Embarrassment for MSNBC as Former Biden Aide Jen Psaki’s New Show Tanks in the Ratings After Only Two Nights

MSNBC’s newest primetime show does not seem to be drawing the audience executives hoped for. Tuesday marked the launch of former Biden Press Secretary Jen Psaki’s new, four-night-a-week 9 p.m. show, “The Briefing.” The show was launched after the network’s top-rated host, Rachel Maddow, defiantly returned to her cushy Monday nights-only schedule while reportedly earning a salary of $25 million a year. Ms. Maddow had agreed to work five days a week, but only for President Trump’s first one hundred days in office. The move was seen as an attempt to stop the bleeding at MSNBC, which saw its audience crater by 57 percent after the 2024 election. Indeed the decision to bring Ms. Maddow back to work five days a week helped the network see an uptick in viewers.Her return to working only Monday nights left a major hole — again — in MSNBC’s lineup, and executives are certainly hoping they can develop Ms. Psaki into a worthy successor to Ms. Maddow, especially amid whispers in cable circles that the shame of Ms. Maddow’s contract is so profound that MSNBC’s soon-to-be new parent company, Versant, will simply pay her out and move on. The White House press secretary, Jen Psaki, March 18, 2022. AP/Patrick SemanskyHowever, the ratings from the first two episodes of “The Briefing” are likely not what executives were hoping for. The first episode, which may have benefited from curiosity from Maddow faithful, drew in roughly 1.2 million viewers, with 139,000 in the coveted 25-54-year-old demo, taking the first place spot for that demo — compared to Fox News and CNN — during primetime programming on Tuesday. On Monday, Ms. Maddow had 1.7 million viewers, of which 155,000 were in the demo.During her last full week of work at the end of April, Ms. Maddow saw days where she drew in more than 2 million total viewers. Sadly, on Wednesday, day two of Ms. Psaki’s show saw its audience shrink to just a hair over 1 million. The audience in the 25-54-year-old age range plummeted 53 percent to just 65,000, only 40 percent of Ms. Maddow’s demo audience on Monday.Those numbers are lower than the average audience for Alex Wagner, who had been hosting the Tuesday-Friday 9pm slot before Mr. Trump took office. In the weeks before the election, Ms. Wagner’s show garnered closer to 1.5 million viewers. However, in December — when MSNBC’s viewership plummeted — her show’s audience dropped to less than 1 million. Ms. Wagner, who is married to Michelle Obama’s White House chef, was demoted to “correspondent” during a programming shakeup in March, and Ms. Psaki’s new show was announced. At the time, Ms. Maddow lamented that anchors of color had been affected (Ms. Wagner is biracial). Had Ms. Maddow still been working full-time, she would have controlled on-camera staffing, as she had for more than a decade. But this time, she was jeered as profoundly disconnected from the struggles of the laid off MSNBC employees.Rachel Maddow was described by an unnamed executive as ‘ratings Viagra’, thus justifying her enormous salary. MSNBCThe rough start to Ms. Psaki’s show came as she was facing criticism for telling Semafor that she “never saw” the version of President Biden, that unsettled viewers during his disastrous June 27 debate with President Trump, during her time in the White House, even though she said she claimed to have been in the Oval Office “every day” between 2021 and 2022.Some liberal social media users had also signaled they were not too thrilled with the choice of the former press secretary to replace Ms. Maddow on MSNBC. In response to an MSNBC official X post about the new show, one user wrote, “Jen Psaki was a brilliant WH Press Secretary but she has not reached that same level of brilliance in her roles on msnbc. Rachel doesn’t want the full-time M-F gig, so here we are with the network trying to figure it out.Most former White House press secretaries have gone on to have careers in public relations at major corporations such as Amazon and Warner Brothers Discovery. A Clinton operative, George Stephanopoulos, who now co-hosts “Good Morning America,” where he’s believed to be paid $25 million a year to work five days a week, is a rare exception who’s succeed as television host.Ms. Psaki is looking for a similar success. One of Ms. Psaki’s Biden administration colleagues, Symone Sanders-Townsend, who was the chief spokeswoman for Vice President Harris, is also trying to make it as an MSNBC host, though she’s been relegated to a panel show on weekends.The ascent at Comcast of Cesar Conde, head NBC’s news group, is believed to have been permanently stalled due to his approving Rachel Maddow’s one-day-a-week work schedule for a reported $30 million, then $25 million, a year. The spinning off of NBC’s cable networks will strip Mr. Conde of most of his portfolio, and he was not offered the CEO job at the new spin-off. NBCUniversalThe bumpy start for Ms. Psaki’s show comes as there have been questions about whether Ms. Maddow will be allowed to keep her undemanding schedule as MSNBC is spun off from NBC News into Versant, with new leadership. Ms. Maddow and NBCUniversal have long faced criticism over what has been perceived as a ludicrous employment arrangement. Ms. Maddow’s previous contract, which paid her $30 million a year to work one day a week, was widely denounced at the time, and when it was reportedly renewed in 2024 for only $5 million less, the situation was widely dismissed as shameful and cowardly.A media reporter at Puck, Dylan Byers, called the salary “absurdly misaligned.” He noted that MSNBC announced it laid off 125 production staffers, who the network said could apply for other jobs, and calculated that the cost of their combined salaries was roughly what Ms. Maddow is reportedly earning. NBCUniversal attorneys headed for soon-to-be Versant are believed to be examining Ms. Maddow’s contract as the new company considers which talent it wants to keep, as it will have to grapple with the challenging environment facing cable companies without any kind of backing from NBCUniversal. If Versant can’t find a clause or condition that allows them to end the contract unilaterally, they will face the choice of continuing with the current, “absurdly misaligned” situation, or, as NBC News did with Megyn Kelly, just write Ms. Maddow a check and walk away.There’s some speculation that if Versant threatened such an action, that Ms. Maddow, faced with losing her platform, would return to five days a week. MSNBC did not respond to the Sun’s request for comment.

Embarrassment for MSNBC as Former Biden Aide Jen Psaki’s New Show Tanks in the Ratings After Only Two Nights

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