MSNBC President Rashida Jones is stepping down from her role after four years, she told staff on Tuesday.
Effective immediately, Jones will be replaced in the interim by Rebecca Kutler, the networkâs senior vice president of content strategy. Jones hired Kutler from CNN in 2022.
Jones will remain an advisor to MSNBC through March, she said in a memo to staff.
âThe people here at MSNBC are what make this place truly special, and our shared mission is what has always united us: to keep our viewers, readers and listeners well-informed, provide critical context, ask tough questions, speak hard truths, say the quiet part out loud, and always adhere to the facts, without fear or favor,â she wrote, according to Vanity Fair.
Jones joined MSNBC in 2013, rising through the ranks before she oversaw the networkâs daytime and weekend programming. NBC News Group chief Cesar Conde tapped her as president in February 2021, making her the first Black woman to run a television news network.
âWhat we had was an enormously capable television producer and executive who was rising at a time when the nation and the media business were taking a cold, hard look at who we are and what are we doing and whoâs making the decisions, and how can those things be changed,â MSNBC anchor Jonathan Capehart told the Daily Beast in 2021 for a profile of Jones.
Throughout her tenure, Jones led the network through both calm seas and media maelstroms. She oversaw the networkâs continued rating success throughout Joe Bidenâs presidency, luring Jen Psaki and Symone Sanders-Townsend to the network after their stints at the White House and helped keep Rachel Maddow with MSNBC in 2021 (albeit with a massive $30 million annual salary for one show a week). The network also played host to multiple candidates last summer vying to be Vice President Kamala Harris' vice-presidential nominee.
But she also was forced to navigated various talent uprisings, including the brigade of stars blasting NBC News' hiring of Ronna McDaniel on its airwaves (leading to her firing) and frequent complaints by Morning Joe hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski throughout last year.
Jones' exit comes as the channel has faced a period of intense upheaval after Comcast siloed it and most of its other cable networks into a new spin-off company. MSNBC also faced months of declining ratings since President-elect Donaldâs Trumpâs victory in the presidential election in November.
MSNBCâs ratings have steadily trickled up since a post-election exodus saw star Rachel Maddow plunge to her lowest ratings in nearly 10 years, netting just 86,000 in the advertiser-coveted 25-54 demographic two weeks after Trumpâs win. The network also saw its primetime ratings in November decline by 22 percent from October, though it was still up over CNN. Maddowâs Jan. 6 ratings, however, were her highest since the election at 1.621 million viewers.
Jones has overseen all of the networkâs sweeping programming changes in the last few months, ranging from the departure of Andrea Mitchell from her long-running program to reporter Ali Vitaliâs new stint as host of Way Too Early.
She was also forced to acknowledge the months-long ratings exodus this week, however, when MSNBC announced Maddow would temporarily return to hosting The Rachel Maddow Show five nights a week through Trumpâs first 100 days. It was Jones, not Kutler, who provided a statement for the networkâs announcement on Monday.
Jones' exit follows a wave of executive departures or firings in recent years.
CBS News President Ingrid Ingrid Ciprian-Matthews announced last year she would leave the network just as David Ellison completed his acquisition of Paramount Global, its parent company. ABC Newsâ Kim Godwin, who was the first Black person to lead a broadcast news division, was pushed out of the network last year after various staffers accused her of mismanaging the Disney division.
Chris Licht was also fired by Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav in 2023 after a lengthy Atlantic profile chronicled his year running the networkâone he admitted last year he should not have done.
