As MSNBC prepares to split off from the Comcast mothership later this year, a new daytime lineup debuts today that will look quite similar to the news-driven approach it has had with NBC News as a sister network.
That is the point, as MSNBC for the first time builds out its own news division, a rarity for linear TV these days, while retaining a lineup of primetime progressive hosts.
As part of the daytime changes, Ana Cabrera‘s 10 a.m. ET show is expanding to two hours, followed by Chris Jansing Reports at noon ET and then Katy Tur Reports at 2 p.m. ET. On the weekend, Alex Witt will continue at 1 p.m. ET for three hours. Gone are shows hosted by Andrea Mitchell and José Díaz-Balart, who are remaining with the broadcast network.
Other decisions are TBA. In recent months, some reporters and anchors have been waiting — a bit anxiously — to see where they land. Other announcements have drawn headlines, like when data guru Steve Kornacki signed a contract that will see him wind down his MSNBC role for NBC News and sports. Antonia Hylton, an NBC News correspondent, will become an MSNBC correspondent in addition to her role as co-host of The Weekend: Primetime.
In an interview, Jansing compared this moment to the early days of MSNBC in the late 1990s, when she joined the NBC News networks from local news.
“There was something very creative and exciting about being a part of something that was new and fresh and felt like it was full of opportunity,” Jansing said. “…I would also argue that at its heart, nothing changes — maybe a format changes, or you pick up another hour and that changes. But we’re journalists, and we are serious about what we do, and these are serious times.”
Chris Jansing
The biggest shakeup that viewers will see will be in the nighttime hours, which leans heavily on analysis and opinion, or “perspective” as the network has called it. Tonight will see the debut of The Weeknight, a 7 p.m. ET show hosted by Alicia Menendez, Michael Steele, and Symone Sanders-Townsend, followed by Rachel Maddow as she returns to a one-night-a-week schedule. On Tuesday, Jen Psaki will move to the 9 p.m. ET slot for the remainder of the week.
As it is now, the daytime hours will continue to be a newsier contrast to primetime.
Scott Matthews, who was hired in March as senior vice president of newsgathering, is in the midst of building up the newsroom, with plans to hire around 100 journalists.
Matthews said that the goal is to be “sort of nimble, scrappy, multiplatform,” as he sees his job as building an operation “literally starting from scratch.” “You only get the opportunity to launch once, so we are trying to be as thoughtful about that as possible,” he said.
Matthews said that the network will have two hubs of operation in New York and Washington, and the goal is to be “extremely competitive” in the D.C. space and “basically flood the zone with great journalists and all the places we need to be.”
Katy Tur
He also said that they plan to have a national footprint, saying that “it’s very possible and likely we will have folks who don’t have a brick and mortar bureau to go to but will have the resources to go gather news and send it back.”
“We’re really trying to be as nimble and detached as possible from too many harnesses so we can hop on planes and get to places where we need to tell the best stories as quickly as we possibly can,” he said.
The differences in news coverage may be subtle, but there will be more alignment to MSNBC programs, he said. “NBC News services a lot of other platforms, or a lot of other distribution channels … so they are a little more generalized on the things that they do, which makes a lot of sense. The experience [on MSNBC] should be a lot more bespoke to the shows and the hosts, which I think will provide a better experience to the viewer.”
Matthews left open the possibility of appearances of CNBC figures, as that network also will be part of the Comcast spinoff. He also said that they are looking at some kind of sharing arrangement with NBC News, even though it will no longer be a sister network, along with other kinds of partnerships.
Ana Cabrera
Tur said that the changes will allow her to have longer conversations, given her extra hour, while “we’re going to have access to different reporters as we build out this newsroom, but I believe it is going to be very hard to discern, in terms of the viewer. We’re still going to have the same cameras. We’re going to have the same eyes on Capitol Hill and Washington. We’re going to have reporters around the country and I believe in some key places around the world.”
