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| Rachel Maddow and Joy Reid (inset) (MSNBC) |
MSNBC's most high-profile figures are reacting with venom to the network's decision to cancel several shows that were hosted by non-white anchors. From a joint report at CNN and Yahoo! News under the headline "Rachel Maddow and other anchors lambast MSNBC’s decision to cancel Joy Reid and Alex Wagner’s shows." Maddow noted the issue of race in her statement, which should raise questions about the network's motivation. The firings come a few days after MSNBC received heavy criticism from President Donald Trump:
Some of MSNBC’s biggest stars are – in extraordinary on-air fashion – rebuking management’s decision to cancel Joy Reid and Alex Wagner’s shows and lay off their production staffs.
Rachel Maddow used part of her Monday night show — MSNBC’s most watched hour — to call the move “a bad mistake.” She said it “feels indefensible” that “both of our non-white hosts in prime time are losing their shows, as is Katie Phang on the weekend.”
Maddow also said the impending layoffs are quite simply, “not the right way to treat people.” Producers and other staffers are being put in limbo, she said, and “the anxiety and the discombobulation is off the charts at a time when this job already is extra stressful and difficult.”
Meanwhile, conservative commentators are celebrating the changes and trying to undermine the progressive network’s credibility, and right-wing personalities are touting the cancelation of Reid’s show as a victory.
But MSNBC says it is not buckling to pressure from President Trump; far from it.
Some of the changes make a lot of sense on paper. For example, Phang and MSNBC weekday morning anchor José Díaz-Balart broadcast from NBC studios in Miami. Once Comcast’s spinoff takes effect and MSNBC is part of a separate enterprise, utilizing NBC’s space won’t be an option, so those Miami-based shows are ending. Díaz-Balart will stay with NBC as the weekend “Nightly News” anchor and Phang will remain with MSNBC as a legal correspondent.
Still, the shakeup has been unsettling for viewers – and for some MSNBC staffers. That’s what Maddow and company highlighted on Monday.
Stories started to circulate on Friday night about Reid and Wagner possibly being replaced, but none of the changes were confirmed until Monday, when new MSNBC president Rebecca Kutler rolled out a revamped schedule that reflects Comcast’s upcoming spinoff of MSNBC and other cable assets.
Viewers mostly learned about it from the anchors themselves. Reid said she was hosting the final edition of “The ReidOut” but didn’t say why. MSNBC didn’t give any reason for her departure, either.
What’s next for MSNBC
In the coming weeks, “The Weekend” co-hosts Symone Sanders Townsend, Michael Steele, and Alicia Menendez will move into Reid’s 7 p.m. time slot. Once Maddow returns to a once-a-week schedule in April, Jen Psaki will host the 9 p.m. hour Tuesday through Friday. (Wagner will become a senior political analyst.)
MSNBC says employees on the cancelled shows are being encouraged to apply for new jobs, but the bottom line is that multiple show teams are being axed, with no guarantees that folks will be hired back. “The idea that those people are all now adrift somehow makes absolutely no sense,” O’Donnell said on air, adding, “I hope something can be done about that.”
Why might race be a factor in the firings? That is not clear, although Trump heaped strong criticism on the network in recent days:
In a Truth Social post late Sunday, Trump labeled MSNBC a “corrupt” and “illegal” arm of the Democratic Party and said “they should be forced to pay vast sums of money for the damage they’ve done to our Country.”
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