Two of MSNBC’s biggest stars are safe from the network’s major programming overhaul – despite plummeting ratings.
According to recent Nielsen figures, the viewership of Morning Joe, hosted by Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski, has dropped by almost half since President Donald Trump’s election victory.
It saw its audience shrink by 40 percent, from 1.1million before November 5 to just 651,000 viewers between November 6 and this past Friday.
Despite concerns about potential replacements following Joy Reid’s departure, it has been revealed by DailyMail.com that Scarborough and Brzezinski are secure in their hosting roles.
‘Joe and Mika are categorically not going anywhere. Nothing here. Full stop,’ Richard Hudock, an MSNBC spokesperson, said.
Morning Joe also saw its audience members in the key 25 to 54 age range shrink. The demographic is of prime interest to advertisers.
Before the November 5 election, the show was averaging 123,000 viewers in the demographic. But since then, that figure has plummeted to just 67,000.
On the other hand, Fox & Friends, the morning show on Fox News, experienced a significant increase in viewers, attracting an average of 1.5 million viewers during the period from January 1 to November 5, marking a 29 percent rise from the same period last year.
Morning Joe, hosted by former Congressman Joe Scarborough and his wife Mika Brzezinski, lost nearly half of its audience since President Donald Trump won the election
Scarborough and Brzezinski appeared to have struggled to gain momentum since they visited Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in the aftermath of his decisive win, which the couple were forced to defend when they received backlash from both conservative and liberal media figures.
‘All of us will do the best we can do and we’re all working towards a better America,’ Scarborough said on air after The View’s Ana Navarro called them ‘opportunistic’ and asked whether they ‘change[d] their stripes’ because of ‘who’s in power.’
Former MSNBC host Tiffany Cross also accused them of ‘kissing the ring’ as she called on black Americans to boycott the network following Joy Reid’s ouster.
Cross denied that Reid’s firing was related to MSNBC’s dismal ratings.
‘Don’t believe the hype about the ratings,’ she urged on the Win With Black Women podcast Monday. ‘Her show was doing very well.
‘You know whose ratings aren’t doing well? Who ain’t never got fired? Morning Joe, Joe Scarborough – They went to kiss the ring and they are still being elevated.’
Instead, Cross – whose own show on the network was canceled after two years – chalked Reid’s ouster to a difference in opinions between Reid and the network executives.
‘There are people in positions of power who do not like her opinions and truth-telling courage,’ Cross claimed, like ‘when she spoke about what was happening in Gaza, among a lot of other things.’
The couple have struggled to gain momentum since they visited Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in the aftermath of his decisive win. They are pictured with Trump in 2015
A spokesperson for the network has since defended Morning Joe’s ratings, telling the New York Post that the morning show has seen its total viewership increase from Inauguration Day by 17 percent – from 587,000 in the period from November 5 to January 20, to 684,000 since Trump took office.
In the 25 to 54 year old demographic, Morning Joe is averaging 24 percent more viewers since the inauguration, from 55,000 prior to January 20 to 68,000 since, the spokesperson noted.
They added that Morning Joe also continued to command a larger audience overall than its liberal rival CNN in February – the 120th consecutive month it has done so, despite falling behind the network’s morning show in the 25 to 54 demographic over the past two months.
The news comes as new MSNBC President Rebecca Kutler seeks to stabilize the network’s ratings.
She announced a series of changes to MSNBC’s programming on Monday, after being forced to confirm Reid’s ouster to angry staff members when the news was leaked to the staff.
Her 7pm EST time slot will now be replaced by a panel show co-hosted by Symone Sanders Townsend, Alicia Menendez and Michael Steele.
On Monday, MSNBC’s new president Rebecca Kutler announced a slew of changes to the network’s programming as she seeks to stabilize its ratings
MSNBC is also working to consolidate broadcast locations to New York and Washington, DC
Katie Phang, Jonathan Capehart and Ayman Mohyeldin were also given the boot from their current timeslots as part of the changes.
Capehart and Mohyeldin – currently the hosts of The Saturday/Sunday Show with Jonathan Capehart and Ayman, respectively – will man programs yet to be named, staffers confirmed.
Mohyeldin, who hosts Ayman Mohyeldin Reports, will broadcast its final episode on April 20 at 7pm, a spokesperson confirmed.
Former White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki will also now anchor a primetime nightly weekday show, taking over Alex Wagner’s current slot.
He will stay with the network as a senior political analyst, according to Kutler’s memo.
At the same time, Rachel Maddow, who is arguably the network’s biggest star, will revert to hosting the 9pm slot once a week, it added.
Her namesake show will return to Mondays at 9pm following the first 100 days of the Trump Administration.
Rachel Maddow torched her bosses Monday after canceling Joy Reid’s low-rated talk show
Meanwhile, as MSNBC works to consolidate broadcast locations to New York and Washington, DC, the network is also planning to end operations in Miami – in a move that will impact shows like José Díaz-Balart Reports and The Katie Phang Show.
Díaz-Balart will stay with NBC News as anchor of Weekend Nightly News, the staff memo notes, while Phang will remain with MSNBC as a legal correspondent, after already serving as legal analyst for NBCUniversal since 2017.
‘In the years ahead, we must continue to show up for our audiences in this critical moment while simultaneously best positioning ourselves for the future,’ Kutler wrote Monday – adding she had hoped to share such changes with staff directly and ‘understand the frustration that you first learned about this over the weekend and not from me.’
But Maddow railed against the changes on her show as she hit out at Kutler and other network executives for firing Reid and other ‘non-white’ anchors.
‘I do not want to lose her as a colleague here at MSNBC, and personally, I think it is a bad mistake to let her walk out the door. It is not my call and I understand that. But that’s what I think,’ Maddow said.
She added: ‘I will tell you. It is also unnerving to see that on a network where we’ve got two – count them – two nonwhite hosts in primetime, both of our nonwhite hosts in primetime are losing their shows, as is Katie Phang on the weekend.
‘And that feels worse than bad, no matter who replaces them. That feels indefensible. And I do not defend it.’
