MSNBC fired Joy Reid despite her ratings being on their way up, figures obtained by the Daily Beast reveal.
The Black anchor’s 7 p.m. show, The ReidOut, was abruptly canceled late last month as part of a wider shake-up which also saw a series of non-white anchors stripped of their shows by the liberal-leaning network—prompting Rachel Maddow, its highest-profile journalist to blast the moves on her own show.
MSNBC’s leaders have avoided saying why Reid, 56, was canceled and declined to comment to the Daily Beast.
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But the Beast has obtained the audience ratings compiled by Nielsen which are used by news networks to assess the success of their shows and the people appearing on them—and they show no signs that Reid was experiencing an audience plunge out of line with her MSNBC co-stars. In fact she and all the other primetime line-up were on an upswing in February.
Reid did not respond to requests for comment. Her final show was last Monday, and she has since launched a Substack. On Thursday she told subscribers that Substack had declared it a “bestseller” and promised she would speak to them after a “wild and crazy” time.
Reid’s show will be replaced in April by former The Weekend hosts Symone Sanders-Townsend, a former Biden White House official; former Republican National Committee chairman Michael Steele; and commentator Alicia Menendez.
Since Reid’s cancellation, MSNBC has hired Politico reporter Eugene Daniels (who was already a contributor) and Washington Post reporter Jacqueline Alemany as co-hosts with Jonathan Capehart of a new show called Weekend. The network also said it plans to hire 100 journalists. Ayman Mohyeldin, one of the other three non-white anchors to lose a namesake show, will host an evening edition of The Weekend with two other panelists.
The figures for Reid show that between January and June 2024, Reid was the lowest-rated primetime host on MSNBC. She averaged about 1.29 million viewers during the first six months of the year, trailing her 6 p.m. lead-in Ari Melber’s The Beat by about 250,000 viewers (1.54 million) and behind Chris Hayes’ 8 p.m. All In by about 150,000 viewers (1.44 million).
But Reid’s ratings spiked throughout July and August 2024, nearing an average of 2 million viewers in August and beating both Melber and Hayes. During those months her program was often preempted by panel coverage of the Democratic and Republican conventions. Jen Psaki’s Inside with Jen Psaki airs at 8 p.m. on Mondays, and her show beat Reid’s averages in July.
Still, The ReidOut retained momentum through September and October, beating her averages from the first half of the year. It beat Inside with Jen Psaki and Alex Wagner Tonight, which aired at 9 p.m. Tuesdays through Friday and was also canceled. Wagner’s show had not been since since January when Rachel Maddow went to five nights a week for the first 100 days of the Trump administration. She was not fired but will remain with the network as a correspondent.
Reid also beat her 7 p.m. competitor at CNN, Erin Burnett Outfront, in the advertiser-coveted 25-54 demographic. Reid captured 158,000 viewers in the demo between January 2024 and the election, 28 percent of the audience share, while Outfront captured 151,000 viewers in the demo, or 26 percent. That was roughly the same percentage margin that All In beat Anderson Cooper’s Anderson Cooper 360 at the 8p.m. hour for the same period.
Throughtout the period, Fox News was dominant, titan, capturing a near-majority of the audience share in both total viewers and the demo before the election then almost 70 percent of both categories since the election.
Ratings for every MSNBC primetime host declined in the period after the election, but Reid’s drops do not appear substantially more than her peers. Melber’s total-viewer ratings were down 42 percent (1.552 million vs. 903,000) between Nov. 6 and the end of February from their 2024 pre-election ratings—as were Reid’s (1.421 million vs. 825,000). Hayes saw a 45 percent decline in that same period (1.496 million vs. 820,000).
In the 25-54 demo, Melber was down 51 percent (156,000 vs. 77,000), while Hayes was down 50 percent (166,000 vs. 83,000). Reid, however, was only at 47 percent (158,000 vs. 84,000), as was Psaki (146,000 vs. 77,000). Maddow and Laurence O’Donnell’s drops were less than 40 percent.
Reid’s ratings were the lowest of any MSNBC primetime host in February, and she averaged fewer viewers than the three hours of Melber and Nicolle Wallace that preceded her. Reid’s exit also came just as a reported one-year contract extension ended.
Over the last three years, she was also down 20 percent from the previous 7p.m. anchor, Chris Matthews. The former MSNBC host and current occasional guest left the network over accusations of making inappropriate comments towards female guests.
Reid, who in 2020 became the first Black woman to host a primetime cable news show, often walked a different path than her primetime peers on the network.
She said last summer she wanted to “keep Hitler out of the White House,” and she often stoked outrage among MAGA commentators online. News executives have since frowned on such language—CNN CEO Mark Thompson told anchors including Cooper and Jake Tapper in January to avoid any pre-judgment of Trump on Inauguration Day, according to Status.
But she also found herself in controversies of her own. Reid was caught in a hot-mic moment last year when she appeared to say Biden was “starting another f‑‑‑in’ war” over Israel’s actions in Gaza. (She later apologized and said she was “anti-war.”) She also had to apologize in 2017 after scores of past homophobic posts were uncovered, though she said in 2018 that other homophobic posts that were uncovered were “fabricated” and claimed she was hacked.
