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The channel is losing Comcast as its corporate parent — and shield from the President’s attacks — as it reclaims its Rachel Maddow-centric identity and plans new leadership.
By Alex Weprin
Media & Business Writer
When top MSNBC talent and executives gathered for a morning editorial call on Jan. 14 in the 15th floor executive conference room at 30 Rockefeller Plaza, they were greeted by a powerful guest at the head of the table: Mark Lazarus, the incoming CEO of “SpinCo.”
SpinCo, of course, is the placeholder name for a new company, one that will be comprised of most of NBCUniversal’s cable channels … MSNBC included.
Lazarus was joined at the head of the table by MSNBC president Rashida Jones and senior vp Rebecca Kutler. Jones stunned attendees by announcing her decision to step down as president, with Lazarus naming Kutler as her interim replacement, effective immediately, less than a week before President Trump’s inauguration.
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While rumblings of a possible exit for Jones had swirled for weeks, attendees of the meeting were nonetheless shocked, with tears shed by a number of those in the room.
Rachel Maddow, MSNBC’s star anchor, used the opportunity to tell Jones “one of the things that I value so much from your leadership,” something that she hoped Kutler and Lazarus would continue.
It was about “the culture in our building and the way we treat each other,” Maddow said.
“I means knowing that the person at the top is listening to us and is a colleague but is also apart from us – in part so that she can take the flack, so that she can take the pressure and not pass it down to us, which allows us to have a culture among ourselves as colleagues where there’s not backbiting, where there isn’t a nest of gossip, where we are treated respectfully, and we know somebody at the top is going to be our heat shield in terms of all the pressures that come down on us,” she added.
Maddow has long been MSNBC’s unofficial power-center. Her stamp of approval on a documentary can secure wider reach, and when she speaks out, others often follow.
And with the anchor set to once again reassert herself as the primetime face of the channel in the coming months, coinciding with the return of Donald Trump to the White House, she appears cognizant of the public pressure that the channel is likely to face.
MSNBC had already been in the news for weeks before Jones’ exit. The channel saw its ratings decline after Trump won the 2024 election (though executives there are quick to note that the ratings appear to have begun to rebound over the last couple weeks or so). And an announcement that Morning Joe hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski met with Trump at Mar-a-Lago bothered some viewers. Earlier in the year, the brief hiring and then firing of former RNC chair Ronna McDaniel sparked an on-air revolt from MSNBC talent, including Maddow.
And staff at the channel had been dealing with the agita that comes along with a change in ownership, wondering what the spin off to SpinCo will mean. Would MSNBC lose its brand or identity? What would happen to the news hours? Where would it be based?
Lazarus sought to assuage some of those concerns in the Tuesday morning meeting.
For starters, he reaffirmed that, yes, MSNBC will still be called MSNBC “for the foreseeable future.”
“I know there was some discussion with the MSNBC name, so you can take that off of your worry list on things,” he said.
And perhaps most significantly, he indicated that MSNBC’s strategy under Jones and Kutler was moving in the right direction. MSNBC has in recent years made an aggressive push into podcasts (many of them led or produced by Maddow), and more recently launched a live event business spearheaded by Luke Russert.
And it still holds sway among Democrats. Consider a booking coup: On Thursday evening, Lawrence O’Donnell will have an exit interview with President Biden, underscoring the channel’s relevance with the party power base.
“The only thing I’ll say is the worst thing any leader can do is change something that’s working just because they can,” Lazarus said. “So, if this is working, then there’s no reason to change it.”
And while some change is inevitable (he also told those in attendance that Jones “put us in a really strong position to move to the next evolution of what MSNBC is going to be”), there were clear indications that the ship was moving in the right direction.
Still, Jones’ departure and Kutler’s promotion come at a critical moment for MSNBC. Not only is the channel set to split from NBC News and forge a path as part of Lazarus’ SpinCo, but it is preparing to shake up its lineup for the early months of the Trump administration, what Jones is calling “a consequential next chapter in American politics.”
Maddow will return to hosting the 9 p.m. hour Monday-Friday, with Alex Wagner, who had been hosting the hour most nights, set to travel the country to report “on the impacts of Trump’s early policies and promises on the electorate.”
And in a sign that MSNBC under SpinCo will be investing, Kutler is working to hire a talent executive and newsgathering lead to help the channel continue to deliver news programming after the spin, with the future of that part of the business still unsettled for now.
“She has my backing to make whatever decisions she thinks helps us,” Lazarus told attendees of the meeting.
One source who has worked with Kutler described the executive as a sharp news producer with an eye for building digital news brands (she previously worked as an ep and executive at CNN), and inside MSNBC there was a sense of optimism about her elevation, even if she has an interim title for the time being.
2025 has the makings of a big year for MSNBC, one in which the channel will forge its identity under new leadership, at a time when the larger TV news landscape is straining under the weight of cord-cutting and putdowns from tech moguls and political power players.
So when Maddow speaks of a culture of respect, where executives take the flak on behalf of talent, it carries weight, and it comes at an important time.
“I want us all to try to hold that up, both to honor you, but because I think it makes us strong and resilient and here for the long run,” Maddow told Jones Tuesday morning.
That resilience will likely be needed over the next few years.
This story first appeared in the Jan. 17 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. To receive the magazine, click here to subscribe.
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