Most of MSNBC star Rachel Maddow’s production staff, as well as employees who worked on Joy Reid’s show and other recently canceled programs, will be let go as part of the liberal cable news network’s sweeping lineup changes, two sources familiar with the matter told The Independent.
Notably, much of the Maddow staff impacted are shared employees across the Alex Wagner Tonight and The Rachel Maddow Show teams, who supported both shows when Maddow hosted on just Monday nights, and Alex Wagner filled in the rest of the week in the 9 p.m. ET time slot. Many of these staffers were told they’d be let go due to Wagner’s show being canceled.
The Guardian was the first to report on the job impacts to employees on Maddow’s program. MSNBC declined to comment.
Maddow, the top-rated anchor on the network, will be keeping her executive producer Cory Gnazzo and other senior staffers. However, the rest of her show’s staff will be laid off and given the option to apply for new positions across MSNBC, which has said over 100 new jobs will be immediately opened to internal candidates amid the programming overhaul.
The majority of staffers impacted by the job cuts worked on shows that were recently canceled, such as those hosted by Reid, Katie Phang, Jonathan Capehart, Ayman Mohyeldin, and Jose Diaz-Balart. The network has informed these employees that they could either accept a severance package or reapply for new positions at MSNBC.
Though Maddow’s show has not been canceled, most of its staff also produced Alex Wagner’s primetime show after Maddow began hosting only on Monday nights. Wagner filled in the 9 p.m. ET time slot Tuesdays through Fridays.
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Wagner, who has been on hiatus since Maddow returned to five nights a week during Donald Trump’s first 100 days in office, will not be returning once she goes back to just Mondays in late April. Instead, Wagner will move into a senior political analyst role, and former White House press secretary Jen Psaki – who had been hosting Sunday afternoons and Monday nights – will take over Wagner’s Tuesday-Friday slot.
Of course, the media industry as a whole has been experiencing upheaval in recent years, with several legacy outlets undergoing extensive job cuts. Just last month, for instance, MSNBC’s cable news rival CNN laid off six percent of its staff as it seeks to reposition itself as a digital-first operation, while the Washington Post recently let go of roughly 100 staffers.
Meanwhile, a network source reiterated that Maddow’s show is far from the only one impacted by the restructuring, adding that the network isn’t experiencing “widespread layoffs” due to the changes. “We are reallocating the personnel needed to support new programs and priorities,” the source noted, stating that there will be a “nearly a one-to-one ratio” of jobs impacted to new positions opening up.
Additionally, the source pointed out that the new job listings should appear within the week and will not be posted externally until internal candidates have had a chance to apply. The network is also expected to open even more positions in the coming months.
Still, as Maddow noted on her show Monday night, the “scale” of the changes is unprecedented at MSNBC, which is currently being spun off from NBCUniversal into the standalone company SpinCo.
In a tense meeting with staffers of Reid’s show, new MSNBC president Rebecca Kutler not only confirmed that The Reidout was being canceled immediately but that the crew of the show would be impacted. The staff, as with other impacted shows, would stay on until April 21, when the new lineup goes into effect. Reid’s show is being replaced by a panel show hosted by Michael Steele, Symone Sanders Townsend and Alicia Menendez, who currently anchor The Weekend.
After appearing on Reid’s final broadcast Monday night, Maddow took a “point of personal privilege” on her show later that evening to criticize the network for parting ways with Reid and the manner in which it was treating impacted staffers.
“I love everything about her. I have learned so much from her,” she declared about Reid. “I have so much more to learn from her. 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.”
She also took a swipe at her employer for canceling several programs that were hosted by minorities, calling it “unnerving” and “indefensible.” While Reid was fired by the network, Phang and Wagner will remain with MSNBC in other roles while other impacted hosts are shifting to co-anchor other programs. Additionally, the trio replacing Reid at 7 p.m. are all people of color, and MSNBC recently hired Politico’s Eugene Daniels to host a new show.
Still, it seemed Maddow was most critical of the way production staff was “being put through the wringer” by management while expressing concern for those impacted.
“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,” she stated Monday night. “They’re being invited to reapply for new jobs. 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.”
