Big changes coming to MSNBC as new boss from Philly takes over

Joy Reid is out at MSNBC as the network announced major lineup changes a month into President Donald Trump’s second term.

The network announced Monday it is canceling The ReidOut, the opinion show Reid has hosted since 2020. After hosting her final show this week, Reid will depart the network where she’s been a familiar voice for more than a decade.

The New York Times and Variety were first to report Reid’s impending departure. MSNBC declined to comment, but Reid reacted to the news during a group call Sunday hosted by Jotaka Eaddy, the founder of the Win With Black Women network.

“As you can imagine, I’ve been through every emotion over the past several days,” Reid said. “From anger, rage, disappointment, hurt … feeling guilt that I let my team lose their jobs.”

“In the end, where I really landed on today is just gratitude,” Reid added, holding back tears. “My show had value.”

MSNBC plans to replace Reid in the 7 p.m. hour with a trio of hosts — former Kamala Harris adviser Symone Sanders-Townsend; former Republican National Committee chairman Michael Steele; and Alicia Menendez, the daughter of former New Jersey Sen. Bob Menendez. The three currently host The Weekend, a show created by new MSNBC president Rebecca Kutler.

The move took Reid and her staffers by surprise. On Sunday, Kutler held a “tense and emotional” virtual meeting with staffers on The ReidOut, who found out about the decision to cancel their show from media reports, according to Oliver Darcy at Status News.

Alex Wagner is also being removed as the host of MSNBC’s 9 p.m. hour on the evenings Rachel Maddow doesn’t host. But unlike Reid, Wagner will remain at the network as a senior political analyst.

Maddow, the network’s biggest star, reduced her schedule to just Monday nights, but has been hosting all week since Trump took office. Maddow plans to continue hosting nightly through Trump’s first 100 days, which would be the end of April.

Wagner’s role hosting Maddow’s 9 p.m. hour from Tuesday through Friday will be filled by Jen Psaki, Joe Biden’s former White House press secretary, who left the administration and joined MSNBC in 2022.

No changes were announced to the network’s other prime-time shows, hosted by Chris Hayes, Lawrence O’Donnell, and Stephanie Ruhle.

MSNBC is also canceling news shows hosted by Katie Phang and Jose Diaz-Balart as it shutters its broadcasting operation in Miami and consolidates to New York City and Washington, D.C. Phang will remain with the network as a legal correspondent, while Diaz-Balart will continue to host Weekend Nightly News on NBC.

As a result, both Ana Cabrera and Katy Tur will expand their daily news shows to two hours, while Chris Jansing’s show will move up to noon. Ali Velshi’s weekend show will expand to three hours.

These are the first moves being made by Kutler, the Philadelphia native who took over as MSNBC’s president earlier this month. The lineup changes take place in front of a huge shift behind the scenes, with MSNBC being spun out of NBC and Comcast and into a new company called SpinCo alongside many of the network’s other cable TV networks, including CNBC, USA, Syfy, and E! (but not Bravo or NBC’s regional sports networks, including NBC Sports Philadelphia).

The deal is expected to close by the end of the year.

As a result, Kutler will be establishing an MSNBC bureau in Washington, D.C., and hiring domestic and international correspondents, according to sources, as the network moves away from NBC News, which will remain part of NBC.

Among the voices MSNBC is in talks to add include Politico’s Eugene Daniels and New York University law professor Melissa Murray, according to sources. Both are currently on-air contributors.

Comcast’s move to split MSNBC off into a separate entity hasn’t stopped Trump from targeting the company. Trump’s Federal Communications Commission is investigating both Comcast and its subsidiary, NBCUniversal, over the company’s diversity, equity, and inclusion policies. Trump himself has threatened Comcast and has a long list of complaints about what comedians on Saturday Night Live and opinion hosts on MSNBC have said about him.

“They should be forced to pay vast sums of money for the damage they’ve done to our Country,” Trump wrote of Comcast on Truth Social Sunday evening.

While MSNBC’s lineup might be changing, its identity as the liberal alternative to Fox News will remain in place.

Sources say Trump’s second term didn’t have an impact on the moves, which were made by Kutler and MSNBC and not new leadership at SpinCo. Incoming SpinCo CEO Mark Lazarus praised Kutler’s early moves in a statement earlier this month, saying her moves are intended to “ensure MSNBC delivers on its brand promise and is positioned for growth during a time of industry change.”

MSNBC remains ahead of CNN as the second most-watched cable news network in the country, and has seen a surge in ratings with Trump in office. Maddow remains a solid draw, averaging over 2 million viewers a night when she hosts.

Still, Fox News easily remains the most-watched cable network in the country, dwarfing both MSNBC and CNN. During the week of Feb. 10, Fox News averaged 1.975 million total viewers and just shy of 3 million in prime-time, compared to 619,000 total viewers and 1.084 million prime-time viewers on MSNBC. CNN averaged just 376,000 total viewers and 487,000 viewers in prime-time.