The Beat with Ari Melber


The Beat with Ari Melber is an American news and politics program hosted by Ari Melber, who is the chief legal correspondent for the network MSNBC. It airs weekdays at 6 PM ET. In its first full year on air in 2018, The Beat drew the "largest audience for MSNBC at 6pm in the network’s history." In 2019, The Beat broke that record. The Beat's audience is larger than The Situation Room, which airs on CNN in the same timeslot, "by a wide margin when it comes to total viewers," drawing about 700,000 more viewers per night, according to Nielsen ratings analyzed by the media website The Cheat Sheet in 2019. The Beat is also one of the most viewed news shows online, drawing "around 13 million viewers per month on YouTube—the highest of any MSNBC show," according to a 2019 Daily Beast profile.

Format

The show features news reporting, one-on-one interviews, panels, and special reports by the anchor. The show includes a "Fallback Friday" segment every Friday.

History

The Beat with Ari Melber was announced after Greta Van Susteren's program For the Record with Greta ended. The network tapped Melber as one of its "most valuable utility players" for anchoring the 6pm slot, according to the Associated Press, an effort to shore up an hour when MSNBC has historically drawn less viewers, trailing cable stars Bret Baier and Wolf Blitzer, who host the 6 p.m. shows on Fox News and CNN. Upon its debut, it was part of MSNBC's evening ratings surge among key demographics on cable television, and went on to draw a larger nightly audience than any hour of CNN.
The Beat with Ari Melber has been noted for its reporting on Facebook's role in elections and journalism. Mediaite, an American Media publication, wrote about its coverage of Facebook's role in the Philippines election, noting "host Ari Melber has carved out an important niche as arguably the leading critic of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg in all of television."
Notable interviews Melber has conducted include U.S. Senators Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Warren, Jeff Merkel, Richard Blumenthal, Dick Durbin, Mark Warner and Cory Booker; Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who had a newsworthy legal exchange on the show, former White House adviser Stephen Bannon, former Trump aide Sam Nunberg, who later credited the interview for his decision to cooperate with Special Counsel Robert Mueller, and musician Talib Kweli, who joined a discussion with Fat Joe and conservative Bill Kristol that Fortune called "one of the most delightfully diverse panels ever. Really."
The show also features musical and cultural guests, such as 50 Cent, Method Man, Vic Mensa, French Montana, Black Panther actor Winston Duke, Sean Penn, novelist Alice Walker, Andrew Leon Talley, DJs Stretch Armstrong, Bobbito Garcia and Jay Smooth, Desus and The Kid Mero, and the rapper Havoc,.

Reception

The Detroit Free Press named The Beat with Ari Melber to its "best" TV shows of 2017, noting its reporting "helped untangle the implications of Robert Mueller's Russia investigation, revealing the actual law obscured by the partisan posturing of so many cable news formats."
TVNewser reported that in 2017, The Beat with Ari Melber "defeated CNN in total viewers this year, and delivered the network's largest yearly audience ever" for its 6pm timeslot. Forbes reported in 2017, the show delivered "MSNBC's best rating ever for the time slot" and "not just because of an overall Trump Bump bringing a rise in viewership," noting "MSNBC saw total day growth of 38%" in ratings, while "Melber's 6 p.m. slot saw growth of 56%."
TVNewser noted in February 2018, The Beat and "posted record viewership in MSNBC history for their timeslots," and The Beat continued its ratings growth in 2018, averaging 1.7 million viewers per night in September 2018—more viewers than CNN's 6pm show and more viewers than every other CNN show in prime time.