Try as some might to disassociate from a second Trump administration, the president-elect will indeed be sworn in a week from today. But TV audiences will be getting another flash of déjà vu from 2017 — five weeknights of Rachel Maddow breaking it down.
MSNBC has announced that “The Rachel Maddow Show” will return to its full-time schedule for the first 100 days of Trump’s term. The show will air weeknights at 9 p.m. ET starting Jan. 20, the day of Trump's inauguration, and return to its weekly Monday night broadcast on May 1.
“Alex Wagner Tonight” typically airs on MSNBC weeknights Tuesday through Friday; during Maddow’s return, Wagner will report from around the U.S. for a new project, “Trumpland: The First 100 Days.”
“The Rachel Maddow Show” first aired in 2008 and grew into one of the most successful primetime news shows of the mid 2010s. The show’s ratings soared past CNN’s “Larry King Live” among 25- to 54-year-olds within weeks of its premiere, eventually trailing only Fox’s “Hannity” viewership among other nightly news shows.
The first Trump administration positioned Maddow as a leading critical voice in the mainstream media’s coverage of the president. In 2018, Maddow briefly surpassed Hannity to become the most-watched cable news host. The show achieved its strongest ratings in 2021, averaging 4.3 million nightly viewers — the highest 9 p.m. ratings in MSNBC’s history.
In 2021, Maddow inked a new deal with MSNBC that added producing and developing new NBCUniversal content to her duties. The following year, Maddow announced she’d be stepping back from hosting duties.
Despite that, Maddow remains “by a significant margin the most popular primetime host on MSNBC,” according to The Hollywood Reporter.
The announcement comes as MSNBC aims to reposition itself outside of Comcast, which announced in late 2024 that it planned to spin off a number of its major cable networks into a new company. That company, SpinCo, will function as an independent company outside of Comcast. The company will be publicly traded; among the Comcast brands it’ll be adopting are MSNBC, CNBC, USA Network and E!, as well as Fandango and Rotten Tomatoes.