Cabrera said, “There’s obviously a ton of news out of Washington, but there’s also news happening all around the country that does not have anything to do with politics, but it’s still worth covering. I’m excited to have more time to explore some different stories, different issues, but it doesn’t change the way we approach it. It just gives us more opportunity to serve our viewers in a broader way. That is now I am looking at it.”
In April, MSNBC averaged 656,000 total viewers, down 24% from a year earlier, compared to Fox News, which averaged 1.62 million, up 28%, and CNN, which averaged 411,000, down 18%, according to Nielsen.
MSNBC, though, has seen viewership recovery after a post-election plunge. In April, total day viewership was up 44% since Trump’s inauguration compared to the post-election transition period, the network noted.
Alex Witt
The flood of Trump-generated news has helped drive up the numbers for MSNBC primetime shows in particular, as a kind of haven for viewers disaffected and dispirited by what is happening in D.C. Maddow, for instance, has provided regular updates on protests happening across the country.
But the MSNBC daytime hosts say that there has been no directive to change their news coverage.
“We have a very clear mandate, which is cover the news as it’s happening. Having a personality doesn’t mean you are partisan, but we are encouraged to be ourselves, to bring our own expertise, our own backgrounds, to be curious in the way that we are individually curious,” Tur said. “… The bend of my show, the way I ask questions, it’s not going to change.” She said that the only thing that they have gotten from [MSNBC President] Rebecca Kutler and other top executives is “to keep doing what we are doing and experiment, to try new things, to give us the freedom to do TV as we believe it can be done best.”
The Trump administration has meant, as Witt says, “a constant firehose of news.” That puts even greater pressure on MSNBC to keep apace once the spinoff is complete.
“One thing I have noticed that has been different, that I don’t expect to change certainly for the next three and a half years, is the work load in terms of the research and we have to do, keeping up with this administration, and the ramifications of the president’s actions or that of the Department of Justice of Health and Human Services of immigration,” she said. Witt said that “because of where I am placed on the weekends, we certainly cover hard news,” with a Saturday look back review of the week and on Sunday feature a look ahead.
Jansing said, “That’s our job — to be immersed in it. Talk to the smartest people. When people say, ‘How do you do it?’ I say, “Every day, I get to go in, and be curious about things and ask some of the smartest people on the planet about that topic.”
Cabrera said, “I come from a general assignment reporter background. I started my career in local news, so I really come to it from the perspective of what we do as a public service. Certainly being a government watchdog is a very big part of that, holding people in power accountable. But I also am curious about a lot of different things, and there are so many stories across the country and around the world, frankly, to cover.”
There also is a bit of a risk as to how MSNBC will fare on its own. There is not just linear viewership but how the network will provide streaming options, given that its programming is now part of the subscription Peacock platform, which will remain a part of Comcast.
Jane Hall, professor in the School of Communication at American University in D.C., said that for MSNBC “there is real potential, especially in this news environment, almost to be a startup focusing on New York and Washington and covering the news here.” A challenge, she noted, will be how they will cover international news, where NBC News will have far more resources.
Hall, the author of Politics and the Media: Intersections and New Directions, said that “the idea of creating a separate news division could be a way to further differentiate themselves.” With its conservative bent, Fox News thrives with its opinion hosts, but it also is distinguished from rivals on the right with its news operation.
Matthews said that in hiring what he is trying to do is to find people with expertise in coverage areas but who “also have the ability to cover relevant things whenever that beat or that specialty isn’t the most important thing at the moment….We want active journalists who are constantly engaged and aggressive, trying to find ways to get on any platform at anytime.”
“My philosophy is the news is the news,” he said. “The facts are the facts. We are going to call balls and strikes and provide the vest, most accurate information for our programs to utilize. And no one has even hinted to me that we want to look at things through a certain bend or a certain lens. My mission has been clear: Just go out and get the news, and that is what we are going to do.”
