Rachel Maddow, the face of the MSNBC network, is renewing her contract but her nightly “The Rachel Maddow Show” will end at some point next year.
CNN’s Brian Stelter delivered a look at the star anchor’s new deal with the liberal network, and it is huge.
“Maddow has signed a new multi-year deal with MSNBC’s parent NBCUniversal, as Insider’s Claire Atkinson first reported on Sunday. Mark Shapiro of Endeavor, the talent agency that repped Maddow in the negotiation, told Atkinson that Maddow ‘is staying home where she belongs with a much broader deal at NBCUniversal and couldn’t be happier.'”
Maddow was “seriously considering” quitting at the end of her contact and was exploring a variety of deals and new ventures, but her devoted base of 2.3 million viewers can breathe easy, at least for now.
The agreement means that she will continue to host “The Rachel Maddow Show” weeknights at 9pm ET for the time being. But that’s not the long-term plan. The five-day-a-week show will come to an end sometime next year as Maddow shifts gears to more of a weekly format, according to two sources with knowledge of the deal.
Maddow is forming her own production company and NBCUniversal will get first dibs on the content, which will not be limited to strictly news programming.
It appears the details are not “set in stone,” or not fully known. Stelter reports one source said “that “her schedule isn’t changing,” while “others said that Maddow will pull back from her daily program at some point, which will allow her to concentrate on other productions.”
One detail does appear to be driving the negotiations. As reported earlier by The Daily Beast, Maddow has been anchoring her show for more than a dozen years, and has said publicly, as far back as 2019, “it’s fine to work long days. But it’s not good for you to work incessant long days, five days a week, 50 weeks a year for 10 years.”
As for who – or what – will replace Maddow’s nightly show, no one knows. But heading into the 2024 election, MSNBC has an obligation to deliver something just as big.
Read the full report here.