This scoop is only coming from one reporter at the moment. Jon Nicosia, formerly at IJR and Mediaite, said he had a source about a coming round of reshuffling at MSNBC in which Joy Reid would be losing her current 7pm show:
Source @ Comcast: "Joy Reid will lose her 7p show in the next round of reshuffling at MSNBC." – "She does not have a show come mid Spring" – The "decision has been made, the only thing left is messaging on the move, which will be ratings" – 1/
— Jon Nicosia (@NewsPolitics) January 6, 2022
Also, like Cuomo at CNN. Watch for MSNBC/Comcast to defend her right until the announcement.
— Jon Nicosia (@NewsPolitics) January 6, 2022
I’m not sure what “past incidents” we’re talking about but if it’s the time-traveling hackers who put anti-gay comments on her blog, that’s pretty old news at this point. It was nearly four years ago when all of that came up. Her weird explanation in which she claimed she didn’t believe she’d written those comments but couldn’t explain how else they got their was obviously garbage when she offered it. In fact, there were sources claiming at the time that MSNBC brass knew she was lying:
According to former colleagues, @MSNBC @NBCNews management “certain” @joyannreid lied about being hacked, but decided not to fire her, in part, given B.Williams history + ongoing role. Truth and integrity still matter to a few at the org, though they feel like a dying breed.
— David Shuster (@DavidShuster) April 28, 2018
As I argued at the time, the problem wasn’t so much that Joy had made some remarks about gay marriage that were still pretty common at the time she made them (remember Obama claimed he was against it when he ran for office). What really disqualified Reid was her 2018 lies about having written all of it. She even dragged the FBI into it allegedly.
Has their been some new information which has finally convinced people she was less than truthful? Or did the MSNBC brass just decide she’s not getting high enough ratings to justify their decision to abandon their alleged principles? Because Reid’s ratings are down substantially from where they were a year ago.
When her show launched last summer it had a strong premiere and seemed to be growing for several months, but it peaked in January of 2021 with about 2.6 million viewers and has been on a steady slide ever since. Here’s a chart showing her ratings decline over the past year. According to this, her ratings in the 25-54 demo have dropped even faster than her overall audience.
The show now pulls in about 1.1 million viewers. According to this November press release, Reid continues to beat the competition at CNN but it’s noteworthy that the entire release highlights how well Morning Joe, Rachel Maddow, Lawrence ‘stop the hammering‘ O’Donnell and Brian ‘I’m taking rocket fire‘ Williams were doing but barely mentioned Joy Reid at all.
The real problem with Reid isn’t her ratings, it’s that she’s a crank. She recently accused Elon Musk of cultural appropriation in a defense of…Elizabeth Warren. How does someone even get that tone deaf? She’s also a bit vague on the basics of the electoral college, something a professional political commentator should probably know about. What she is good at is accusing everyone who dares to oppose the left of being racist. That seems to be enough to garner 1.1 million viewers a night but not much more than that.
If someone else confirms the story today I’ll try to add an update here.
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