trump’s legal battles, MSNBC’s viewership has increased with each subsequent indictment,” Axios’s Sara Fischer noted.

The MSNBC’s approach—and success—is in spite of the broader recalibration toward nonpartisan media that newer outlets like Semafor and The Messenger have said they see a market for. CNN, too, made an apparent attempt to overcorrect for its breathless coverage of the Trump White House. The result, largely ushered under now ex-CEO Chris Licht, has at times been over-sanitized, leaving viewers unsure of what the network is offering.

CNN has definitely lost a ton of audience to MSNBC, One of Chris Licht’s great legacies was basically telling the audience we built during the Trump era: You’re not welcome, we don’t work for you. I don’t know if that’s ever going to be undone, and this new lineup is certainly not a strategy to attract this audience back.” CNN is maintaining its focus on hard news, both in its latest streaming effort and newly cemented prime-time lineup. “We now have a decade of data telling us that cable news viewers don’t want news in prime time,” the producer adds. “So this completely ‘blinders on, we’re gonna double down on news in prime time and hope for the best’—it just doesn’t make any sense to me.”

Meanwhile, MSNBC has seemingly only doubled down on being the premier news source for the Trump resistance. For two years, the network’s coverage and numbers were largely driven by Robert Mueller’s special counsel investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election. “In addition to breaking pieces of news related to the probe—working in tandem with journalists from NBC News—MSNBC’s anchors, and, in particular, its opinionated progressive evening hosts, turned the Russia story into a gripping daily soap opera that not only helped grow the channel’s audience, but kept it coming back for more,” Joe Pompeo wrote back in 2019.

A person close to MSNBC’s strategic thinking credits the network’s ratings to more than just the recent indictments, pointing to both the network’s consistency with viewers and expanded footprint across digital, audio, and streaming. Following Trump’s departure from office, the mandate for hosts has been to keep it nice, as Semafor reported—opinion without snark or bombast.

Now MSNBC is approaching what could be the apex in Trump political coverage: his indictments, trials, and another presidential run. The network appears particularly well-positioned to take on this story with its stable of legal analysts, including former top Mueller prosecutor Andrew Weissmann, former acting US solicitor general Neal Katyal, and former US attorney Joyce Vance. It helps that NBC News has also been a central player this political cycle and appears well-sourced with both Trumpworld and Ron DeSantis’s camp; NBC nabbed the first network interview with the Florida governor after he launched his campaign, and has been nabbing scoops on him as well as on the Biden administration.

Timing, too, is on their side; MSNBC is firing on all cylinders just as its competitors face a period of instability. Fox News is still figuring out its future without Tucker Carlson and girding for more defamation suits, while CNN is rudderless, with temporary management attempting to pick up the pieces post-Licht’s tenure, as the company searches for a new CEO.

Over at MSNBC, things are comparatively low drama. MSNBC president Rashida Jones has an “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” mentality that has been well-received by top talent.

MSNBC has seen a boost in prime-time ratings this summer, thanks in large part to its coverage of the slew of indictments against former President Donald Trump.

Fox News has been the undisputed cable news ratings leader for years. But Trump's legal woes, combined with Tucker Carlson's departure from Fox, have helped MSNBC close in on Fox News' prime-time lead several times in the past few months.

MSNBC beat Fox News in prime time last Monday and Tuesday evenings thanks to its coverage of Trump's indictment in a fourth major case in Georgia over efforts to overturn the presidential election's outcome.

• Rachel Maddow's interview with Hillary Clinton after the indictment drew an unprecedented 3.9 million viewers on Monday evening.

• The network narrowly beat Fox News in prime time on Monday, July 10, as well, although it surpassed Fox more consistently during the second quarter.

• Mondays tend to be MSNBC's highest-rated prime-time evenings, given that's when Maddow continues to regularly host her 9pm show.

MSNBC started beating Fox News in prime time periodically following Carlson's departure in April.

• The network beat Fox News in prime-time ratings for a full week in early June during its coverage of Trump's second indictment on charges relating to classified documents at Mar-a-Lago, ending Fox News' 120-week prime-time winning streak.

• Throughout several points during the second quarter, MSNBC also beat Fox News in the prized 25- to 54-year-old advertising demographic.

• While most of the country is experiencing some level of fatigue over Trump's legal battles, MSNBC's viewership has increased with each subsequent indictment.

Fox News has been able to regain much of the viewership it lost following Tucker Carlson's exit by installing Jesse Watters as permanent host of the 8pm hour in July and by replacing Laura Ingraham with Greg Gutfeld during the 10pm hour.

