AT MSNBC, RISING TENSIONS FUEL FEARS OF COLLAPSE:
MSNBC’s postelection viewership decline has surpassed its executives’ worst fears. Several top shows have lost more than half of their viewers since Nov. 5. This includes Rachel Maddow’s flagship show, as well as Joy Reid’s ReidOut, The 11th Hour with Stephanie Ruhle, All In with Chris Hayes, and Inside with Jen Psaki. Morning Joe has suffered a fate nearly as bad, with hosts Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough losing over 400,000 viewers in the same period.
In total, MSNBC averaged more than one million viewers during election week, but that number fell to just above half a million two weeks ago. This decline comes even as Fox News is scoring huge ratings, as viewership jumped 21 percent at the network following Trump’s win. (RELATED: MSNBC’s Attacks on Pete Hegseth Are Not About Trump — It’s About Fox News)
The collapse in viewership alone would be enough to induce panic among MSNBC staffers, but tensions have escalated even more following Comcast’s Nov. 20 announcement that it will spin off MSNBC and other channels, including CNBC, USA, Oxygen, and E!, into a separate company. Staffers are fretting that this will decimate the network’s journalistic reputability given that MSNBC’s relationship with NBC News provides it with a significant proportion of its journalistic resources. For instance, MSNBC utilizes NBC’s news bureaus and foreign correspondents to supplement its more opinion-focused staff. Without these resources, MSNBC would be pared back to hosts reading from a teleprompter in New York City or moderating roundtable discussions.
Staffers fear that the spinoff will result in layoffs, lower pay, and potentially even a sale. Under the current arrangement, NBCUniversal cable channels generate only 5.7 percent of Comcast’s current revenue, and the declining value of cable TV makes these channels even less appealing. By reorganizing the networks into a standalone company, Comcast may be positioning itself to offload this undesirable segment of its business. It also appears that MSNBC has overly high expenses. Most notably, Rachel Maddow just signed a contract to receive $25 million a year even though she only hosts her show once a week.
Related: MSNBC president Rashida Jones weighing network exit after Trump is sworn in: report.
MSNBC president Rashida Jones is considering leaving the network after President-elect Donald Trump is sworn in to a second term in the White House as the left-leaning channel’s ratings crash, according to a report.
Jones – who took the helm in 2021 and became the first black woman to lead a major national news network – is mulling an exit from the job early next year, according to a report by Oliver Darcy in his Status newsletter.
The move would only come after Trump is sworn in to serve a second term as president on Jan. 20, Darcy reported, citing anonymous sources.
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“It’s amazing how people want to spend more time with their families or look for new challenges when the ratings crash,” a TV exec said sarcastically — skeptical that Jones would be leaving the helm on her own accord.
“Of course she’s making the decision,” the TV exec added. “They’re all leaving on their own, Norah O’Donnell, Chris Wallace.”
And while Al Sharpton will likely be the last man standing there, he’s under pressure as well: Black church coalition calls on MSNBC to suspend Al Sharpton over donations from Harris campaign.