MSNBC confronts viewer frustration, changes and an identity crisis

Strangely enough, MSNBC was one of the winners on election night. For the first time in its 28-year history, the network brought in more total viewers than CNN, and it was the second-most-watched channel in all of traditional television during the prime-time hours of Nov. 5.

Things have gone downhill since then. In the days that followed, MSNBC began seeing a significant decline in viewership (as has CNN), as left-leaning viewers opted to turn off the channel rather than watch the aftermath of Donald Trump’s victory. One of the network’s most valuable franchises, “Morning Joe,” faced backlash after hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski revealed Nov. 18 that they had traveled to Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in an effort to “restart communications.” They framed the visit as a necessary nod to the reality that voters elected a man the co-hosts have decried in the past as exemplifying fascist behaviors. Some viewers felt otherwise and turned off the show in protest in the days that followed.

Forget short-term ratings drops - questions about the future of the network picked up considerably Nov. 20, when parent company Comcast announced that it would spin off MSNBC and some of its other cable channels into a separate company. Network bigwigs framed the new entity - temporarily called SpinCo - as a lean, future-oriented machine that could provide an off-ramp for the declines in traditional television viewership that have shrunk revenue for major broadcast and cable companies. Others saw it as a way to peel off the cable companies that are seen as declining assets, with a potential sale down the road.

Given all this, MSNBC employees are trying to wrap their heads around what it all means and the potential changes ahead. The fear inside the building is about whether the move could portend a less ambitious future for MSNBC - with a smaller, lower-compensated staff and a lot less journalism, considering the network will be separated from the NBC News operation that contributes much of the reporting.

“We’re going to become a guest-driven, fully opinion operation that doesn’t even have the appearance of being a news-driven operation,” predicted one MSNBC journalist who, like others quoted in this story, spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to comment.

But there’s also some openness to a new structure, which could result in more investment in the cable news network.

“I’m potentially optimistic because I think if they do it right, it’s a big opportunity, but you also have to be frozen or blind not to see that there are risks,” said another network insider.

“It’s the reality of the business. It’s just going to change constantly,” said a third network staffer, a producer. “The message that was trickled down to me was that this is a genuine attempt to make this work as a second company. It is not us being primed to be bought. You take everything with a grain of salt, but that’s obviously better than the alternative.”

One risk ahead is the loss of brand identity and recognition, a concern that spread after a report on the morning of the announced split that a top executive told an internal gathering that he wasn’t sure whether MSNBC’s name and branding would have to change. “The name matters a lot,” the network insider told The Washington Post. “People have to find you. It’s harder than ever to find things.” (MSNBC launched in 1996 as a joint venture between Microsoft and NBC, combining online news with cable news. The years brought several updates to the brand and its approach; Microsoft got out of the TV operation in 2005 and the website by 2012, while NBC wrapped MSNBC into its overall digital and televised news coverage.)

Some inside the network view the decline in ratings as cyclic. After Trump was defeated by Joe Biden in November 2020, Fox News - the network most associated with the former president - briefly saw a decline in ratings. In January 2021, Fox attracted a smaller audience throughout the day than both MSNBC and CNN for the first time in 20 years. By the following month, however, Fox was back on top. MSNBC’s audience also declined after Trump’s victory in 2016.

There’s a belief inside MSNBC that exhausted, dispirited viewers will return in droves once Trump is inaugurated in January and begins taking executive orders and other actions. “I’ve heard from so many people that they just can’t watch the news,” one network veteran said. “I don’t want to watch the news. I don’t even want to read it.”

The drop in viewers that began the week after the election has flattened out, though it still represents a significant decline in audience - the network averaged more than 1 million viewers for the week starting Nov. 4, but just 539,000 last week.

The numbers were stark for “Morning Joe.” Compared with an average of 1.09 million total viewers per episode this year, the show attracted audiences of 680,000 and 647,000 viewers the two days after the hosts revealed their Trump meeting. Still, the show’s average audience last week, while much smaller than normal, was similar to the previous week, indicating that the Trump meeting did not decimate the show’s viewership.

In a podcast interview last week, Brzezinski said she was surprised by the backlash to the Trump meeting. “I think we’re going to talk again, and I hope that we do,” she said. “Some people really disagree with this, and I don’t. I regret talking about people and not to them.”

Some critics questioned what the hosts meant by saying they were going to take a “different” approach to covering Trump.

“The big problem with the announcement is that they all but said they’re going to give warmer coverage, which is a strange thing to announce,” the network insider said.

While that may have been a common interpretation of their comments, the hosts said they will cover Trump aggressively and call out his actions and words as president.

Bigger questions remain about what exactly MSNBC is supposed to be. In the past two decades, the network has tried to reposition the brand on multiple occasions. There have been attempts to bring on more conservative voices and attempts to create more - or less - separation between the news programs on the channel during the day, and the opinion programs in the morning and the evening.

“We’ve been asking for a long time for help with making sure we’re all aligned with the mission, and we don’t have that,” the MSNBC journalist said.

Even before the announced split between the cable channel and NBC News, MSNBC was seen as moving in a more opinion-focused direction.

Some longtime critics of MSNBC, however, view that ideological orientation as not sufficiently progressive. Cenk Uygur, co-creator of the digital outlet the Young Turks (and a onetime MSNBC contributor and host), cited the number of Republicans and lapsed Republicans on the channel, including hosts such as Scarborough, Nicolle Wallace and Michael Steele.

“MSNBC is a giant corporate propaganda operation to trick Democratic voters into voting for the most Republican candidate,” he said.

Still, Uygur said that MSNBC’s audience - “older Democratic viewers that decide primaries” - is an important one, making the network’s success vital for anyone who cares about electing liberal Democrats.

While MSNBC is not on the market, according to Comcast, Uygur recently floated a potential acquisition - not unlike Elon Musk, who also raised eyebrows by asking on his X platform how much the network might cost.

“Anything is possible,” Uygur said. “If you’re looking to reform MSNBC into something that is popular, it makes sense to go to a popular online network, and see if they can do the trick.”