Most of Maddow’s Staff To Be Axed As MSNBC Ravaged By Job Cuts: Report
The majority of the production crew working on MSNBC’s The Rachel Maddow Show will be let go, The Guardian reported on Tuesday night.
For the first 100 days of the Trump administration, Rachel Maddow is hosting her show on the network five nights a week after hosting on Mondays only. It was reported this week that MSNBC is overhauling some of its programming, as Joy Reid has exited the network after hosting the last episode of The ReidOut on Monday. Alex Wagner’s Alex Wagner Tonight was also canceled, but she will remain at MSNBC. The network also shuttered its Miami operations and with it, José Díaz-Balart Reports and The Katie Phang Show.
The Guardian reported that most of Maddow’s production crew members are being let go because they also worked on Wagner’s show:
The Maddow team was let go because of a quirk of how they worked on both Maddow’s show and Alex Wagner’s show, when Maddow scaled back to hosting only Mondays and Wagner hosted Tuesday to Friday.
Maddow is currently hosting five nights a week for the first 100 days of the Trump administration, but when she returns to Mondays only and the programming shake-up takes effect on 21 April, Jen Psaki, the former Biden White House press secretary, will take over the Tuesday-to-Friday slot.
MSNBC said the cuts are not indicative of “widespread layoffs.”
Maddow’s executive producer, Cory Gnazzo, and several senior producers will remain at the program.
On Monday – about 90 minutes after Reid wrapped her last show – Maddow authored a stunning moment of television in which she criticized her own network, particularly over Reid’s termination.
“She is leaving the network altogether and that is very, very, very hard to take,” Maddow said. “I do not want to lose her as a colleague here at MSNBC, and personally, I think it is a bad mistake to let her walk out the door. It is not my call and I understand that. But that’s what I think.”
Maddow also criticized the cuts to production staff.
“Dozens of producers and staffers, including some who are among the most experienced and most talented and most specialist producers in the building are facing being laid off,” she added. “They’re being invited to reapply for new jobs. That has never happened at this scale in this way before when it comes to programming changes, presumably because it’s not the right way to treat people.
