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MSNBC head: We can beat Fox by 2014

MSNBC President Phil Griffin says in a profile in The New Republic out Monday he believes he can beat Fox News — dubbed “Loserville” by one of his producers — by 2014.

Media reporter and TNR contributor Rebecca Dana writes in the piece, “Slyer than Fox,” that beating Fox News President Roger Ailes is Griffin’s “life’s ambition.”

“MSNBC is more successful now than it has ever been,” Dana wrote. “At the end of this presidential election, it drew an average of 1.5 million viewers to its weekday prime-time lineup. (The numbers have fallen since.) Fox still gets more than two million a night, but Griffin, optimistically, believes he can beat Fox by 2014.”

“It’s a cockiness that has funneled down,” Dana noted. “In a recent staff meeting, one of Griffin’s producers coined a term for Fox News: “‘Loserville.’”

Ailes, meanwhile, told Dana that he is “fond” of Griffin. “He’s like the guy next door who wants to borrow your lawnmower,” he said, according to TNR. “And he does a pretty good job of managing that mean-spirited circus over there. But let’s be honest, he built his whole career out of being in Jeff Zucker’s wedding party.”

As for Zucker, Dana wrote that Griffin doesn’t obsess over beating the CNN chief like he does Ailes. “All I know is I kicked CNN’s ass without Jeff Zucker,” Griffin said. “Now I gotta kick his ass, too.”

Read the full profile here.