Well, well, well—if the latest cable news ratings are any indication, MSNBC is in freefall. Despite a month packed with breaking news—including Trump’s inauguration, the shocking New Year’s attack in New Orleans, the ongoing conflict in the Middle East, and Biden’s final acts of political favoritism—MSNBC couldn’t give away viewership in the key 25-54 advertising demographic.
Let’s put this in perspective: Fox News dominated prime time, pulling in an average of 353,000 viewers in the demo. Even CNN—a network that has been hemorrhaging credibility for years—managed 118,000 in the same time slot. And MSNBC? A pathetic 63,000. That’s dead last among the big three cable news networks and 31st overall among all cable channels.
Yes, you read that right—30 different cable networks outperformed MSNBC, including TV Land, Freeform, Syfy, the History Channel, BET, Discovery, TLC, and even reruns of Seinfeld and Family Guy. That’s right: a 25-year-old sitcom about nothing pulled in more young viewers than Rachel Maddow.
So what’s going on here? Simple: MSNBC built its brand on being The Resistance™—a non-stop, Trump-hating, panic-inducing propaganda machine. But now that Trump is back in office, their formula isn’t working like it did the first time around. They’ve spent years scaring their audience into thinking democracy was in its final days, and yet, here we are—Trump is president again, and MSNBC’s audience has vanished.
It gets worse. Even President Biden’s final interview as commander-in-chief, an exclusive sit-down with Lawrence O’Donnell, couldn’t save MSNBC’s ratings. Despite weeks of advertising and media buzz, the interview pulled in just 97,000 viewers in the demo—fewer than the audience for an episode of South Park.
And the fallout isn’t just in prime time. MSNBC’s entire daily lineup is struggling. Across the full broadcast day, the network managed only 45,000 demo viewers. Compare that to 253,000 for Fox News and 80,000 for CNN. In other words, MSNBC isn’t just losing to its competitors—it’s barely holding on.
Behind the scenes, things aren’t looking much better. MSNBC president Rashida Jones—who ran the network for nearly four years—just resigned. The timing? Convenient, considering MSNBC’s disastrous January ratings.
Her replacement, Rebecca Kutler, is stepping in as interim president, but her background at CNN (where she was once Don Lemon’s executive producer) doesn’t exactly inspire confidence that MSNBC will turn things around.
And then there’s the even bigger shake-up: Comcast, MSNBC’s parent company, has announced plans to spin off NBCUniversal’s cable networks—including MSNBC—into a separate entity. What does that mean? It means MSNBC will no longer be tied to NBC News, and its fate will be entirely dependent on whether it can prove itself financially viable. In other words: MSNBC is on its own now, and if the ratings don’t improve, the future looks bleak.
