Rachel Maddow will return to hosting her MSNBC show five nights a week through President Donald Trump’s first 100 days as her network wrestles with ratings woes, it was announced Monday.
The full week for Maddow will start on Tuesday Jan. 21, the day after Trump’s inauguration.
Alex Wagner, who had broadcast for the 9 p.m. hour Tuesday through Friday with Alex Wagner Tonight, will instead begin a reporting tour across the U.S. examining the effects of Trump’s early policies. Both shows will return to their normal schedule on May 1, the network said.
Maddow is critical to the network’s success. Wagner’s show pulls in less than half the number of viewers Maddow reaches, Nielsen data shows.
MSNBC president Rashida Jones, said the move was a response to “the moment we’re in,” which, “requires us to cover the early days of the new administration from all over the country.”
The move comes as the 9 p.m. slot on the network has flailed since the 2024 election. Maddow’s ratings were down by 43 percent in the weeks following Trump’s win, and while the network’s ratings steadily trickled up, her Jan. 6 broadcast was still down 26 percent from her October average.
MSNBC’s ratings have steadily trickled up since a post-election exodus saw Maddow plunge to her lowest ratings in nearly 10 years, netting just 86,000 in the advertiser-coveted 25-54 demographic two weeks after Trump’s win. Maddow also saw six weeks of ratings below 1.5 million viewers after the election, down almost a million viewers from her 2.4 million average in November 2023. The network saw its primetime ratings in November decline by 22 percent from October, though it was still up over CNN.
While post-election ratings dips are fairly standard, and MSNBC and Maddow’s ratings have slowly trickled upward since the holidays, her Jan. 6 total of 1.61 million viewers (117,000 viewers in the demo) is still down from her January 2024 average of 2.2 million viewers. The total was, however, her highest showing since before the election.
The shift follows a November report that Maddow’s $30 million salary was cut by $5 million last fall as part of a five-year contract renewal.
The $30 million mega-salary, which rivaled few in the industry, shocked observers at the time, with many unsure how an anchor could pull in a high figure while only hosting one night a week. (Maddow filled the rest of her schedule with various podcasts, books, and documentaries.)
Still, last year’s salary cuts and ratings decline indicate MSNBC expects her to put in the screentime to earn her high pay in an era of talent cost-cutting. Maddow re-signed with NBCUniversal’s Cesar Conde, who had approved the $30 million deal in 2021, months before SpinCo CEO Mark Lazarus took over MSNBC and CNBC.
The shift also comes as MSNBC recalibrates itself as part of Comcast’s spun-off SpinCo, which has seen multiple anchors take pay cuts in recent months and NBC stalwart Andrea Mitchell prepare to leave her show after the inauguration.
Maddow has been the network’s focal point for years, often anchoring its special coverage and becoming a resource for viewers outraged by Trump’s tirades. Situating her in her slot for five nights a week in Trump’s first 100 days—at least—potentially gives the new company and Lazarus new ratings wins to tout as it completes the spinoff process.
