While we patiently wait for The Morning Show to come back for season four, the real-life version appears to be playing out at MSNBC. Unfortunately, it’s less fun when TV theatrics involve actual people’s livelihoods, but that doesn’t mean it’s any less dramatic. Over the past few days, a shake-up at MSNBC has led to tears, public callouts on prime time, and Don Lemon telling Megyn Kelly to go fuck herself. Joy Reid is out of a job, Rachel Maddow is pissed off at her employers, and that’s to say nothing of what’s happening over at NBC Nightly News. Here’s a rundown of the whole debacle, then we’ll throw it to Al Roker for the weather.
When did all of this start?
Shortly before Donald Trump took office, MSNBC president Rashida Jones (not that one) announced that she would be stepping down. Jones was the first Black woman to lead a major cable-news network when she stepped into the role in 2021, and under her leadership, MSNBC often hovered above CNN as the second-rated cable-news network with Fox News consistently ranking first. Following her departure, Jones was replaced in the interim by Rebecca Kutler, a former CNN exec.
And the new boss cleaned house?
Okay, so here’s where the story really gets going. On Sunday, the New York Times reported that Joy Reid’s show, The ReidOut, was being canceled as part of a network overhaul led by Kutler. That wasn’t all, though. Alex Wagner, who had previously hosted the 9 p.m. slot four nights a week, was getting replaced by former Biden press secretary Jen Psaki. (That change will happen in April, when Rachel Maddow ceases her five-day-a-week coverage of Trump’s first 100 days and reverts to only doing Mondays.)
On Monday, it was also announced that anchors Katie Phang, who hosts a Saturday-afternoon show, and José Díaz-Balart, who hosts a mid-morning show, were losing their hours. Wagner, Phang, and Díaz-Balart are all staying within the MSNBC ecosystem, while Reid is out of a job entirely. (Wagner and Phang will be correspondents, and Díaz-Balart will anchor Weekend Nightly News.) It is probably worth noting that all four of these booted hosts are people of color and that Reid was the first Black woman to ever host a prime-time cable-news show. In a statement shared to X, Phang wrote, “I was proud to platform more AAPI voices than any other cable show ever. And I was, and remain, proud to have been one of the only AAPI hosts with her name on a show. Representation matters.”
What did Joy Reid say about her cancellation?
During a Zoom call with Win With Black Women on Sunday night, Reid said, “I’ve been through every emotion from, you know, anger, rage, disappointment, hurt … guilt. You know, that I let my team lose their jobs. But in the end, where I really land and where I’ve landed on today is just gratitude.”
Reid said she was proud of covering hot-button issues and topics like the Black Lives Matter movement, the violence Asian Americans were experiencing in 2020, the war in Gaza, and “what the president is doing that is subversive to the Constitution.” “Where I come down on that is I’m not sorry,” she said.
In her final episode on Monday, Reid devoted a segment to historical examples of people who resisted fascism. “You don’t always win every battle,” she reminded viewers, “but the whole thing is about resisting.”
How did Rachel Maddow get involved?
On her own show Monday night, MSNBC’s top anchor, Rachel Maddow, took the time to decry Kutler’s decision. “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,” Maddow said. “I love everything about her. I have learned so much 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.”
“It is also unnerving to see that on a network where we have two — count ’em — two nonwhite hosts in prime time, both of our nonwhite hosts in prime time are losing their shows, as is Katie Phang on the weekend,” Maddow noted.
And somehow Don Lemon and Megyn Kelly are in this too?
Okay, well, would you believe that Megyn Kelly had some ghoulish things to say about Reid’s show being canceled? In a post on X celebrating Reid’s departure, Kelly called her “the absolute worst person on television.”
Well, former CNN anchor Don Lemon didn’t take too kindly to Kelly’s posts and devoted an entire 22-minute episode of his YouTube show to examining her history of racism (particularly that time she defended doing blackface for Halloween).
“The worst person on television was fired from NBC and the Today show a few years ago and that’s Megyn Kelly,” Lemon said. “That’s the worst person who’s not on television anymore. It’s you. So hoorah for that. NBC did something good with that.”
To cap off his video, Lemon looked directly to camera and said, “Let me just say to Megyn Kelly, on my 30-some years as a journalist and my 50-some years as a person of color: Go fuck yourself.”
Is there also drama with Lester Holt at NBC Nightly News?
This is technically unrelated to the MSNBC stuff due to some Comcast-level business decisions that are, frankly, above my pay grade. (In short, MSNBC will be spinning off from NBC entirely.) That being said, while the two networks still share three letters, you might as well hear some gossip coming out of 30 Rock. NBC Nightly News anchor Lester Holt announced on Monday that he would be stepping down from his role after ten years. He’s going to stick around, but he’ll be devoting himself full time to Dateline, which he’s hosted since 2011.
So now the big anchor chair is open, and according to the tabloids there’s an ongoing battle as to who’s going to get it. On one side, there’s Tom Llamas, current senior national correspondent for NBC News. The New York Post reported last year that there were rumors Llamas had been hired in 2021 to eventually replace Holt and that Llamas was waiting “impatiently” in a “slow-motion coup d’état.” Now that the time has finally come, Llamas is reportedly facing competition from Hallie Jackson, the Sunday-night anchor of NBC Nightly News.
“It’s basically a race between Tom and Hallie Jackson, but Tom is 99 percent,” a source told “Page Six.”
But a source told the Daily Mail that while Llamas and Jackson are “duking it out” for the job, it might end up going to neither of them. The insider claimed that NBC News brass “doesn’t have faith in Llamas or Jackson replacing Holt. It won’t work.” They continued: “Long-timers in the newsroom think neither have the name recognition for the job.” Brutal.
Seems like it’s one big mess over there. On the bright side, I’m sure that the intern group chat is filled with top-tier gossip right now, and I love that for them.