Toy Story 5 star Tom Hanks took a sledge hammer to MS NOW’s tiny number of viewers right in the face of one of the network’s reporters in Chicago on Thursday.

Hanks was in the Windy City for the grand opening of the Obama Presidential Center when a reporter for the former MSNBC — which rebranded itself as MS NOW last summer — approached the film star with mic in hand.

As the Cast Away star turned his attention to the reporter, he offhandedly remarked, “What can I do for the 800 people watching MS Now?”

The reporter was a tad hurt by the comment, so Hanks added, “Alright, add a zero to it if you need to.”

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Of course, adding a zero — to make eight thousand viewers — is still nothing like gangbuster viewership for a cable network. Just for example, the nine a.m. show on Fox News, America’s Newsroom with Bill Hemmer, usually earns up to 2.1 million viewers during the time slot. So, if Hanks imagines that all MS Now can dredge up is eight thousand viewers, that says it all.

Even as Hanks was taking a humorous jab at MS NOW, the Obama Center, which he came to see, has become mired in its own sea of controversy after news broke that the millions of dollars in cost overruns have left dozens of black-owned small businesses, construction companies, and tradesmen unpaid for their work on the Center.

Construction companies are now reporting that the Center owes them amounts ranging from the tens of thousands to multiple millions in unpaid construction fees. And in the case of many of the black-owned businesses, they face bankruptcy if they don’t get paid soon, Fox News reported.

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