Reverend Ow: Sharpton Loses Top Enabler at MSNBC
MSNBC president Rashida Jones allegedly resigned her post Tuesday as the struggling liberal network prepares to be spun off from parent company Comcast later this year. Jones, who ran the network for nearly four years, thanked staff for the "many successes we've achieved together as a team" and expressed confidence that MSNBC was "well-positioned for the future," a dubious claim given the significant ratings decline since the 2024 election.
Jones's departure is bad news for the embattled (and formerly fat) activist host Al Sharpton, who will lose his top enabler at the network amidst the still unresolved scandal surrounding the Kamala Harris campaign's $500,000 donation to Sharpton's nonprofit before he interviewed the candidate on his MSNBC show. In November, the network revealed that it was "unaware" of the donation to Sharpton's group, the National Action Network, but declined to take action publicly to address the egregious breach of journalistic ethics.
Sharpton's close ties to Jones, who received the National Action Network's "Chairman's Award" in 2021 and 2024, have raised questions about the network's refusal to discipline the notoriously anti-Semitic host. Jones introduced Sharpton last year at National Action Network, celebrating his 70th birthday. "I am extremely honored to be here to honor Rev," Jones said before hugging Sharpton and kissing his bony cheek. Sharpton also enjoyed close ties to MSNBC's parent company, Comcast, which announced in November that the liberal network would be spun off into a separate entity. Comcast hired Sharpton in 2010 to lobby the Obama administration to approve its $14 billion acquisition of NBCUniversal and gave him a show on MSNBC the following year.
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Jones, whose most notable attribute is sharing a name with (and occasionally being mistaken for) a Hollywood actress, was widely heralded by people who care as the first black woman to lead a major news network. She was not known for being a strong executive willing to cut costs and stand up to the self-important "talent" at MSNBC, but that is precisely the kind of leadership the network will require going forward. People will be fired. Salaries will be slashed. Sharpton's shameless grifting will be curtailed. It's only a matter of time.
Star host Rachel Maddow, widely believed to be running the network behind the scenes with Jones as a figurehead, has already agreed to temporarily return to work five days a week (up from one) and accept a reduced annual salary of only $25 million (down from $30 million). Jones may have excelled at sucking up to Sharpton, but she was clearly unequipped to drive a hard bargain with narcissist hacks such as Joe Scarborough, who is believed to have negotiated his own exorbitant salary increase after Maddow's deal was announced.
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It seems unlikely that Jones's (interim) successor, Rebecca Kutler, will have the competence and fortitude to put the likes of Maddow and Scarborough in their place while also preventing them from making MSNBC even more unwatchable on account of their deranged anti-Trump antagonism. Kutler joined the network in 2022 from CNN, where she spearheaded the disastrous launch of CNN+, the $300 million streaming service that shut down after less than a month. On the bright side, Kutler did work as an executive producer for Don Lemon at CNN, which means she has at least some experience wrangling childish drama queens.
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The shakeup at MSNBC, days before Donald Trump is sworn in for a second term as president, comes at a particularly perilous time for the network, whose ratings in the coveted 25-54 age demographic have plummeted more than 60 percent since 2020. Roughly 90 percent of its total viewing audience in 2024 was between the ages of 55 and dead, which is precisely why Comcast CEO Brian Roberts decided to rid itself of the "declining asset" and make it someone else's problem. Maddow's return (for the first 100 days of the Trump administration) could provide a much-needed spark, as many of the network's elderly viewers regard her as "a nice young man" they'd like to introduce to their granddaughters. But the future is bleak.
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