MEGHAN MCCAIN: You know, I was trying to figure out what I wanted to ask you, and I was thinking about it last night, and I have the unique experience that I briefly worked at MSNBC and Fox News for much longer. I obviously work here now. [Aside to audience member] I don't know what that was. And I would like to say, it's interesting being in the underbelly of both places, and conservative media dominates liberal media across the board. In ratings, their viewers are more loyal. I know that you were friends with Roger Ailes.

RACHEL MADDOW: Mm-hmm.

MCCAIN: What do you think was the key to conservative success and conservative brilliance in Fox News that they just lap you guys and still do? And that's your own verbage that you used one time on Bill Maher.

MADDOW: There's no -- I don't think there's any shame in it. Listen. I was in talk radio before I was ever in TV, and you want to talk about conservative domination on talk radio.

MCCAIN: Yeah.

MADDOW: Part of it is the conservative media world has set itself up as 'you can only come to us. Don't believe anybody else. Everybody else is against you. We're the only people who will tell you anything that you need, and you should not read the paper and not trust any other sources of news.'

And when you lock in an audience of that, even if you don't have a majority of the country listening to you or watching you, you get them uniquely, and you get them all day long, and you get them passionately.

I don't think that's good for the country because I think you end up giving people a single stream news sort, and that's not great. In the rest of the media, we're bringing on people from different papers and I, you know, I cite Fox News reporting on my show and stuff like that. I'll take reporting from anywhere. Don't care.

JOY BEHAR: It seems they have a more simplistic point of view.

MADDOW: It's more of a political operation. That's what I learned in getting to know Mr. Ailes. It's not like we hung out or anything, but I talked to him about the business and he really approached the business as a political operative who was trying to get Republican talking points out and get the Republican Party to move to the right, and he was running that as a constant campaign. I'm telling you. The people running MSNBC are not running a constant political campaign. They're just running a TV network, and when you don't have that same ideological drive, I think you end up producing a different product. We're sort of doing two different things. I don't think that Mr. Hannity and myself are doing parallel shows. We're doing different projects.

JOY BEHAR: They're in disarray now, so bravo.

MADDOW: Oh. No comment.

MCCAIN: We're trying to get more conservatives here, across the board on all networks there should be more fusion. That's how we're so tribal at the moment, but we have to talk about your book, "Blowout."