Time for Comcast-NBC to Fire Al Sharpton

By Jeffrey Lord | December 27, 2014 | 12:53 PM EST

MEMO TO: Comcast/NBC Universal

Happy New Year. Now do yourself and your company a favor and fire the man identified by Mediaite as ..really…””the most powerful man in America.” Who would that be, as described here, exactly? “Outside of the president, Al Sharpton might possibly be the most powerful man in America right now.”

Mediaite’s Joe Concha made the point of Sharpton’s power these days by measuring with four “power indicators” that illustrated just what gives a man infamous for his race card playing his clout. In brief, they were:

1) Sharpton’s access to the White House;

2) a “nobody owns him” factor that was verified using a Quinnipiac poll that gives Sharpton a 69% favorable rating by New York City’s African-Americans as their leader, beating out President Obama and Congressman Charlie Rangel;

3) Sharpton has a full hour-long television show on Comcast/NBC’s cable news MSNBC giving him a five-day-a-week media platform;

And -- drumroll, please -- Power Indicator # 4 is that “Unlike the rest of us, he’s excused from paying taxes.” The latter point stunningly correct, Sharpton’s massive unpaid tax bills clearly one big no-never-mind to even the president himself.

But to the point here the most important indicator of Sharpton’s power, as noted by Concha with what seems to be unerring accuracy, is Power Indicator # 3, Sharpton’s hour-long nightly show on MSNBC. Not only is Sharpton a lousy, painful-to-watch TV host, his ratings are somewhere below the cellar, losing his time slot regularly and worse than badly to CNN’s Wolf Blitzer and, of course, to Fox’s Bret Baier. Yet there is not a hint that Sharpton’s show will get the axe from the network. And why might that be? In Concha’s perceptive words;

“So if the ratings are bad and the delivery even worse, why and how does Sharpton still have a program on the air? Answer: Because Comcast and NBC — and this is just an educated guess — must be petrified to fire him (by, yes, the race card being turned against them). Remember, Sharpton gave his crucial blessing to the Comcast/NBC Universal merger a few years back. Not long after, he was magically given his own show at 6:00 p.m. on MSNBC. Reciprocity at its finest.”

Wow.

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