The end of 2022 was hardly a great time for one of MSNBC’s more recognizable hosts, Rachel Maddow. That’s because she, despite surely making the hearts of cat aunts everywhere flutter, had absolutely dismal ratings on her show, which used to be a prime time show that used to air five nights a week.
Now? Not so much. In fact, the ratings were so terrible that MSNBC replaced her five-night-a-week show with one called “MSNBC Prime”, on which a different guest host takes over on each night. So now she just has one prime time hour a week and her slot was taken over by a different MSNBC personality. That personality is Alex Wagner, who hosts “Alex Wagner Tonight.”
That change took place back in November of 2022, though it was hardly a home run of a switch up.
Our friends at Patriot Fetch, reporting on the change at the time and noting that Wagner was hardly an all-star success, particularly when compared to even middling Fox News Channel personalities like Hannity, and that Maddow is doing a little bit better now that she’s only on the prime time slot once a week, said:
Maddow’s clear demotion shows that she didn’t get enough viewers. Wagner’s ratings have gone up a little bit, but her debut, which drew only about 2 million viewers, wasn’t great. This time slot was won by Hannity on Fox News, which had 3.1 million viewers.
With her one-day-a-week time slot, Maddow has seen a comeback. The Rachel Maddow Show averaged 2.39 million viewers, which was enough to get it into the top five shows in the hour of a month.
And that’s not the end of it for the struggling MSNBC. Wagner’s two million or so viewers were a decimating collapse from when Maddow was doing well in 2021, particularly in the all-important 25-54-year-old demographic, the one advertisers love to see.
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In fact, viewership among that all-important demographic collapsed by a whopping 50% over the year, with the average falling from 304,000 viewers in it in 2021 to a dismal 151,000 viewers in the demographic.
As an illustration of how crushing such a massive collapse in that viewership demographic is, a former TV executive told CNN that, “A 50 percent drop in the key 25-54 demo is a 50 percent drop in your billable viewer. Imagine running a store or restaurant and losing 50 percent of your billable customers. Not your looky-loos. Your paying customers.” Yikes.
And it wasn’t just that important demographic that fell off a cliff for the time slot over the year. Total viewers dropped substantially as well over the year, though not quite as badly. According to Nielsen, the total number of average viewers dropped by “only” 34% over the year, falling from 2.4 million to 1.6 million.
Though Wagner is doing badly, Rachel Maddow’s show isn’t much better, as mentioned above, particularly given that she’s only on once a week. But, it is doing slightly better, particularly with the 25-54 demo, putting “The Rachel Maddow Show” in the top 10 with that viewer block alongside numerous Fox News programs.