MSNBC's Ronan Farrow has only been hosting his new show "Ronan Farrow Daily" since Feb. 24, but there are already whispers around the network that it may be canceled due to low ratings, the New York Daily News reports.
Last Wednesday, his show was ranked 708th among all programming by Nielsen, with the midnight airing of "Baggage" on the Game Show Network finishing ahead of it:
"He sort of stinks on TV," an MSNBC source told Confidenti@l. "He hasn’t turned out to be the superstar they were hoping for."
The theory was that Farrow, a Rhodes scholar who graduated college when he was 15 and went on to score degrees from Yale and Oxford, would bring his 245,000 Twitter followers with him to television. "But that hasn’t happened," the source said. "Just because someone is a boy genius-turned-Twitter star doesn’t mean they deserve their own TV show."
Last Wednesday, Farrow drew an average of about 312,000 total viewers, which might be stellar for Twitter but "is rather measly for someone who is supposed to be a major national personality," another source said.
Even worse: Wednesday’s show was 708th among all programming ranked by Nielsen, in both total viewers and the 18-to-49 age group advertisers covet. The midnight airing of "Baggage" on the Game Show Network came in ahead of it, at No. 707, and the 8 a.m. "Golden Girls" on the Hallmark Channel (No. 700) crushed it.
Only 26, Farrow has stumbled out of the gate on his program, tripping over his words, repeatedly referring to himself as a "huge fan" of his guests, asking cringe-worthy questions of his audience about who's the "hero or zero" of the day, and recently enduring an embarrassing chyron gaffe.
The Daily News added that an MSNBC representative issued a statement similar to what the network said before canceling Alec Baldwin’s show after he made homophobic comments: "This is simply not true. We’re happy with the debut of ‘Ronan Farrow Daily’ and the show's progress this first month. MSNBC will continue to support Ronan and his team as they develop and grow the program."