MSNBC star Rachel Maddow will lose much of her staff as part of the network’s production cuts, Fox News Digital has confirmed.
Maddow’s team is expected to be slashed in April after she finishes broadcasting five nights a week as part of MSNBC’s primetime coverage of President Trump’s first 100 days in office. “The Rachel Maddow Show” will then revert to only Mondays, an arrangement the network’s most powerful host has brokered despite her lofty salary.
Much of the staff being laid off also worked on “The Alex Wagner Show,” the now-canceled program that previously took over Maddow’s 9 p.m. ET time slot Tuesday through Friday, when “The Rachel Maddow Show” only airs on Mondays. “Inside with Jen Psaki” will be taking its place in MSNBC’s revamped programming lineup, with the Maddow-Wagner shared staffers being let go.
Maddow’s most senior producers were spared and staffers being cut have been invited by the network to reapply for open positions. MSNBC does not consider these “widespread layoffs,” and resources are being reallocated to support new programs and priorities.
MSNBC declined Fox News Digital’s request for comment.
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On Monday night, Maddow candidly acknowledged to her viewers that layoffs could impact her show while denouncing MSNBC’s treatment of its staffers, saying they were “really being put through the wringer.”
“Dozens of producers and staffers, including some who are among the most experienced and most talented and most specialist producers in the building, are facing being laid off, they’re being invited to reapply for new jobs,” Maddow said.
“That has never happened at this scale in this way before when it comes to programming changes, presumably because it’s not the right way to treat people, and it’s inefficient and it’s unnecessary, and it kind of drops the bottom out of whether or not people feel like this is a good place to work, and so we don’t generally do things that way,” she continued.
Maddow added, “Maybe all of our folks, including most of the people who are getting this very show on the air right now, maybe they will all get new jobs here, and I hope they do, but in the meantime, being put in this kind of limbo, the anxiety and the discombobulation is off the charts at a time when this job already is extra stressful and difficult.”
However, very few at MSNBC have the job security of Maddow, who allegedly negotiated a whopping $25 million salary last year.
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Maddow also offered a full-throated defense of her former colleague Joy Reid after MSNBC canceled “The ReidOut.”
“I am 51 years old. I have been gainfully employed since I was 12. And I have had so many different kinds of jobs, you wouldn’t believe me if I told you. But in all of the jobs I have had, in all of the years I have been alive, there is no colleague for whom I have had more affection and more respect than Joy Reid,” Maddow said.
“I love everything about her. I have learned so much from her. I have so much more to learn from her,” she continued. “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 went on to call it “unnerving” for the network to cancel the shows of “two non-White hosts” (Reid and Wagner) in its weekday programming as well as “The Katie Phang Show” on the weekends.
“And that feels worse than bad, no matter who replaces them,” Maddow said. “That feels indefensible, and I do not defend it.”
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While Maddow noted that Wagner will remain with the network as a political analyst, she did not mention that Reid’s timeslot is being filled by Symone Sanders-Townsend, Michael Steele and Alicia Menendez, two of whom are Black and one is Latina, all currently co-host a weekend program together. Phang, too, is also remaining with the network as a legal correspondent.
New positions at MSNBC are expected to be made available to impacted employees before they are publicly posted. MSNBC’s layoffs come during a rough time in the news industry, as CNN, the Los Angeles Times and Washington Post have also recently reduced headcount as well.
Fox News’ Brian Flood contributed to this report.
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