A Brian Williams Move To Cable Tells You All You Need To Know About MSNBC

After several weeks of rumors, CNN's Brian Stelter reported Wednesday that troubled NBC newsman and anchor Brian Williams is likely headed to sister cable news outlet MSNBC in some as yet to be defined capacity.

Williams, an otherwise solid newsman, has been embroiled for months in accusations that he has "embellished the truth" on nearly a dozen occasions. Once the accusations surfaced, it quickly became clear that he wasn't going to return as anchor of the NBC NIGHTLY NEWS. But what do you do with a guy who is just as expensive to fire as to keep on the job? If you're NBC News, you apparently decide to shuffle him off to MSNBC.

If you work at MSNBC, you probably have two immediate responses. First, who is going to get pushed off the network to make space for this expensive hand-me-down? Secondly, what does this say about how the executives at NBC News view the network?

The answer to the second question is obvious. NBC News executives have never quite known what to do with MSNBC. Since it's launch in 1996, MSNBC has tried to walk this line between hard news and political commentary. NBC executives have never been comfortable with controversy and you get the impression than in a perfect world they'd prefer to just program the network with a steady diet of news and light commentary. But that's not a programming mix that the audience has any interest in watching.

So the network has lurched from programming crisis to ratings crisis and back again. Each time overreacting in a way that simply shows their lack of faith in the cable network's management. At the same time, NBC News executives have a fairly passive-aggressive attitude about the network's ratings prospects. Rather than swinging for the fences, they've opted for micromanaging anytime there's the slightest hint of controversy.

I wrote a lot in 2003 about Phil Donahue's exit from the network and it's striking to see the similarities between those events and the decision to move Brian Williams to the network. There was lots of micromanaging, decisions were made in hopes of mitigating risk instead of programming confidentially and even before moves are officially announced, other unhappy execs are anonymously trash-talking the decision to the press. Lester Holt even served as the replacement in both cases, with Holt's COUNTDOWN: IRAQ replacing Donahue in 2003.

It's also instructive to note that both decisions were bolstered by private polling that supported the network's decision. In 2003, a series of memos outlining troubling likeability numbers sealed the fate of Phil Donahue. And according to several sources at NBC, some positive results from a recent poll of viewers commissioned by the network's news division supported claims by Williams supporters that he is still a well-liked news figure.

Without knowing what role Williams might play at MSNBC, it's difficult to predict how he'll be received by viewers. That's especially the case if he ends up with a nightly news show, a move that a number of current MSNBC employees fear might be the case. But while moving MSNBC might make things somewhat easier for NBC News executives, it's not a move made from confidence and faith in the network.

Phil Donahue was canned in 2003 primarily because MSNBC and NBC News executives feared they'd be seen as disloyal Americans by viewers preparing for a war in Iraq. It's the same fear that now drives executives to move Brian Williams into some ill-defined role at a network that isn't exactly clamoring for the guy. It's a move made for all the wrong reasons and that usually doesn't end well for any of the parties involved.