Morning Joe ended a tumultuous week with a precipitous scores drop. Since co-hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski disclosed their in-person assembly with President-elect Donald Trump, the MSNBC morning present has seen a gentle erosion in viewership.
Whereas that dovetails with the bigger post-Election Day scores woes going through each MSNBC and CNN, it additionally means that the Morning Joe viewers didn’t precisely embrace the duo’s argument that it was “time to do one thing totally different” with reference to overlaying Trump.
The controversy surrounding Scarborough and Brzezinski’s journey to the president-elect’s Florida headquarters began nearly instantly after they disclosed the Mar-a-Lago assembly on Monday’s present. In accordance with Nielsen Media Analysis information, 770,000 whole viewers watched the Nov. 18 newscast. On Tuesday, although, solely 680,000 whole viewers tuned in for a -12% drop.
Wednesday’s present averaged 647,000, a slip of -5% in comparison with the day past and -17% since Monday. A supply at MSNBC notes to TVNewser that Morning Joe was up +4% in whole viewers from Monday to Wednesday in comparison with the earlier week, and that the newscast grew its whole viewer viewers in each hour from 6-10am throughout these two days.
Wednesday was additionally the day that Comcast introduced the launch of SpinCo, a brand new publicly traded spinoff firm constructed to accommodate the company big’s struggling cable networks—together with MSNBC and CNBC. That might cleave each shops from the principle NBCUniversal Information Group and require them to doubtlessly construct their very own newsgathering operations from the ground-up.
Showing on Morning Joe on Wednesday, CNBC co-host Andrew Ross Sorkin defined causes to be optimistic about SpinCo. “MSNBC [and] CNBC produce extraordinary income,” he remarked. “So the query is: For those who might take that cash that’s coming off of those channels and make investments it within the companies as an unbiased entity—what [does] that finally seem like?”
SpinCo’s new management workforce—together with CEO Mark Lazarus and CFO and COO Anand Kini—have been taking proactive steps to maintain MSNBC within the fold forward of the corporate’s launch, which is anticipated to take a couple of yr. The Ankler correspondent Lachlan Cartwright lately reported that the community’s star anchor Rachel Maddow re-upped her deal, albeit with a $5 million pay reduce in response to his sources.
As of now, Scarborough and Brzezinski seem inclined to stay round as properly. Even with its latest viewership decline, Morning Joe stays a well-known MSNBC model that the community would doubtless wish to maintain onto because it enters a brand new period. And each hosts are standing by their determination to have interaction with Trump. On Tuesday’s present, Scarborough mentioned that he’d observed as “large disconnect” between the social media response and what he was personally listening to from buddies and colleagues.
