MSNBC host Rachel Maddow has reached a new deal with NBCUniversal, one that will continue her employment at the network for several more years. Considering that her show, since it debuted in 2008, has become the network’s prime-time anchor, you’d expect the news to be announced with a press release, including happy quotes from executives. Not so. “[A]n MSNBC spokesperson declined to comment. After all, the network isn’t even confirming her new deal on the record,” wrote CNN’s Brian Stelter.
A statement from bosses such as new network president Rashida Jones might clear up a matter of some consequence to the show’s 2 or 3 million regular viewers: How much longer will they see Maddow at 9 p.m. on their TV screens? According to an account in the Wall Street Journal, the 48-year-old Maddow “will continue to host her show on weekdays.” But Stelter reports that she’ll transition next year to more of a “weekly format.”
Let’s just say that a weekly “Rachel Maddow Show” is not “The Rachel Maddow Show” that fans have come to embrace. Frequency matters. One of Maddow’s gifts is to follow the tiks and toks of big news stories as they mature.
An MSNBC source tells this blog that Maddow’s schedule “isn’t changing.” Note that such formulation leaves open the possibility that it will change in the future. “Details are still being finalized,” says the source.
We also asked Maddow herself about this matter; she declined to comment and didn’t address the question on her Monday night show.
Burnout appears to have set in since the show’s debut 13 years ago: Maddow told the New York Times in 2019 about the travails of a daily cable-news show, revealing that she and Fox News’s Tucker Carlson had thrown out their backs around the same time. “I’m realizing now — 10, 11 years into this — that it’s fine to work long days,” Maddow said. “But it’s not good for you to work incessant long days, five days a week, 50 weeks a year for 10 years.”
The product reflects the effort, as Maddow has patented the extended, 15- to 20-minute opening monologue, which she tries to present more as a bedtime story than as the product of a New York-based newsroom. She’s forever contextualizing the issues of the day by grabbing events from decades ago and unspooling the parallels in an unhurried style not available elsewhere on the cable dial.
And, as the Daily Beast reported recently, Maddow’s grown weary of writing the equivalent of a New Yorker essay five times a week. The host is “intrigued by opportunities in the streaming and podcasting space, which would allow her more freedom, time for her personal life, and for other projects,” noted the report. Just two weeks ago, she told her audience, “I have been on vacation for the last couple of weeks. First two-week vacation I have ever had, in my whole life. It was amazing.” Maddow’s new deal allows for film and TV series — and a first option for NBCUniversal on projects from her new production company, according to the Journal.
It all sounds a bit like the newspaper beat reporter who graduates to a focus on “enterprise” journalism.
Maddow has done her share of long-form stuff. She’s written books on American military might and the international plague of oil, along with a podcast series with Michael Yarvitz on the “vast criminal enterprise” of Vice President Spiro T. Agnew — a corrupt man who whined about a “witch hunt,” hammered the media and shared other traits with a recent White House occupant.
If Maddow has been pummeled by the demands of a prime-time cable show, she’s done a fine job of camouflaging the toll. Throughout the Trump presidency, she greeted the daily bumper crop of scandal stories with a mix of incredulity and exuberance. “Now that I am back, I want to say thanks to the news gods for keeping things suitably insane so there’s a real reason for me to be here trying to make sense of what’s going on,” said Maddow after a break in May 2018.
The possibility that Maddow would walk away from her nightly show marks a moment for cable news historians, if only because people tend not to just walk away from these perches. Among the big three cable news outlets there are just nine coveted prime-time slots, a few more if you adopt a looser definition of “prime time.” These positions often come with salaries in the eight-figure range, opportunities to cover — or even host — presidential debates and election night coverage, a long tail on social media platforms, and relevance that’s yours to lose.
It’s no wonder, then, that these hosts tend to quit their shows under pressure or amid controversy. Think Chris Matthews of MSNBC (inappropriate comments to women); Bill O’Reilly of Fox News (sexual harassment, advertiser boycott); Greta Van Susteren of Fox News (behind-the-scenes “chaos”); Piers Morgan of CNN (ratings); Keith Olbermann of MSNBC (“stormy” relationship with bosses); and Larry King of CNN (“personal mess” and ratings).
Regardless of what happens with Maddow’s show, we here at the Erik Wemple Blog are using her likely departure to suggest a 15-year term limit for prime-time cable news hosts. Had this rule been in effect at the founding of Fox News, we’d have been rid of Sean Hannity in 2011.
