"Meet The Press" About To Fall Behind "Face the Nation?"

I've always considered Face the Nation as an incredibly dreary, low budget affair that can't attract decent guests. Meet the Press still gets good guests, just as it did when Tim Russert hosted the show, but the problem problem with MTB is the host.

Since mid-September of ’11, NBC’s “Meet the Press” is averaging 3 million viewers; while “Face the Nation” is averaging 2.93 million. 

Back in April, CBS expanded Schieffer’s show from 30 minutes to one hour, which is the running length of “Meet the Press” and “This Week.”
 
In an interview with the AP at the time, Schieffer noted that, shortly after he started as the show host two decades ago, Russert went to his NBC bosses and got them to expand “Meet the Press” to an hour. Russert promised if the ratings did not go up in three months, he’d agree to cut it back to 30 minutes, Schieffer said. The numbers went up, and Russert ruled the Sunday Beltway show ratings until his death. 

On the eve of “Face the Nation’s” expansion in April, CBS News execs told the AP that “Face the Nation’s” expansion is, likewise, an experiment — one that will be reviewed after 20 weeks before being made permanent. 

Consider what has become of the Sunday morning talk shows. First ABC hands "This Week" to leftist knot head Christianne Amanpour, and when that fails the turn it over to Clinton hack George Stephanopoulos. 

Although a liberal Democrat to his core, Tim Russert raised MTP to the top of the Sunday morning talk show lineup by asking Democrats the same kind of hard questions that he asked of Republicans. David Gregory squandered all of that by turning his show into one of left wing, partisan hackery. 

And the ratings go down. When will the networks learn. If you turn your show into one that only caters to leftists, those are the only people who are going to tune in.