Rachel Maddow is blasted by her MSNBC mentor after signing huge new deal

Rachel Maddow was criticized by her former MSNBC mentor Keith Olbermann for her new contract, which will increase her salary from $30 million to $25 million per year.

Olbermann was in many ways the predecessor to Maddow, the liberal-leaning network’s biggest star for nearly a decade.

During that time, he hosted several of MSNBC’s current stars, including Maddow, who was a frequent guest host of Olbermann’s old show “Countdown” before landing her own program in 2008.

The ex-ESPN star has criticized the network several times in recent years, including Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski for their meeting with Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago weeks ago.

He is also furious with Maddow, who he says vetoed Olbermann’s possible return to the network.

The outburst over the Morning Joe hosts’ pivot and owner Comcast’s desire to “spin off” the liberal network prompted one commentator to wonder whether Maddow should start her own operation and leave MSNBC.

There appears to be no love lost between Olbermann and Maddow, as the ex-Fox Sports host gave a caustic response.

Olbermann wrote, “She just re-signed for $25 million. If you think she would do something on principle, I’ll light a candle for you.’

Comcast appears poised to ‘spin-off’ MSNBC amid radical changes that prompted Scarborough and Brzezinski to joke they could lose that same penthouse earlier this week.

Salaries for key talent appear to be undergoing cuts, following the lead of rivals CNN, with Maddow signing a new deal that will reduce her pay from $30 million a year to $25 million.

An anonymous executive called Maddow “ratings Viagra” and regularly drew significantly more viewers than the rest of the network’s primetime lineup.

Although the network and Morning Joe’s ratings have been reported to have suffered since the couple’s announcement that they had made peace with Trump weeks ago, the network has sharply pushed back on that.

Initial reports indicated that Morning Joe was losing viewers on an hour-by-hour basis after the hosts revealed their secret Mar-a-Lago meeting.

However, an MSNBC spokesperson said DailyMail.com’s live viewership was actually up 24% in the 7 a.m. hour, slightly more than the 22% increase the show saw hour-to-hour the week before.

Additionally, the network claimed victory as that Monday, November 18 show saw a greater number of viewers watching the show on DVR, with more than 400,000 people watching the 6am hour later that day, a 77% increase, compared to a year past. -date average of 27%.

They also said that the show’s ratings fell only 1.7% in the entire week of the Mar-a-Lago meeting announcement from the week before. Both Fox and CNN were flat or down in ratings that week.

MSNBC continues to boast that “more Americans will tune in to the first hour of Morning Joe than any other” program in its time slot in 2024, especially when viewers can watch the program via DVR later in the day.

However, reports continue of changes coming to MSNBC. A source said The ankle boot that the Morning Joe rebrand of making peace with Trump is part of the network having a come-to-Jesus moment that goes too far left during the election.

“We were so Harris propaganda that viewers were shocked when she lost. It turned into one giant circular shock and echo chamber. If MSNBC wants to serve its viewers, they can’t keep them in fantasy land.”

However, keeping liberal star Maddow on the air even one night a week was non-negotiable.

‘No one else can do what she does. You can’t build a brand like that overnight.’

Comcast’s move to spin off its NBCUniversal networks would have been a baffling move years ago, as its channel fleet was previously among the company’s most profitable assets.

But the decision means channels like MSNBC, USA, Oxygen, E! and Golf Channel are being spun off into a separate entity – and a separate balance sheet.

Comcast executives said they will not spin off all the channels and will keep Bravo, the Peacock streaming service and the NBC broadcast network under the parent company.

But by shedding its expensive networks, Comcast is hedging its bets that it can expand its movie studios and theme park industries without being dragged down by the problems of traditional television news.

It also comes at a delicate time for the Morning Joe hosts after it was revealed that Joe and Mika visited Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago – after a years-long feud that reached a fever pitch when Scarborough compared him to Adolf Hitler – leading to anger among viewers of the liberal show.

Amid the backlash, Morning Joe staffers have insisted the Florida meeting was “f***ing worth it.”

However, there are reports that Mad is a starDow is furious with her Morning Joe colleagues for their encounter Donald Trump after he won the presidential election.

Maddow, along with other hosts of the troubled liberal network, are calling this move by Morning Joe’s married co-hosts “opportunistic,” according to a report in The American sun.

‘The meeting at Mar-a-Lago created a lot of tension in the teams, and many other stars… see both Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski as opportunistic and with very low self-esteem, forgetting their values ​​of journalists with independence and integrity ‘, says a journalist who has worked at MSNBC for fifteen years.

Speaking on condition of anonymity, the journalist made it clear who has a problem with Morning Joe switching from calling Trump a fascist and an admirer of Adolf Hitler to having a cordial meeting with him to find out what will happen in the future to happen.

‘They have lost a lot of credibility. Rachel Maddow is mad at them, as are other hosts like Chris Hayes and Ari Melber. They are so frustrated,” the journalist said.

“It was such a stupid thing to do,” they added. “They have bent their knees to make sure they don’t become targets of Trump and the entire MAGA world.”