Comcast is finally cutting ties with MSNBC, the media conglomerate announced Wednesday. That's bad news for the exorbitantly compensated and increasingly unhinged personalities who call the left-wing network home (for now). MSNBC and other declining television assets—but not the reality TV powerhouse Bravo—will be spun off into a new publicly traded company by the end of next year. That means MSNBC will soon be divorced from the ostensibly more serious and less overtly partisan NBC News, which routinely shares reportage, fact-checking (if you can call it that), and contributors with its sister network. Comcast brass on Wednesday told MSNBC staffers that the network's name and peacock logo might not survive the breakup. The outrageously inflated salaries of the network's top anchors almost definitely won't.
The move suggests Comcast executives can no longer justify to shareholders the enormous incomes of "star" hosts such as Rachel Maddow, Joe Scarborough, and Joy Reid. MSNBC and other Comcast-owned cable networks continue to make money, but those profits have declined substantially in recent years. That explains why executives and investors are eager to rid themselves of the "declining assets." Comcast's stock price rose in after-hours trading on Tuesday after news of the decision was leaked to the press. MSNBC's hosts have had a good run, earning sizable fortunes preaching partisan hysteria to a dwindling audience of elderly viewers. In the week following this year's election, the network drew just 65,000 primetime viewers in the coveted 25-54 age demographic, less than 10 percent of total viewers.
"This is sort of a very clear, direct statement by Comcast," Rich Greenfield, cofounder of the research firm LightShed Partners, told CNBC, which is also being spun off into the new entity. "They are exiting the cable network business. This is them saying we don’t want to be in this business. This is no longer a growth business. It’s going to be around for a long time, but it’s just no longer a growth business."
Once MSNBC and its sister networks, which include USA, E!, and Oprah Winfrey's Oxygen, are spun off into a separate entity, new management will use the occasion to "right-size" the business by firing staff and slashing salaries. The grotesque spectacle of MSNBC hosts earning seven- or eight-figure salaries to rant about Hitler to a six-figure audience—just five figures in "the demo"—will finally end. Some of the highly paid "talent" may threaten to walk, but where will they go? CNN? Nope. That network's already started firing staff and slashing compensation. The gravy train is off the rails, burning in a ditch, and most Americans could not care less.
Here's a look at some of the ridiculous MSNBC anchor salaries that executives at the new, yet-to-be-named media company are likely to decimate.
Rachel Maddow
She somehow suckered NBCUniversal News Group chairman Cesar Conde into paying her $30 million a year to do one show a week while devoting the majority of her time to "other projects." She continues to promote deranged conspiracy theories about Donald Trump's alleged ties to Russia and is being sued for defamation after making "verifiably false" statements about a Georgia gynecologist who treated immigrants at an ICE detention facility.
Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski
There's nothing they won't say or do in the name of ratings and self-promotion. The power couple—widely despised at MSNBC for their bullying, conniving, self-dealing, and hypocrisy—recently went to Mar-a-Lago to meet with Trump, whom they repeatedly denounced during the campaign as a "racist" and "fascist" in the mold of Adolf Hitler. They are believed to have secured themselves a "Maddow-esque" compensation package after Rachel's absurd new contract was announced. Scarborough in particular has grown increasingly hackish in recent years. "This version of [Joe] Biden, intellectually, analytically, is the best Biden ever," he said, contrary to all available evidence, several weeks before the president's disastrous debate performance, which forced him to drop out of the 2024 race. A former GOP congressman who sponsored a resolution in 2000 condemning Al Sharpton for his "vicious verbal anti-Semitic attacks directed at members of the Jewish faith," Scarborough routinely invites Sharpton on his show to discuss a range of issues, including anti-Semitism.
