MSNBC Names Rachel Maddow Replacement

MSNBC has announced the host that will replace Rachel Maddow at 9 p.m.: Alex Wagner.

“I am absolutely thrilled and honored and generally upside down with excitement to come back home to @MSNBC to host the 9PM hour, beginning August 16th,” Wagner said on Twitter. “LET’S DO THIS.”

In a statement, MSNBC said Wagner will “contribute to special coverage for MSNBC, including the pivotal midterm elections this fall.”

The network also said Wagner will be the only Asian American to host a prime time cable news program.

The New York Times broke the news on Monday morning. In an interview with the Times, MSNBC president Rashida Jones pointed to Wagner’s experience covering politics as her strong suit.

“This is not a show where our hair is on fire and we’re yelling past each other, and we’re creating these manufactured moments of tension,” Jones told the Times. “I really want the takeaway from this show to be a better understanding of what’s happening in the world.”

Maddow announced in April that she would be scaling back The Rachel Maddow Show, which she has been hosting five nights a week — to great ratings success — for more than a decade. Maddow now hosts the 9 p.m. hour on MSNBC once a week on Mondays, as she works on other projects for the network.

Wagner hosted a weekday show on MSNBC from 2011 to 2015 until it was canceled to make way for more straight news programming and less opinion during the daytime. She left the network for stints at The Atlantic, CBS News and Showtime’s The Circus, before returning in February. Since, she has served as a replacement host for Maddow, Nicolle Wallace and Chris Hayes.

According to the Times, the name of Wagner’s show, which will run Tuesday through Friday starting August 16, has not been decided.

“Alex Wagner in the 9pm hour was a clear choice. Her unique perspective—built on more than two decades in journalism—and tenacious reporting in the U.S. and abroad will help our audiences contextualize what matters,” Jones said in a statement released by MSNBC on Monday. “I am looking forward to watching Alex thrive in MSNBC’s primetime lineup.”

“I’m honored to be anchoring a key hour of television in such a critical time for American democracy,” Wagner said in her own statement. “In many ways, the stakes have never been higher, and there’s no better place to explore this moment than MSNBC. I’m thrilled to be coming home.”