‘Evening Joe?’ MSNBC Considering Expanding ‘Morning Joe’ With Prime Time Specials: Report

MSNBC is considering expanding its Morning Joe franchise to prime time specials, Variety reported on Wednesday.

“It would be an opportunity to branch out and do some different things,” Morning Joe co-host Joe Scarborough told Variety’s Brian Steinberg, who reported the “hourlong primetime specials… could take viewers on deep dives into topics like voting rights or into some of the challenges facing American cities.”

MSNBC president Rashida Jones told Variety, “I really want the content to drive the placement, and as the year plays out and the ideas play out, that will drive where these things hit.”

But do Scarborough and co-hosts Mika Brzezinski and Willie Geist, who already host four hours of MSNBC every weekday, have the stamina for even more airtime?

As Variety reported:

The “Morning Joe” trio do seem to have their hands full. “Morning Joe” expanded to a fourth hour this year, and the demand for more content, says Scarborough, “is killing me.” Four hours, he says, “for me is physically 10 times as hard as three hours is, and I don’t know why. We’ve had to radically alter our lifestyle.” (He and [co-host Mika] Brzezinski married in 2018.) Attentive viewers might notice that the fourth hour of the program is more structured than the others, which hinge largely on freewheeling conversations between the trio and their guests and regulars. After 9 a.m., there’s room for segments, including from Andrew Ross Sorkin and Donny Deutsch.

In the ratings, Morning Joe has consistently outperformed the new CNN This Morning, but it has trailed Fox News’ Fox & Friends, which has dominated the 6-9 a.m. slot.