After a lengthy decade and a half on the air, MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell is now stepping back from doing the daily anchoring duty on her show, MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell Reports, after years of viewership issues for the cable network, which is struggling to stay watched and relevant.
Such is what Mitchell, now 77 years old, announced on Tuesday, October 29. Her stepping back comes after not just 15 years on air, but being with the woke network since the 1970s. While she is stepping back from her show, her reporting will apparently still remain on TODAY, NBC Nightly News, Meet the Press, NBC News NOW, and MSNBC.
Further, she will also, after the presidential inauguration in January 2025, continue with her work as NBC News’ Chief Foreign Affairs Correspondent and Chief Washington Correspondent and occasionally cover breaking news events and political nights on MSNBC and other NBC properties.
Commenting on air about her decision, Mitchell said, “After 16 years of being in the anchor chair every day, I want time to do more of what I love the most: more connecting, listening and reporting in the field, especially as whoever is elected next week is going to undertake the monumental task of handling two foreign wars and the political divisions here at home.”
Continuing, she said, “So, after the inaugural next January — I’ve asked for the opportunity to continue covering those stories, but from a different vantage point — still with NBC News and at MSNBC and still as chief Washington and foreign affairs correspondent. “Just not on the schedule of a daily show.”
NBC News leadership wrote a short note to network staff in announcing Mitchell’s transition away from her longtime show and prominent network position, saying, “Andrea remains one of the country’s foremost and most trusted experts on foreign policy and domestic politics.”
It continued, with the note and noted that she would remain around, saying, “Her contributions to NBC News over the last 46 years have been invaluable to the network, and we are so pleased that she will remain an essential part of the News Group for years to come.” Watch Mitchell announce the end of her show here:
Mitchell’s show was launched in 2008, making it the network’s longest-running daytime program. However, it has struggled to stay relevant to viewers in recent years, dominated as it is near-exclusively by anti-Trump sentiment, and has shed viewers while struggling to maintain itself.
In fact, according to USTVBD reports that it has even shed a large number of viewers in recent months, providing, “Andrea Mitchell Reports is watched by a total number of 634,000 people (0.2% rating, down -12% from last month) per episode, as of the average monthly audience measurement for the period ending July 31, 2024.”
Further, MSNBC itself has struggled to hold onto viewers. While Fox News Channel averaged 1.6 million total day viewers over October, finishing as the number one cable network, MSNBC couldn’t even breach a million; its viewers over the same period, averaged just 903,000 viewers. CNN, meanwhile, did even worse, managing just 532,000 average viewers over the same period. Together, then, MSNBC and CNN still lost to FNC.
"*" indicates required fields