• Even after Maddow's big ratings win last Monday and MSNBC's beat on Tuesday, Fox News was back to winning total prime-time viewership across the three networks by Wednesday last week.

• And it did that while featuring a rotating cast of hosts in the 8pm hour while Jesse Watters was out for the week.

• While the network saw viewership declines year-over-year last quarter, Fox News still remained the top cable news network in prime time by a landslide. For the month of July, that momentum continued.

Both CNN and Fox experienced major disruptions during the second quarter, giving MSNBC an edge over its competitors.

• In the second quarter of the year, MSNBC saw a double-digit percentage increase in overall viewership compared to the same quarter the year prior, while CNN and Fox News saw year-over-year viewership declines.

• CNN CEO Chris Licht was fired in June after weeks of internal drama. Fox News settled a historic $787 million defamation case and abruptly fired Carlson shortly thereafter.

CNN has been unable to tap into the same level of ratings success as MSNBC, in part due to its commitment under its new ownership to lean into straight news and reporting over opinion and partisan analysis.

• Last week, the network announced an overhaul of its schedule, adding Abby Phillip — a hard news political correspondent — to its prime-time anchor lineup following Kaitlan Collins, previously the network's chief White House correspondent.

Fox News will air the first Republican presidential debate on Wednesday.

• While debates are usually a boon to ratings, this week's event could be impacted by Trump's declaration that he won't participate.

Last year, still chaotic in internal MSNBC, same chaotic in “MSNBC - Deep Impact” before Comet crashes.

The leak sent leaders at MSNBC scrambling to address questions internally about what a fourth hour of "Morning Joe" would look like, including which producers would be responsible for the additional programming, and how a 9am hour would cater to a West Coast audience.

• Given that MSNBC President Rashida Jones and NBCUniversal News Group Chairman Cesar Conde first approached the "Morning Joe" hosts with the plan around two weeks ago, many of the details weren't fully baked, according to a source familiar with the discussions.

With "Morning Joe" marking its 15th year in September 2022 (or 16th year in September this year), and with ratings continuing to beat CNN in the mornings, Jones, Conde and other executives thought an extension of the show made sense. But they only began to consider it seriously in January 2022, once it was decided that Ruhle would move to the 11pm hour, leaving her 9am slot open.

• Hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski, who are married and deeply involved in the show's day-to-day operations, were excited about the idea but had questions about what the extension would mean for their staff, according to a source familiar with their thinking.

• In addition to producing "Morning Joe" from 6 to 9am ET, the same team also produces "Way Too Early" at 5am ET.

• An additional hour at 9am ET would open up an opportunity for "Morning Joe" to address West Coast audiences. But that also meant the show's team would need to figure out new coverage plans.

• Ruhle, a senior business correspondent for NBC News and a former bank executive, anchored the show when markets opened and often brought on guests based on the West Coast to talk about tech and business news.

Even before Williams' departure last winter, senior executives began mulling significant lineup changes in 2022, according to two sources familiar with their thinking.

• A top priority would be leaning further into familiar franchises and figuring out how top talent could be utilized to boost streaming efforts.

• In August 2020, the network announced it would be expanding Nicolle Wallace’s show, "Deadline: White House," to two hours and would move Chuck Todd's weekday show, "MTP Daily" (for "Meet the Press") earlier in the afternoon.

• Later, the network's highest-rated star, Rachel Maddow, reached a multiyear deal with NBCUniversal to run a production company that would broaden her portfolio of projects with the network, but would remove her from her day-to-day hosting duties at the 9pm ET primetime hour later in 2022.

• NBC News leaders hosted a call with staff about network updates. The topic of who would replace Maddow and Williams was one of the first questions they were forced to answer.

• Jones said she would tell employees more about the 11pm ET hour when there was something to share. She didn’t provide an update on who would replace Maddow, but noted that Maddow’s not going far.

• Another source said Jones was unable to get on the phone with staffers of "The 11th Hour," Williams' former turf, before the news came out.

• Asked for comment, Jones said: "We are very excited for our viewers to be rolling out the new lineup for 'Morning Joe' and Stephanie, and how their voices fit in our broader vision for programming during this consequential year.”

Ruhle is expected to begin anchoring "The 11th Hour" in a few weeks, according to a network source familiar with MSNBC's plans. Staffing plans and production logistics for the 9am hour is still being worked out.

Now, 25 years of Deep Impact, same popular MSNBC before Wolf-Biederman crashes, arguably hard work internal MSNBC in real life also payoff tonight and at least until next October: very high rating.

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