When David Gregory was announced as the new moderator of NBC's "Meet the Press" back in December, I speculated that he would lose the program's longtime lead over its Sunday show rivals within the year. As it turns out, Gregory needed only about half that time.

ABC's "This Week" beat NBC's "Meet the Press" in a clean ratings fight for the first time in a decade, Nielsen Media Research said on Thursday.

It was June 1999 when ABC's show last beat NBC's program in a contest without substitute hosts, sports pre-emptions or presidential visits.

[...]

The ABC show had 2.8 million viewers on Sunday, compared to 2.77 million for "Meet the Press," Nielsen said. CBS' "Face the Nation" with Bob Schieffer had 2.3 million viewers and "Fox News Sunday" with Chris Wallace had 920,000.

From this vantage it seems that Gregory's problem is that he's simply not as interesting, engaging or capable of making news Tim Russert or George Stephanopoulos. What's the difference? They came from the world of professional politics, working in campaigns before making the jump over to covering them. They knew the business from the inside, what types of questions politicians don't want to hear, those that could do damage and garner headlines. Will MTP go back to what perviously worked for it, and what is now apparently working well for "This Week"? If the answer to that question is yet, then when will they start looking for a new host -- if they haven't already begun mulling it over, even if hypothetically and informally?

There's more...

Ouch.

NBC's Meet the Press was the top rated Sunday morning public affairs program again last week, but it was the show's lowest Total Viewer delivery since August 19, 2007 (excluding June 8, 2008, when the French Open gave the show just 86% coverage). NBC, 2nd place "Face the Nation" and 3rd place "This Week" were all just 350,000 viewers apart.

I have already written about my low expectations for the new host of "Meet the Press" David Gregory, whom I simply do not see as cut out for the job, and have noted that the executives at NBC appear to be grooming Gregory's replacement. But that doesn't mean I'm not surprised that MTP's dropoff has come this quickly.

At this point, the selection of Gregory looks about as successful as the selection of Katie Couric to head up the CBS Evening News (which now trails its competitors by about 30 percent in the ratings). Of course Couric has been able to turn around the reputation of her program, if not her ratings, with her exceedingly newsworthy interviews with Sarah Palin in the fall, so hope does remain for Gregory to get MTP back on track. But until the point when -- or if -- Gregory can turn things around, he seems likely to become like Roger Mudd, Marvin Kalb, Chris Wallace and Garrick Utley, the men who preceded Tim Russert in the MTP moderator chair, and get only two or three years at the program.

There's more...

Last week I noted how NBC's "Meet the Press" has been dropping like a rock relative to its Sunday competitors ever since David Gregory took over as the program's full-time moderator. Now comes word that NBC News is going to even greater lengths to groom the man who someday (and not necessarily so long in the future) might replace Gregory.

According to multiple network sources, MSNBC is in the process of developing a weekend political show to be moderated by Chuck Todd, the network's political director and chief White House correspondent.

Last year, in the wake of Tim Russert's death, network executives seriously considered Mr. Todd to take over the moderating duties on Meet the Press.

Ultimately, however, Mr. Todd lost out to David Gregory, a more seasoned TV newsman, who had significantly more experience than Mr. Todd sitting in the anchor's seat and doing one-on-one interviews with top newsmakers in Washington.

NBC News has already tapped Chuck Todd to replace Gregory once -- as White House correspondent, a position seen as a stepping stone for even bigger things to come -- so it wouldn't be out of the question to see the goateed guru follow in Gregory's footsteps again in the future. And, remember, prior to Tim Russert, who spent seventeen years moderating "Meet the Press," NBC shuffled a number of reporters in and out of the chair -- Garrick Utley, Chris Wallace, Marvin Kalb, Roger Mudd -- for two or three years apiece, at most, so that future point may not be too distant. Todd will still have to prove himself, no doubt, but this definitely looks like news that augurs quite a bit for the direction in which NBC News is moving and will be moving in the years to come.

There's more...

In early December, around the time when David Gregory was announced as the new permanent moderator of NBC's "Meet the Press" -- which to that point had totally dominated the Sunday public affairs program market for years -- Josh and I had the following conversation over gchat:

Me: i bet you
gregory doesn't last 5 years at mtp
and

Josh: I bet you're right

Me: within the next year

Josh: what a [poor] choice

Me: stephanopoulos passes him

Josh: totally agree

My estimations -- that five-year window for Gregory's tenure at "Meet the Press," as well as the one-year window for ABC's "This Week with George Stephanopoulos" passing the NBC program -- might have been a bit too generous. Take a look at the latest ratings from this past Sunday.

NBC's Meet the Press was the top-rated Sunday morning public affairs show last week in both Total Viewers and the A25-54 demo -- but ABC's This Week was just 200,000 viewers behind. Less than 300,000 viewers separated NBC from 3rd place CBS' Face the Nation.

[...]

ABC closed the Total Viewers gap by 71% year-to-year with 1st place NBC, while CBS was up 10% compared to last year.

Gregory's "Meet the Press" earned 3,340,000 viewers last week to the 3,140,000 viewers brought in by Stephanopoulos' "This Week" -- still a win, no doubt, but not an impressive one. In the fourth quarter of 2008, which was not very long ago, "Meet the Press" was winning by well over a million viewers, topping "This Week" by a 4,630,000 viewer to 3,350,000 viewer margin. In the second quarter of 2008, the last to regularly feature the late Tim Russert, "Meet the Press" dominated even more thoroughly, 4,126,000 viewers to 2,563,000. And a little over a year ago, during the first quarter of 2008, "This Week" wasn't even in second place -- it trailed CBS' "Face the Nation."

At this pace, with Gregory turning what was once (not that long ago) a 1.5-million viewer lead into just a 200,000-viewer lead, I'm not sure that he's going to last two years, let alone the five I was talking about in December. And with this trajectory, "Meet the Press" may give up it's lead in well under a year. Time to start looking for a new "Meet the Press" moderator?

There's more...

I couldn't agree more with Josh's assessment of what a coup hiring Rachel Maddow would be for Meet The Press, but alas, it never seemed terribly likely, especially considering what a rising star she is in the 6p/9p time slot. David Gregory doesn't seem to have that problem.

This in from The Huffington Post:

David Gregory will take the reins as moderator of NBC's "Meet the Press," the Huffington Post has learned. Gregory has been a leading contender for the permanent spot since Tom Brokaw stepped in as interim moderator following Tim Russert's death in June. [...]

Brokaw will conclude his duties as interim moderator this weekend, when he will interview President-Elect Barack Obama.

NBC is denying it:

An NBC spokesperson responded to Politico: "I don't know where they are getting this. We have nothing to announce."

Oh, really?

UPDATE: The Observer reports that Richard Liebner, Gregory's agent, wouldn't confirm or deny the HuffPost report.

To my mind Gregory is about the safest and least interesting pick of any of the contenders. As host of Road To The White House, Gregory has been passable at best, demonstrating nothing unique or particularly interesting in his hosting style and in fact has been a top purveyor of the obsession so many inside the beltway journalists have with false balance and the DC conventional wisdom. As some time substitute host of MTP he's been fine as well, but just sort of a pale imitation of Russert. If it is in fact Gregory, perhaps the task of taking over an institution such as MTP will raise his game, but at first glance it appears to be a signal that NBC has no interest in advancing Meet The Press in a post-Russert era but rather merely putting it in neutral.

There's more...