You'd think with all the talk about change coming to Meet the Press, there'd be at least someone out there advocating for veteran NBC News reporter Andrea Mitchell to cap off her long, productive career at the network as host of television's longest running show.
You'd be wrong.
Fine, Mitchell isn't the greatest host working in television news. She's not even a really good host. Regular viewers of her daily MSNBC show, Andrea Mitchell Reports, know that her teleprompter delivery is still not so smooth. But she can conduct good interviews, can book big names, and, of course, wins Emmys. Since Mitchell will probably never get the other prestige news job at the network — anchoring the Nightly News — what other than Meet the Press could such a respected, respectable NBC News lifer merit?
Chuck Todd and the co-hosts of Morning Joe, Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough, have been the biggest targets of speculation about David Gregory's replacement. Either of these options would shake things up. But what's the worst that could happen if Andrea Mitchell hosts Meet the Press? Considering how unimpressive MTP's ratings have been recently, Mitchell would have to be phenomenally bad to make viewers and media critics long for the days of David Gregory. And even if she failed to improve on MTP's dismal numbers, just a short Mitchell era at MTP could help 30 Rock in more ways than one:
1. Meet the Press can eventually radically evolve, and therefore stay relevant.
It might be that if Meet the Press is going to survive the next general election, it needs to become something very different from what it is now. There's already talk of someone like Today's Savannah Guthrie spearheading that sort of transition, which could include transporting the show from D.C. to Manhattan.
In giving Mitchell the Meet the Press job, the show could continue its traditional style of programming relatively undisrupted, giving NBC more time to figure out how the heck they're going to successfully bring, or if it's at all possible to bring, MTP into the 21st century.
2. MSNBC can get on with its life.
Mitchell's MSNBC show — one of the last straight news shows left on the network's weekday schedule, is smack in the middle of the day. If Mitchell moved on, MSNBC would be able air a steady stream of its signature opinion talk shows from 12 p.m. to 12 a.m., and so move closer to a world in which the liberal cable talk network and NBC News don't have to deal with each other.
3. NBC can make corporate loyalty ~cool~.
If there's no payoff, what's the point of working literally 30 years for one network?
