It has been announced that Rachel Maddow, the most watched anchor on MSNBC and one of the most important voices in liberal media, would be taking a break from her weekly television show.
She is scheduled to take a sabbatical until April, but no specific return date has been set yet, according to two individuals at the network who were privy to her plans but asked not to be identified because they were discussing private matters in private. After Thursday’s programme, she is slated to begin her leave of absence.
During the first segment of her Monday night programme, Ms. Maddow informed viewers that she would be taking a “slight break” from her broadcasting duties. “I’m apprehensive about everything. It represents a sea shift in my life. “However, everything will work out in the end.”
Some MSNBC anchors and producers have speculated about whether Ms. Maddow would return to a full slate of nightly shows or if she will scale down her schedule to something less taxing. Ms. Maddow has not responded to their inquiries. She made it clear on Monday that she was considering taking further time off.
“It’s possible that I’ll take another break at some point in the future,” Ms. Maddow remarked. We’re taking things one step at a time, for the time being.”
It’s difficult to exaggerate the significance of Rachel Maddow to the MSNBC brand and its audience. Among leftist viewers, her 9 p.m. show is a popular destination, and it is frequently the only prime-time programme on cable news that comes close to Fox News’s ratings in the hour before the news broadcast.
It had been generally anticipated that Ms. Maddow would take a vacation from MSNBC this year in order to explore other projects, but many in the industry had speculated that her sabbatical would take place in the spring.
Even during her absence, she is anticipated to make infrequent comeback appearances on MSNBC, notably during the network’s broadcast of Vice President Biden’s State of the Union address in March, according to sources. For the time being, a rotation of fill-in anchors will take over the network’s 9 p.m. time period.
Ms. Maddow’s new deal with the network, which she signed last year, permits her to devote more time to a range of projects outside of her regular television programme. Insider has previously reported about her plan to take a brief sabbatical from the show.
One of the initiatives she will be working on over the vacation is a podcast for NBCUniversal, which she will produce. The actor Ben Stiller and producer Lorne Michaels are also collaborating on a film adaptation of “Bag Man,” the podcast about the 1970s scandal surrounding Spiro T. Agnew, who was forced to resign as Richard Nixon’s vice president as a result of his involvement in it.
“Change is beneficial,” she continued. “Change may be really frightening.”
Executives at MSNBC are reorganising a schedule that is currently in turmoil. Brian Williams, the former anchor of MSNBC’s 11 p.m. show, departed the network in the latter part of last year. After the announcement that he will be replaced by the anchor Stephanie Ruhle, the network’s morning programme “Morning Joe” added one hour to its schedule, beginning on Monday, January 28th, 2019.
