Rachel Maddow Seriously Considers Leaving MSNBC

Rachel Maddow has been MSNBC’s most high-profile on-air persona for greater than a decade, lengthy embodying the community’s liberal ethos and raking in an obsessive following for her nightly primetime broadcast.

However when MSNBC viewers tune in subsequent yr, she is probably not there.

In accordance with six individuals acquainted with the scenario, Maddow, 48, is critically contemplating leaving the community when her contract ends early subsequent yr as negotiations drag on and the temptation to take her model elsewhere or begin her personal profitable media firm has grown.

Insiders who spoke with The Every day Beast mentioned whereas the star host has sometimes entertained other offers prior to now, she has in current months more and more expressed an openness to exiting when her deal ends, citing a need to spend extra time together with her household and the toll of internet hosting a nightly program since 2008.

Maddow appears unlikely to leap to a rival tv information community. As a substitute, she has been intrigued by alternatives within the streaming and podcasting area, which might enable her extra freedom, time for her private life and for different initiatives, individuals acquainted with her pondering mentioned.

The high-profile TV host has gotten aggressive in exploring her subsequent profession strikes: In current months, she left her longtime brokers at Napoli Administration Group, linking up with highly effective expertise company Endeavor and its key brokers Ari Emanuel and ​​Mark Shapiro, who’re representing her in contract negotiations with NBCUniversal.

“Nothing has been determined. We’re deep into it with NBCUniversal and Rachel has a superb relationship with them,” Shapiro instructed The Every day Beast. “We don’t touch upon worker issues,” MSNBC spokesperson Lorie Acio wrote by e mail.

Former MSNBC president Phil Griffin, who left the network earlier this year and has an in depth relationship with each Maddow and Emanuel, has been consulted in regards to the scenario as negotiations have grown “heated” and has supplied recommendation, in line with two individuals with direct information of the matter.

Maddow has sometimes dropped hints about skilled burnout. Throughout her Monday night broadcast, she knowledgeable viewers {that a} two-week break she took earlier this month was the longest trip she’s taken in her total life. And through an interview with The New York Times, Maddow mentioned she realized that between writing a guide and internet hosting her present, she barely has any time to herself.

“I’m realizing now—10, 11 years into this—that it’s advantageous to work lengthy days,” she instructed the Occasions. “But it surely’s not good so that you can work incessant lengthy days, 5 days every week, 50 weeks a yr for 10 years.”

Maddow’s resolution could characterize the primary main take a look at for brand new community president Rashida Jones, who changed Griffin earlier this yr and took the reins at a considerably precarious second for the left-leaning cable community.

Sources instructed The Every day Beast that MSNBC is taking main steps to maintain Maddow on board. Individuals briefed on the matter say NBCUniversal CEO Jeff Shell and NBCUniversal Information Group chair Cesar Conde additionally stay centered on retaining her, and are gearing as much as supply her a significant contract extension so as to take action. One thought higher-ups have floated features a lowered schedule to accommodate Maddow’s need to lighten her internet hosting load.

Within the 12 years she’s occupied the 9 p.m. slot, Maddow’s success has reoriented the community’s programming round her present and on-air tenor. For years, the 8 p.m. slot hosted by Maddow’s bombastic mentor Keith Olbermann was seen because the coveted airspace on the community. However following his (acrimonious departure), Maddow emerged because the face of the community—the wonky, chipper, and loquacious Obama-era antithesis of Olbermann’s fireplace and brimstone screeds. And because of her dogged protection of the Trump period, Maddow has cast a novel reference to the MSNBC viewers, spawning a category of viewer dubbed the “MSNBC Mother” (earlier this month, fill-in host Ari Melber aired a viral TikTok during which one such viewer expressed frustration with how Maddow hadn’t been on the air for weeks).

MSNBC has been onerous hit by the rankings plunge that befallen the cable networks within the months following Trump’s exit from the White Home. However Maddow is coming off a number of the finest years of her profession by way of viewership. Her rankings skyrocketed following Trump’s 2016 electoral victory, and haven’t let up a lot since. She stays the highest-rated host on the community, forming a significant ballast for MSNBC’s primetime lineup that persistently beats all reveals at CNN and sometimes outpaces high primetime hosts at Fox Information.

It has not been misplaced on community higher-ups that MSNBC doesn’t have an instantaneous or apparent successor if Maddow chooses to go away.

Whereas insiders mentioned even the dialogue of replacements was untimely, many doubted MSNBC would change her with 10 p.m. anchor Lawrence O’Donnell, whom community executives virtually despatched packing a number of years in the past amid tense contract negotiations that spilled out into public view. And eight p.m. host Chris Hayes, who was described for years as a Maddow protégé, has additionally by no means managed to rack up main viewership numbers within the hour main into her present.