The Melissa Harris-Perry Show won best hour, barely, with a very light number of mentions. It’s score, 850 mentions for the 11am hour, wasn’t too far ahead of the 804 Up with Steve Kornacki got at 8 am or Disrupt with Karen Finney‘s 375 at the 4pm hour. Up through the beginning of February, the MHP show was regularly pulling in over 2000 mentions during the same hour, and sometimes far more.
Unfortunately for MSNBC and The MHP Show‘s ratings, two big things have affected the show. The first was the Winter Olympics, which took up most of the month of February and scrambled MSNBC’s weekend schedule by pre-empting shows with sporting events. Even when The MHP Show was unaffected, frequently Up with Steve Kornacki was replaced with a hockey game. The second is (still) the host’s maternity leave, which started mid-February. These two have acted like a slow leak on audience engagement over the past month and a half.
Even though the show has been ably served by a series of guest hosts, it is clear that the audience misses the sparkle of Ms. Harris-Perry. Let’s hope, for her and MSNBC’s sake, the audience doesn’t develop new habits for weekend mornings and her engagement levels are restored upon her return.
Caveat: I am not measuring the separate, personal engagement of the substitute hosts but only the show’s Twitter accounts and hashtags. I do not expect that this makes a large difference, but I could be wrong.
