Jen Psaki starts new MSNBC show in Rachel Maddow's former time slot
Jen Psaki took over the coveted 9pm Tuesday - Friday slot on MSNBC last week - but just two nights in to her broadcast, viewership has crumbled. Psaki, a former White House press secretary, replaced Rachel Maddow with a new show titled 'The Briefing,' but her sudden ratings collapse appears to be one of the most humiliating flops in recent cable news memory. After building momentum with her Sunday show 'Inside,' Psaki was elevated by MSNBC President Rebecca Kutler as a face of the network's new era.
Maddow had taken up the five-nights-a-week schedule to cover Donald Trump's first 100 days of his second term. She will now return to her weekly Monday night show while Psaki takes over. The change was seen as an opportunity to hand the reins to Psaki, a DC insider with access and experience, setting out to do four nights from Tuesday through Friday. But instead of holding steady, Psaki's first full week has seen a ratings freefall.
According to Nielsen data, The Briefing launched on Tuesday with a respectable 1.2 million total viewers and 139,000 in the critical 25–54 age demographic - the group most coveted by advertisers. But by Wednesday night, Psaki's audience cratered to just over one million viewers, and her key demo numbers plunged by 53 percent, down to a startling 65,000. Among younger viewers aged 18–49, the drop was even steeper - a brutal 67 percent collapse from Tuesday to Wednesday as her ratings fell off a cliff.
The Briefing was trounced not just by its competitors at Fox News and CNN, but by 38 other cable news programs across networks. Psaki's show was outperformed in the demographic by reruns of 'Seinfeld,' 'Friends,' 'Bob's Burgers,' 'The King of Queens,' and even Nickelodeon's 'Paw Patrol.' Among MSNBC's own programming, the ratings provide difficult viewing. From 8-11pm, Wednesday marked MSNBC's lowest-rated night since January 8, before President Trump was sworn in for his second term. And at 9pm, Psaki delivered the lowest-rated MSNBC slot on a Wednesday during that hour since Alex Wagner's disastrous showing in December 2024.
Psaki always knew she had a difficult task trying to follow Rachel Maddow, the face of MSNBC for nearly two decades, and acknowledged as much in an interview last month. 'There's only one Rachel Maddow,' Psaki said. 'Even if I trained at the Rachel Maddow anchor school - which doesn't exist, that I'm aware of - for five years, I could never do what she does how she does it.' She emphasized how she intended to bring her own experience from 20 years in Democratic politics, including her time with Presidents Obama and Biden, to offer 'clarity' and 'stories of hope.' But doesn't seem to be enough to hold viewers. Before stepping away from her five-night schedule, Maddow confessed Psaki's show would be better than hers because the former press secretary has actual news connections.
'The thing she has which I do not have, which is going to make 9 o'clock better with Jen Psaki than it is with Rachel Maddow, is that she both knows people and knows how to talk to people,' Maddow told People. 'I really am a weird little hermit who works great with my staff, but I don't know anybody in Washington. I don't know anybody in the news, and it's on purpose. 'I am not great at interacting with people. I'm not a great interviewer and I'm not great at cultivating sources. It's not my thing. I'm a reader, not a talker.' Maddow expressed her support in Psaki as her successor, claiming she believes Psaki will be immune to the 'television curse that turns decent people into monsters.' 'I don't know anybody else who really can do that the way that she does,' Maddow said. 'She's not been susceptible to that wizardry. She's a good person.' Indeed, the decision to hand Psaki the 9pm slot was seen as a bold move by MSNBC's leadership - particularly as the network navigates both a corporate split from NBC News and a changing media landscape during Trump's second term. Psaki's critics argue that the experiment shows MSNBC may have overestimated her star power and underestimated Maddow's gravitational pull.
The network had already seen a decline when Alex Wagner (pictured) attempted to fill Maddow's shoes. Wagner was eventually shuffled to a new role following lackluster ratings. Despite the poor start, Psaki remains focused on the long term. During April's interview she said she hoped to use her show to help viewers make sense of a chaotic moment. 'Right now, in this moment, as the federal government is being dismantled and the rule of law is being threatened, there's a huge appetite for information and understanding of what the heck is happening,' Psaki said. She added that the name change from Inside to The Briefing reflected a shift in tone, away from the idea that Washington insiders have all the answers: 'I didn't want to send the message to viewers that that was our assumption.'
It may be too early to say whether Psaki's disastrous Wednesday ratings were a one-off slump or the beginning of a downward spiral. Cable ratings can fluctuate in the early days of a show's run, and MSNBC may give The Briefing time to stabilize but her launch has been bruising, and the 9pm hour, once a dominant force under Maddow is facing a full-blown crisis. Psaki's promotion is the latest in a slew of changes by new MSNBC president Rebecca Kutler (pictured). Kutler axed Joy Reid and canceled her namesake show The ReidOut, which has been a fixture of MSNBC's evening programming since 2020. Katie Phang, Jonathan Capehart and Ayman Mohyeldin have also been given the boot from their current timeslots by the network's new boss.
Kutler was officially named president of MSNBC on February 12, after dropping her interim title following Rashida Jones' departure. MSNBC stars and contributors have reportedly had to endure several indignities as the progressive network aims to cut costs amid plummeting ratings. In recent years, contributors to the network have sometimes had to pay for their own Ubers to get to the MSNBC DC studios, and have been forced to do their own makeup, as reported by Puck News. As the outlet puts it, it is '[sad], but justifiable when you're averaging less than 600,000 viewers in total day and less than 60,000 in the demo.' The DC studios are the home base for anchors such Psaki and the former headquarters for fired Reid. MSNBC has been struggling with its audience and is preparing to split from parent its company NBCUniversal later this year.
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