The sweeping overhaul at MSNBC has reached production staff after tearing through its lineup of anchors.
The network has already told the majority of employees who produce Rachel Maddow and Joy Reid’s shows that they were being let go with the option to apply for new roles, according to two sources who spoke to The Guardian.
Maddow, MSNBC’s biggest star, will get to keep her executive producer Cory Gnazzo and multiple other senior producers, the sources said.
The rest of her team, however, was reportedly given the option to claim severance or apply for new roles within the network along with producers for other canceled shows.
The Maddow staff had originally worked on her five-nights-a-week show, then when she stepped back to only working on Mondays had produced Alex Wagner’s show the other four nights of the week. But it was canceled and Wagner was reduced to being an “analyst.” Former Biden White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki will take over Tuesday-Friday nights.
A source familiar said the changes were “not widespread MSNBC layoffs” and that people affected would be able to apply for new roles the slimmed-down cable channel is creating.
MSNBC president Rebecca Kutler earlier announced massive changes to the network’s daytime, primetime, and weekend schedules, headlined by the cancellation of Joy Reid’s The ReidOut.
Other non-white MSNBC anchors who lost their eponymous shows were Katie Phang, Jonathan Capehart, Ayman Mohyeldin, and José Díaz-Balart.
Maddow lashed out at the network on Monday over the shake-up.
The cancellation of The ReidOut “is very, very, very hard to take,” Maddow said. “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.”
“I will tell you it is also unnerving to see that on a network where we’ve got two—count them, two— non-white hosts in primetime, both of our non-white hosts in primetime are losing their shows, as is Katie Phang on the weekend,” she added. “And that feels worse than bad, no matter who replaces them. That feels indefensible, and I do not defend it.”
Reid expressed “pure gratitude” for her supporters in a tearful defense of her show.
Phang said she was “stunned” to hear of her show’s cancellation, though she will remain on the network as a legal correspondent with no anchor slot.
MSNBC suffered a post-election drop in ratings but has since rebounded to beat out CNN as left-wing viewers flock to its combative coverage of the second Trump administration.
