Former WH press secretary struggles in Rachel Maddow’s primetime slot at failing liberal network
MSNBC has been slouching toward oblivion since November, when its parent company Comcast announced it was cutting ties with the left-wing network. Things got so bad after the election that network executives forced their highest-rated host, Rachel Maddow, to work five days a week (instead of one) to collect her $25 million salary. Maddow returned to her old schedule earlier this month to make way for MSNBC “rising star” Jen Psaki, the self-described journalist who previously served as White House press secretary under Joe Biden. The early returns do not bode well for Psaki, who is facing increased scrutiny for her role in the cover-up of Biden’s cognitive decline.
Psaki debuted her new show, The Briefing, which will occupy Maddow’s coveted 9 p.m. weekday time slot (except on Mondays, when Maddow hosts), on May 6. MSNBC’s new boss, Rebecca Kutler, reportedly views Psaki as the “face of the network’s new era.” The ratings for the debut weren’t bad, presumably because some Maddow fans were unaware of the switchover. They crashed down to earth the following day. On May 7, viewership in the crucial 25-54 age demographic—the only number advertisers care about—plunged from 139,000 to just 65,000, a decline of 53 percent. The Briefing was crushed in the demographic by time-slot competitors at Fox News and CNN. Psaki was also outperformed by reruns of Bob’s Burger, King of Queens, and Paw Patrol.
During her first week in primetime, Psaki averaged 92,000 viewers in the demographic, a 47 percent decline compared to Maddow’s last full week. On Tuesday, The Briefing drew just 79,000 viewers in the coveted age group, putting Psaki in fourth place among MSNBC’s weekday hosts. Even Nicolle Wallace, the obnoxious personality known for her flirtatious infatuation with convicted felon Michael Avenatti, got more viewers. Only the Maddow look-alike Chris Hayes at 6 p.m. and Stephanie Rhule at 11 p.m., well past the bedtime of MSNBC’s elderly viewers, had lower ratings in the demographic. Hayes is widely regarded as one of the worst hosts in the history of cable news.
It’s a disappointing result for MSNBC executives, who had hoped the former Biden press secretary would be a better Maddow replacement than Alex Wagner, who averaged just 66,000 viewers in the demographic while hosting the 9 p.m. time slot from November 2024 to January 2025, when the panicked executives forced Maddow to return to a full-time schedule to stop the bleeding. Psaki’s numbers aren’t quite that bad as Wagner’s were during the post-election period when MSNBC’s ratings plummeted across the board. MSNBC chose to elevate Psaki over Wagner earlier this year, around the same time the network fired Joy Reid, a shameless partisan hack whose ratings were also terrible. Many criticized the reshuffling, alleging white supremacy in action. “Both our non-white hosts in primetime are losing their shows,” Maddow seethed at the time. “That feels indefensible.”
Psaki left the White House in May 2022, several weeks before journalist Mark Leibovich published an article in The Atlantic noting that Biden’s age and mental acuity was a “recurring theme” he heard from concerned senior officials. As press secretary, she dismissed concerns about Biden’s health, insisting he was “hard to keep up with.” Earlier this month, amid a torrent of revelations from books about the 2024 campaign, Psaki denied seeing any signs of Biden’s decline until he walked on the CNN debate stage and bragged about beating Medicare. “I’m not a doctor,” she said. “Aging happens quite quickly.” Psaki rejected the idea that White House officials and their media allies engaged in a “cover-up” of Biden’s decline. “I like to think that, no, they would not be part of an active ‘let’s hide from the public what we see happening privately,'” she said. “I don’t know the facts of what was happening.”
Read more: Biden’s Highly Paid Enablers at MSNBC
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