Al Sharpton
The notorious anti-Semite and racial agitator's salary might be relatively low (on the books), but that doesn't mean he's not tremendously overpaid. Sharpton, who incited the 1991 Crown Heights riot, the worst outbreak of anti-Semitic in modern American history, still gets paid. The Kamala Harris campaign funneled $500,000 in donations to his nonprofit group, the National Action Network, shortly before Sharpton conducted a friendly interview with the then-candidate on his MSNBC weekend show. Sharpton's nonprofit has close ties to MSNBC president Rashida Jones, who received the National Action Network's "Chairman's Award" in 2021 and 2024.
Joy Reid
A political liability whom most corporate executives would be eager to jettison, Reid was promoted in 2020 despite falsely claiming two years earlier that her old blog was "hacked" after internet sleuths uncovered an array of homophobic and anti-Semitic posts. Her power at MSNBC has only grown since then, while her show has become an increasingly virulent carnival of racial grievance and assorted nonsense. She interviews "experts" who accuse Republicans of making it "literally illegal" for black people to vote. She has suggested Republicans "taught people the word 'inflation'" and recently denounced Latino men for betraying their race, including their own families, by voting for Trump.
Nicolle Wallace
A former Republican operative who joined the liberal elite upon moving to New York City and getting paid to denounce Republicans, Wallace is best known for her credulous promotion of convicted felon Michael Avenatti. Beloved by mentally ill #Resistance wine moms, Wallace regularly interviews "experts" who think the September 11 terrorist attacks were "nothing compared to January 6." Soon after divorcing her first husband in 2019, the now-52-year-old Wallace announced she was dating New York Times reporter Michael Schmidt, 41, a frequent guest on her show. (They're married now.) Schmidt is coproducing a new Netflix series with Noah Oppenheim, the self-dealing former NBC News president who allegedly discouraged Ronan Farrow from exposing Harvey Weinstein's history of sexual violence.
Chris Hayes
Sometimes described by colleagues as "the male Rachel Maddow" without her talent for reading a teleprompter, Hayes does his best to mimic his lookalike's sneering pretentiousness and disregard for the facts. He's also being sued for defamation. When's he not trash-talking the troops or ranting in support of transgender surgeries for minors, Hayes has shown a remarkable knack for promoting racially fueled invective on his show. Last week, for example, he nodded along solemnly as Sherrilyn Ifill, a former president of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, claimed without evidence that Trump's nominee for secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth, was "known to be a white supremacist." Even longtime Democratic operative Michael LaRosa, a former MSNBC producer, said this remark was over the line. "This shit has to stop," LaRosa wrote. "Conversations and demonization like this are a big part of the reason we got our asses kicked."
Stephanie Ruhle
Just as shameless and ambitious as Joy Reid, and almost as much of a liability, Ruhle sweet-talked the Harris campaign into letting her conduct the candidate's first solo interview of the campaign. Harris might as well have been talking to her press secretary. The aging and formerly attractive "journalist" previously worked at Bloomberg, earning a reputation for being a notorious flirt who sucked up to CEOs and jumped around on studio desks in yoga pants like a crazy person. Ruhle, who's married with kids, reportedly had an intimate relationship with Under Armour CEO Kevin Plank, during which she flew on Plank's private jet, offered business advice, and hawked Under Armour shoes on the Today show—without disclosing the relationship. She was embroiled in a shareholder lawsuit against the company after the Wall Street Journal reported on the relationship in 2019.
NBC News
The once-respected media outlet will remain with Comcast, but industry insiders think the network is "screwed." NBC News could also be forced to cut staff and reduce exorbitant anchor salaries to offset the loss of profits from MSNBC and CNBC. The network is itself an asset in decline. Its most profitable program, the Today show, has shed millions of viewers over the past decade, while Nightly News with Lester Holt, who reportedly earns about $10 million per year, has seen its average ratings in the 25-54 age demo decline by about 50 percent since 2018. Comcast executives may be eager to "right-size" NBC News after the spinoff, which could mean big pay cuts for the likes of Holt and Savannah Guthrie, who is believed to earn around $18 million a year as cohost of the Today show. Guthrie's husband, Michael Feldman, is a longtime Democratic operative best known for advising former vice president Al Gore.