It turns out the pay cuts have already started at MSNBC. Weeks before parent company Comcast announced it was spinning off the obnoxious liberal network into a separate entity, star anchor Rachel Maddow reportedly agreed to reduce her annual salary from $30 million to $25 million over the next three years. Some would argue Maddow is still grossly overpaid considering she only hosts her MSNBC show one night per week, but the substantial pay cut, first reported by the Ankler on Thursday, is almost certainly a sign of things to come for Maddow's increasingly deranged colleagues at MSNBC, who will soon be at the mercy of new management eager to "right-size" their ridiculous salaries.
Comcast's decision to cut ties with MSNBC did not come as a surprise. Network television is generally regarded as a "declining asset." Audiences are getting smaller and the viewers are getting older. MSNBC's ratings are down 40 percent compared to this time last year. In the week following the election, the network drew just 65,000 primetime viewers in the coveted 25-54 age demographic, less than 10 percent of total viewers. MSNBC's brand of increasingly virulent #Resistance liberalism was also a likely factor in Comcast's decision to part ways with the network, which is facing a $30 million defamation lawsuit filed by a Georgia doctor whom Maddow and her colleagues repeatedly and falsely accused of performing "mass hysterectomies" at an immigrant detention facility. One on-air commentator complained to the Ankler that MSNBC had become a "giant circle jerk and echo chamber" that kept its viewers "in fantasy land" with Democratic "propaganda."
In recent days, MSNBC has annoyed people on both sides of the political spectrum. Liberal viewers were outraged after Morning Joe cohosts Joe Scarborough and Mike Brzezinski revealed that they traveled to Mar-a-Lago last week to meet with Trump in an effort to "restart communications" with the president-elect. On Wednesday, the show suffered its lowest ratings since 2021. On Friday, conservatives and other normal Americans blasted MSNBC for a headline that appeared to sympathize with the illegal immigrant who murdered 22-year-old college student Laken Riley. Last week, Maddow look-a-like Chris Hayes nodded along like a serious journalist 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." Michael LaRosa, a longtime Democratic operative and former MSNBC producer, was not impressed. "This shit has to stop," LaRosa wrote. "Conversations and demonization like this are a big part of the reason we got our asses kicked."
Hayes, who is believed to earn an annual salary of at least $4 million, is one of many MSNBC hosts whose exorbitant paychecks are unlikely to survive the spinoff. Scarborough and Brzezinski are believed to earn almost as much as Maddow. Joy Reid, of all people, is believed to earn about $3 million per year. Nicolle Wallace and Stephanie Ruhle are believed to take home at least $2 million per year. Some of them may threaten to walk rather than take a pay cut, but where will they go? CNN has already started firing staff and rolling back anchor salaries. They've had a good run, but there's likely no one left in the media industry who believes these people are worth that much. Because they aren't.