MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow sheds 43% of audience since Trump’s Election Day victory
MSNBC's "The Rachel Maddow Show" has lost nearly half of its audience since President-elect Donald Trump’s Election Day victory in November.
MSNBC star Rachel Maddow has been tuned out by nearly half her audience since President-elect Donald Trump’s Election Day victory.
MSNBC’s "The Rachel Maddow Show" has lost 43% of its total audience in 2024 since Election Day, averaging only 1.4 million total viewers since Trump’s decisive win over Vice President Kamala Harris.
The astounding decline comes when comparing the average audience of "The Rachel Maddow Show" from January 1, 2024, until Election Day to the MSNBC show’s audience since November 6.
Maddow famously cut "The Rachel Maddow Show" to once a week in 2022 to pursue other projects despite an enormous salary, and she recently signed a new contract to remain the face of MSNBC for the foreseeable future.
MSNBC’s biggest star has fared even worse among the advertiser-coveted demographic of adults aged 25-54, shedding a staggering 56% of its audience since the election, while averaging only 103,000 viewers from the critical category.
"The Rachel Maddow Show" aired every weeknight during its heyday, when it often competed for "most-watched cable news host," but Maddow began hosting only on Monday nights two years ago and passed the 9 p.m. ET hour the other four days a week to Alex Wagner. Wagner had her lowest-rated week ever last week.
Maddow is also a mainstay on MSNBC’s coverage of big events, such as Election Night, and hosts podcasts and works on various side projects.
Maddow reportedly made $30 million per year on her last contract. The new deal, reported by The Ankler, was for $25 million a year over the next five years, but MSNBC insiders have disputed the exact figure.
Fox News contributor Joe Concha, who spent years covering the media industry, said it's not surprising that a host who "so strongly supported Kamala Harris" is losing viewers on the heels of the election.
"What was surprising is that MSNBC still doled out $25 million to her to work one night a week. And the return on investment is that she finishes a distant second to Sean Hannity at 9 P.M. Is that money well spent? Rhetorical question," Concha told Fox News Digital.
Maddow largely built her program around passionate criticism of Trump for years and famously pushed since-debunked theories tying him to Russia and fixing the 2016 election. "The Rachel Maddow Show" thrived off the left’s loathing of Trump, averaging 2.5 million viewers in 2017, 2.9 million in 2018, 2.8 million in 2019 and 3.2 million in 2020. In 2021, she rolled back her workload after a lengthy hiatus.
"The Rachel Maddow Show" averaged 2.4 million viewers on Monday nights in 2024 until Election Day pushed viewers away. Earlier this year, Maddow criticized her own network for airing Trump's victory speech on Super Tuesday and claimed it was "irresponsible to broadcast."
Maddow also expressed concern before the election that Trump would become a dictator if re-elected.
DePauw University journalism professor Jeffrey McCall feels MSNBC's choices regarding Maddow are not "business decisions."
"Maddow's hefty contract and minimalist work schedule are only designed to signal to the far-left MSNBC viewers that the news outlet is still riding its ideological high horse and is committed to journalistic activism," McCall told Fox News Digital.
McCall believes viewership could "bounce back modestly" once hard-left viewers recover from the shock and disappointment of the election, but center-left and moderate viewers are probably gone for good.
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