As we previously reported, Rachel Maddow is fuming over recent shakeups at MSNBC, and she made sure everyone knew it. Following the cancellation of Joy Reid’s show and other cuts at the network, Maddow delivered a monologue packed with melodrama, outrage, and, of course, identity politics.
It appears her network wasn't very happy about it.
Maddow described Reid’s departure as “very, very, very hard to take” and heaped praise on her deranged former colleague, calling her irreplaceable. But the real fireworks started when Maddow questioned the reasoning behind MSNBC’s decisions. As anyone could have predicted, she played the race card.
Maddow pointed out that the network only had “two — count them, two — nonwhite hosts in primetime,” both of whom were losing their shows, along with Katie Fang on the weekend. “That feels indefensible,” she declared.
But here’s what Maddow conveniently ignored: “The ReidOut” has been bleeding viewers, dropping 28% from February 2024 to February 2025. MSNBC is a business, and failing shows get canceled. Does Maddow really believe minority hosts should be shielded from the same ratings-based decisions as everyone else? Apparently, basic economics wasn’t part of the “learning” she claims to have gained from Reid.
Maddow also lamented MSNBC’s broader restructuring, noting that dozens of producers and staffers were being laid off or forced to reapply for new jobs. She blasted the network’s approach as unprecedented, inefficient, and demoralizing.
And because no MSNBC meltdown is complete without turning everything into an existential crisis, Maddow framed the network’s shakeup as an assault on the free press, insisting that journalism itself is “under attack” in America. In reality, MSNBC is simply making business decisions like any other network, cutting deadweight. Maddow can wail all she wants, but the numbers don’t lie.
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Now, according to a report from The Guardian, the majority of MSNBC staffers who produced her show got the axe.
The Maddow team was let go because of a quirk of how they worked on both Maddow’s show and Alex Wagner’s show, when Maddow scaled back to hosting only Mondays and Wagner hosted Tuesday to Friday.
Maddow is currently hosting five nights a week for the first 100 days of the Trump administration, but when she returns to Mondays only and the programming shake-up takes effect on 21 April, Jen Psaki, the former Biden White House press secretary, will take over the Tuesday-to-Friday slot.
An MSNBC source said that the changes were not “widespread layoffs” but rather the reallocation of producers to support new programs and priorities. They said the new roles were being posted internally first and would not be posted externally until affected employees had had a chance to reapply.
The manner of the personnel changes – having employees reapply for roles in time slots they already produce – are unprecedented at MSNBC at this scale. Typically, MSNBC has taken great pains to redistribute staffers without laying them off after shows have been cancelled.
Was this karma? Revenge? Just business? Who cares? We all get to see Rachel Maddow cry over it.
How long before she gets axed?
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