The poor little rich libs at MSNBC: Now that they’re without their corporate sugar-daddy, their new boss is a “golf bro” who — gasp! — might be the type to own a MAGA hat!
From the sounds of things, you’d almost expect Rachel Maddow to reprise her famous election night 2016 monologue during the Monday all-hands meeting: “You’re awake, by the way. You’re not having a terrible, terrible dream. Also, you’re not dead and you haven’t gone to hell. This is your network now, this is our station, this is us — it’s real.”
Naturally, it’s not that bad — but don’t tell that to the people at the network who talked to Politico about the cable network’s messy divorce from its parent company, Comcast. As you’ve probably heard, the media MegaCorp Inc. has decided it’s too big for its own good and is spinning off its cable assets, including MSNBC.
On an ironic note, this means that both of the corporate entities that comprise the network’s acronym — when it was started in 1996, it was a collaboration between Microsoft and NBC News — have nothing to do with it. While that’s a cute bit of irony, there is a very real problem in the fact that MSNBC is a news channel which no longer has access to the resources of one of the big three broadcast networks’ news department — a dilly of a pickle, as Ned Flanders might put it.
On Friday, Politico Magazine ran an article on the sturm und drang regarding the divorce, titled, “Maddow’s Back! The Resistance Is Rising! So Why Is MSNBC’s Future Uncertain?”
Well, for starters, you can’t fault Lachlan Cartwright, who wrote the piece, for not spelling out how chaotic the miry, jumbled divorce has been:
Inside 30 Rock — the iconic skyscraper synonymous with a satirical TV sitcom — a select group of prominent Comcast executives are busy drawing up lists. In a process that internally has been likened to the Hunger Games, the top brass, including NBC’s Cesar Conde and Rebecca Blumenstein and MSNBC’s Rebecca Kutler, are dividing anchors, hosts and correspondents into a few buckets as MSNBC prepares to spin off from its mothership, NBC News. There are those NBC News wants and MSNBC doesn’t. The ones MSNBC is keen to nab that NBC is happy to see go. And the lucky few whom both networks would love to keep, granting those journalists the luxury of deciding between the two. Sunday Today Show anchor and Morning Joe co-host Willie Geist is one of the rare exceptions that will be allowed to appear on both channels. But layoffs await a sizable number of those neither network wants.
“It’s a cluster***,” a person familiar with the negotiations told me.
Wait, it’s just now achieved that status? I’ve hate-watched more than my fair share of MSNBC of the years and it’s always definitely been a cluster of something. For it to get worse … all I can say is that I pity the poor fools, and that’s saying something when you consider who they are.
Will things change at MSNBC?
For those of you interested in the minute details of the petty breakup between Comcast and SpinCo — the unoriginal aptronym they’ve given the independent entity comprising the cable channels, including MSNBC — Cartwright does a pretty good job, and not just by the standards of Politico; it’s worth the read if you have the time.
However, beyond the minutiae of how SpinCo will operate are worries from the progressive stalwart that the guy running the new operation isn’t a pink-haired Oberlin graduate.
Mark Lazarus is a company man, a “golf bro,” as someone who knows him professionally told me. His career began in sports media (after working on the sets of soap operas “Ryan’s Hope” and “All My Children”) at Turner Sports, where he played a major role in recruiting Charles Barkley for TNT’s “Inside the NBA” before expanding to oversee all the company’s entertainment properties, from Turner Classic Movies to Adult Swim. After joining NBC in 2011, where he became head of sports, he climbed the corporate ladder over the next 14 years to become chairman of NBCU’s media group, controlling the company’s TV and streaming portfolio. Last year he took over as SpinCo’s CEO-to-be, in charge of executing the separation until that day comes.
Lazarus is more conservative than some of his left-leaning colleagues. “He could have a MAGA hat at home and we wouldn’t know,” one MSNBC staffer told me. In meetings, he’s suggested that Republicans feel they don’t get a fair shake on the network. But though he might not be aligned with their politics, he’s aligned with MSNBC talent on the nuts and bolts of making good TV — and understands the network can’t risk alienating its core audience. [Emphasis ours.]
Uh-oh! Looks like the hive of covert Proud Boys inside 30 Rock played the long game and got a “golf bro” who may or may not have a MAGA hat in his desk in charge of a wide swath of cable channels, including a mindlessly progressive news channel. It’s time for Congress to ask this guy, under oath, “Are you now wearing or have you ever worn a piece of red headgear?”
And it’s not just that this guy’s idea of a hobby is a good walk spoiled. Lazarus is in charge of making sure MSNBC, now that it’s not able to rely on NBC News, can stay competitive and look sort of sane in the process — not an easy task for anyone, as illustrated in February when the network parted ways with one of its most problematic personages.
As you may have been aware, MSNBC host Joy Reid had long been an embarrassment to the network — and, last year, NBC News decided they were going to effectuate one of those non-firing firings; she was given a mere one-year extension to her contract with her salary cut, a message in any line of work that it was time to brush up the résumé and buy a copy of “What Color Is Your Parachute?”
Reid, inexplicably, did not get the hint and kept right on doing her show. Lazarus then gave Rebecca Kutler, head of the MSNBC division of SpinCo, the blessing to kick Reid to the curb — prompting histrionics from Reid and on-air accusations of racism from Rachel Maddow, who also insinuated any other cuts would be driven by bigotry:
Joy Reid breaks down sobbing while addressing being fired from MSNBC:
“My show had value!” pic.twitter.com/T1dOabN7DT
— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) February 24, 2025
Wow. Rachel Maddow just did her MSNBC show and ripped MSNBC management for firing Joy Reid. She even implied that they were racist for firing multiple minority hosts.
If you were management, would you allow an employee to imply that you’re a racist? 🤔pic.twitter.com/nIYGS729kv
— Robby Starbuck (@robbystarbuck) February 25, 2025
As much as I do wish it were so, this wasn’t because Lazarus has a MAGA cap under lock and key in his office and bows down to it like a golden calf three times a day. Reid was a constant embarrassment to the network — a racist, homophobe, conspiracy theorist, and perpetual self-owner, she couldn’t provide a salient analysis of “Green Eggs and Ham” if she tried, much less dissect American politics.
And, just in case this needs saying, this all would have been true even if she were whiter than a pint of mayonnaise smeared between vinyl copies of Dave Matthews Band’s “Crash” and The Shins’ “Oh, Inverted World.” She could have drawn the kind of ratings that “Seinfeld” did — she didn’t, naturally — and she still would have been such a liability to the new venture that, considering she couldn’t get a less-than-subtle clue, Lazarus was forced to hit her over the head with a three-wood of reality.
The importance here is that this is the story you’re going to hear out of MSNBC over the coming months and years. For decades, even though the network hasn’t exactly been a money pit, it’s still functioned more or less as an opinionated annex of a public service provided by a broadcast network. Now, it’s expected to maximize profits — which means no more Joy Reids, no more living off the crumbs of NBC News’ credibility, none of that. It needs to survive on its own merits.
And — surprise, surprise — the progressives are unhappy about that.
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