MSNBC’s ratings have been in free fall since Election Day — including for its star anchor, Rachel Maddow — with the left-leaning network’s audience shriveling by nearly half as staffers panic inside the halls of 30 Rock.
Maddow — who reportedly has agreed to take a $5 million-a-year pay cut with a new, five-year contract worth $25 million a year — has seen her ratings tumble, stoking fears that her outsize compensation heightens the risk of layoffs among the rank and file.
Despite one exec reportedly gushing that the 51-year-old anchor is “ratings Viagra,” since Nov. 5 the “Rachel Maddow Show” saw its audience plummet 41% to 1.4 million total viewers. In the demo, Maddow lost 50% of her audience, bringing in just 118,000, Nielsen said on Wednesday.
This past Monday, Maddow’s program attracted just 1.3 million total viewers — 13% below the previous week and a paltry 84,000 in the key 25-54 demographic — her smallest audience of the year and worst performance in the demo since 2015.
That’s part of a nearly 50% drop across MSNBC where employees are still reeling from last week’s announcement that the network would be spun off next year by parent Comcast, along with its other cable channels— with a top executive even suggesting the MSNBC may be forced to change its name.
The surprise spinoff news and plummeting ratings prompted Joe Scarborough, co-host of “Morning Joe,” to joke nervously on air: “We could all be fired a year from now.”
Nielsen estimated that a whopping 37% of the “Morning Joe” audience has evaporated after he and co-host Mika Brzezinski revealed that they met with President-elect Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago to reset their contentious relationship– turning off many of their liberal viewers.
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