Brian Williams has his own show again.
The former NBC Nightly News anchor will debut “The 11th Hour with Brian Williams” Tuesday night at 11 p.m. ET., MSNBC announced today. Williams’ likely move to the 11 p.m. hour was first reported last month.
“This new assignment is a natural extension of the hundreds of hours of political coverage Brian has anchored through this campaign cycle so far,” said MSNBC president Phil Griffinin a statement. “He and Rachel Maddow and the team have been great on the big nights, and now he’ll build on MSNBC’s prime-time momentum by taking us live into the 11 p.m. hour every night.”
I’m so old I remember predicting THIS EXACT SHIT HAPPENING:
Consequences? This isn’t even a bruise, except to Brian Williams’ ego, which is NOT A REAL THING. Brian Williams’ self-esteem is not of any concern to anyone other than Brian Williams and possibly his wife. The rest of us know how this is going to go. He’s going to spend his suspension writing a book. Call it What I Have Learned, or some shit like that. It will be published by an NBC-affiliated publisher.
He will emerge from his suspension with a round of penitential interviews on NBC-owned properties, and we will be subjected to endless thinkpieces about how Brian Williams is our new sacrificial goat or something Biblical like that, as if that’s not self-indulgent in the extreme.
When he returns to TV he will do so in a ratings bonanza, benefitting NBC and its advertisers immensely and convincing the public for ten seconds that anyone outside of the studio gives a shit about the myth of the network anchor.
A year from now, no one will remember any of it at all.
It’s no less bullshit for having been obvious, of course. There are at least 400 journalists within a rock’s throw of my goddamn chair who would do a better job at covering this election than Brian Fucking Williams. None of them have lied about anything or made anything up. But I don’t know what their Q scores are, so.
A.
Sitting next to Rachel makes him seem even more of an empty suit. It’s been very hard, if not impossible to watch the coverage with him being the “anchor” – if I were Rachel, my eyes would be tired from rolling.
The good news is that the network made a show of “Anchor lies matter.” of course they didn’t pay the price of the unbusted lies of their guests pushing the war, but it’s something.