Ratings continue to sunset at MSNBC‘s “Morning Joe” after the hosts surprised audiences earlier this week by announcing they had gone to visit Donald Trump at Mar-A-Lago following years of feuding with him.
On Wednesday, MSNBC’s morning mainstay lured an average of 647,000 viewers overall, and just 51,000 viewers between 25 and 54, the demographic most coveted by advertisers in news programming. On Monday, the four-hour program reached 770,000 overall and 86,000 viewers in the demo, meaning Wednesday’s overall audience fell by 15% and its viewership among people between 25 and 54 tumbled nearly 41%.
The figures mark the second consecutive decline in viewership since co-anchors Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski told viewers Monday that they had gone to visit the former and soon-to-be next U.S. President at his home in Florida in a bid to reach a sort of detente after years of criticizing him on the program. On Tuesday, the four-hour broadcast of the show captured 680,000 total viewers, and 86,000 viewers among adults between 25 and 54, both representing a decline of 12% from Monday’s program.
MSNBC could not be reached for immediate comment on the show’s audience trends over the last three days.
The ratings dip comes amid rising uncertainty at MSNBC, which is part of a pack of cable networks set to be separated from NBCUniversal under a spinoff plan revealed earlier this week by corporate parent Comcast. At a meeting on Wednesday with Mark Lazarus, the NBCU senior executive slated to be CEO of the new company, MSNBC personnel asked questions about whether the network would have to change its name or remove some of its signature markings due to the separation, which is expected to take place over the next 12 months. Lazarus was unable to give significant detail about plans, including whether MSNBC would be able to use the newsgathering of NBC News, which has helped fuel programming for years.
On Monday, Scarborough and Brzezinski told viewers that they had agreed “to restart communications” with Trump, a move that angered some die-hard fans of the progressive cable-news outlet. The two had not spoken directly to Trump since March of 2020, except for a call Scarborough made to him following the recent attempt made on Trump’s life in Butler, Pa.
“We didn’t see eye-to-eye on a lot of issues and we told him so,” Scarborough said Monday, citing issues such as abortion and the potential for retribution against political enemies and the media.
The announcement surprised many. In 2018, Trump shocked media figures when he made remarks about Brzezinski’s appearance. “Crazy Mika” and “Psycho Joe” are phrases he has tried to make common, even though the hosts have with Willie Geist maintained one of the longest-running anchor teams on a national morning-news program.
On a podcast run by The Daily Beast Thursday, Brzezinski said she had heard words of encouragement from “people that I respect a great deal, leaders, people I don’t usually hear from who are really powerful, who just wanted to let me know that that was the right thing to do.” But she also said she felt like she was being treated like a “punching bag” by observers and commentators. “The media landscape right now is dominated by echo chambers,” she added. “It’s my job to talk to people I don’t agree with—or even feel threatened by.”
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