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MSNBC got some very good people. They've got a good-looking set. All They're first-class. Somewhere along the way, they kind of lost their identity as a news channel, and they started doing a lot of other sort of magazine-type programming.

When I was little, people like Talking Heads were on the radio. There was something geeky yet groundbreaking about them.

When I came to MSNBC, its identity as the place for politics was growing.

When it went on the air, the sales department hated it. It was the highest advertising pullout show in the history of NBC. At the early focus groups, people were saying, 'Who are these people? Why should we watch them?

For years, the defenders of television have argued that the networks are only giving the people what they want. That might be true. But so is the Medellin cartel.

Television is the triumph of machine over people.

I do think that the days of gathering around a television set that functions merely as a television set, to receive a live broadcast of some networked programming, those days are probably numbered.

Broadcast radio was entering its own golden age during the Depression, with live programming on stations all through the day. Local stations needed singers, musicians, announcers, and whipcord personalities, along with Christian clergy to give prayers and pundits to speak on world affairs.

There were some television sets back in the '50s, but they were expensive. People would gather at the rich guy's apartment down the hall to watch Milton Berle on his 10-inch black-and-white screen.