Mr. Gregory, The Doctor Will See You Now

Bless NBC’s heart.  They’re in a bit of a pickle.  They seem to be a small gherkin in a jar of large dill pickles.

“Meet the Press”, the longest running Sunday morning talk show is No. 3 and in the midst of a three-year slide. During the first three months of this year, the program finished behind perennial rivals “Face the Nation” and “This Week With George Stephanopoulos”.  Viewing among people aged 25 to 54, the preferred demographic for TV news advertisers, fell to its lowest level ever in the last quarter of 2013.

“Last year, the network undertook an unusual assessment of the 43-year-old journalist, commissioning a psychological consultant to interview his friends and even his wife. The idea, according to network spokeswoman, Meghan Pianta, was to get perspective and insight from people who know him best.’ But the research project struck some at NBC as odd, given that Gregory has been employed there for nearly 20 years.”

Odd indeed.  NBC is now disputing the Post story, referring to the resource called in last year as a “brand consultant”.

"Do I want to be No. 1 in the ratings?" Gregory said in an interview with the Post. "Every week I want to be No. 1, and we fight like hell to get there. And it’s tough right now. It’s a fight.

"I’m not just trying to sell you—well, I am trying to sell you—but I’m not going to B.S. you, either. Yeah, it’s hard. I see what our challenges are. But we’re going to fix our problems."

I guess the “brand analyst” was called in to see if the tat on David’s ass of the logo for The World’s Most Dangerous Community Organizer needed to be re-inked.  It’s bound to have faded a little though you’d never know it based on the way he kisses the ass of Democrats and is full of piss and vinegar (note the pickle theme) when interviewing Republicans.

Paul Farhi, who wrote the WaPo piece, said he checked with NBC twice on Sunday about the term "psychological" and that they had no objections at the time.

With NBC willing to allow information like this to go public it’s easy to see that the writing must be on the wall.

Dr. Freud will review the id, the ego and the superego with David.  It’s OK though.  NBC has deep pockets.

UPDATE:  I love what Vodkapundit had to say.

“NBC is in a real bind here, because who is there better to replace Gregory? NBC’s bench is so shallow that he really is the best they’ve got to host TV’s longest-running program.” 

“So the bad choices are to suffer the shame of canceling TV’s longest-running program, bringing in one of the D-listers from the MSNBC farm team, or keep Gregory as captain of the sinking ship.” 

“Honestly, it couldn’t happen to a nicer group of shills.”