Rachel Maddow paused her usual criticism of President Donald Trump and his new administration to instead focus her ire on her own network’s cancellation of now-former MSNBC host Joy Reid’s primetime show.
Reid’s program, “The Reidout,” was among the high-profile slate of MSNBC shows that top network brass decided to ax over the last few days as part of a major shakeup of its primetime lineup.
That decision was one Maddow told viewers on Monday was “very, very, very hard to take.”
“In all of the jobs I have had in all of the years I have been alive, there is no colleague for whom I have had more affection and more respect than Joy Reid," Maddow, 51, said. “I love everything about her. I have learned so much from her. I have so much more to learn from her. 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.”
Maddow on her top-rated show continued to lay into leadership at the progressive cable news network in an over five-minute on-air sound-off, where she alluded to even greater turmoil inside MSNBC headquarters.
“It is not my call, and I understand that, but that's what I think,” Maddow said. “I will tell you, it is also unnerving to see that on a network where we've got two – count them two – non-white hosts in primetime, both of our non-white hosts in primetime are losing their shows, as is Katie Phang on the weekend. And that feels worse than bad, no matter who replaces them, that feels indefensible. And I do not defend it.”
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But aside from the network’s big-name hosts, Maddow added concern for “the people who get our shows on the air,” who she said are “really being put through the wringer.”
“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,” Maddow revealed. “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 and it's inefficient and it's unnecessary – and it kind of drops the bottom out of whether or not people feel like this is a good place to work. And so, we don't generally do things that way.”
Maddow said the “kind of limbo” network employees are finding themselves in include some working on her program, “The Rachel Maddow Show,” which resumed airing daily for the first 100 days of President Donald Trump’s new administration.
“The anxiety and the discombobulation is off the charts at a time when this job already is extra stressful and difficult,” Maddow added. She concluded by saying that the present moment “is a difficult time in the news business.”
“But it does not need to be this difficult.”
