What Do Joy Reid, Katie Phang, Jonathan Capehart, Ayman Mohyeldin, José Díaz-Balart and Alex Wagner Have In Common?
None of them is white, and MSNBC is canceling or sidelining them all.
It’s been mayhem in the media since That Man won, with networks and newspapers obeying in advance all over. Now it sure looks like MSNBC is trying to placate him too. Or gee, maybe it’s just a coincidence!
Way back last November, MSNBC (and also CNBC) became no longer affiliated with NBC in any way. The channels’ overlord, Comcast, spun them off into a new company called SpinCo, headed by a guy named Mark Lazarus, who said he wanted to make the channel more appealing to Republicans while keeping its appeal to progressives. Which is kind of like saying you want to enjoy the flavor of orange juice, and simultaneously the minty freshness of toothpaste. Seems pretty obvious that Joe Buildthewall is not going to start watching MSNBC no matter what, even if the hosts were replaced with topless fire-jugglers.
Also probably-not-coincidentally, the week of November 18 when the SpinCo spinoff was announced happened to be the very same week Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough crawled down to Mar-a-Lago to try to find “common ground” with the guy they used to freely call fascist, unmoored, mentally unstable, liar, and an insurrectionist, and who had tweet-called them “low I.Q. Crazy Mika” with a “bleeding facelift,” and “Psycho Joe,” respectively. If you were wondering what the backstory was with their 180.
The appropriately-named Lazarus would also like to attract younger viewers, because the average viewer of MSNBC is 70. SEVENTY! Seven zero! Fox’s average viewer is 69, and CNN attracts the youngest average audience, at 67. The kids don’t watch television, they don’t subscribe to newspapers, and none of the media companies really knows what to do about it. Break everything, throw it at the wall and see what sticks!
So at MSNBC just last month, the successful Black lady network president who helped the channel beat CNN in ratings, Rashida Jones, stepped down, and was replaced not even two weeks ago by one Rebecca Kutler, who is apparently so eager to carry out the new boss’s business of reshaping MSNBC into a vision that is less offensive to Donald Trump’s eye that the firings and reshuffling went down with almost no warning to the hosts or their staffs, just 10 days after she started work.
And now MSNBC is replacing the only two primetime weekday shows on the network solely hosted by women of color. Joy Reid has left the network entirely, and her staff has been laid off and “invited” to re-apply for other jobs. Jonathan Capehart, Katie Phang, and Ayman Mohyeldin are all losing their weekend shows, and it was reported that Capehart and Mohyeldin will instead be one of multiple hosts of separate editions of “The Weekend.” Phang will have no slot, and appear as a legal correspondent. And Katy Tur’s show has been expanded to two hours.
Reid’s spot will be filled by Alicia Menendez, Michael Steele, and Symone Sanders Townsend. Rachel Maddow will continue to appear nightly for the duration of Trump’s first 100 days, then will move to just Monday nights, as was the original plan. At the end of her stint, the “Alex Wagner Show” was supposed to take her spot. Instead that 9 p.m. slot will be taken by “Inside with Jen Psaki.”
In an interview with “Win With Black Women” on Monday, Reid broke down in tears, and said she was “not sorry” for being outspoken on issues including the Black Lives Matter movement and objecting to the war in Gaza. “I am not sorry I stood up for those things, because those things are of God.”
Of course Trump and the troglodytes are cheering about Reid’s firing, and saying generally gross things.
Lowlife Chairman of “Concast,” Brian Roberts, the owner of Ratings Challenged NBC and MSDNC, has finally gotten the nerve up to fire one of the least talented people in television, the mentally obnoxious racist, Joy Reid. Based on her ratings, which were virtually non-existent, she should have been “canned” long ago..
Ugh, that’s enough, go read the whole thing on Truth Social if you want.
He ranted some more the next day, “MSNBC, COMMONLY KNOWN AS MSDNC, IS A THREAT TO OUR DEMOCRACY. SUCH LYING AND MISREPRESENTATION. BAD PEOPLE AT THE TOP!”
Huh, sounds like the move intended to appease him did not appease him at all!
Last word to Rachel Maddow, who rebuked her own network not just for the firings, which SURE DO LOOK PRETTY RACIST, but for the shitty way that they did it, not just to the hosts but the staffers on their shows. Very much a “Hi! I am the actual most powerful person on this network, and now I am going to call the new boss out for how she’s treating everyone right here on national TV. Right after the A-block too!”
“Dozens of producers and staffers, including some who are among the most experienced and most talented and most specialist producers in the building, are facing being laid off, they're being invited to reapply for new jobs. That has never happened at this scale in this way before when it comes to programming changes, presumably because it's not the right way to treat people, and it's inefficient and it's unnecessary, and it kind of drops the bottom out of whether or not people feel like this is a good place to work, and so we don't generally do things that way.”
Yeah, it’s a pretty bad way to do things! It doesn’t just look bad, it is really bad.
Ruminate on that in your OPEN THREAD!
I mentioned seeing this man a couple weeks back but couldn't get a picture at the time. I made sure I did today, and he was very happy to pose for me. Fighting back one voice at a time. I photographed this amazing gentleman today near the 96th St. C train subway stop.
https://substack.com/@ziggywiggy/note/c-96204675?utm_source=notes-share-action&r=2knfuc
“Attract republicans viewers”. “Attract younger viewers”
There’s your problem right there. The news should be focused on reporting facts accurately and informing the public. not worried about who the fuck is watching them.