NBC’s Lester Holt is stepping down as anchor of its Nightly News show, while MSNBC host Ayman Mohyeldin is losing his weekend evening show as the networks’ owners continue a major programming shakeup.
MSNBC has announced significant changes to its lineup in recent days. A day after news broke that MSNBC had canceled the longstanding anchor Joy Reid’s show, The ReidOut, the liberal network revealed further changes to its schedule.
MSNBC said it was moving Jen Psaki, the former White House press secretary, to the 9pm primetime hour for Tuesdays through Fridays, and ending Alex Wagner’s current night-time spot. Rachel Maddow will return to hosting the Monday 9pm slot, after finishing her stint hosting five days a week during the first 100 days of the Trump administration.
Along with Mohyeldin’s weekend evening show, the network is also cancelling Katie Phang and Jonathan Capehart’s shows.
The plan is for Capehart, like Mohyeldin, to host a new show, and Phang would continue as a legal correspondent. Wagner will stay with the network as a senior political analyst.
Holt, who has served as the anchor and managing editor of NBC Nightly News for a decade, is leaving the broadcast early this summer, that network reported.
A successor for Holt on the program is yet to be named. He will reportedly continue to work with NBC, which shares an owner with MSNBC, as the principal anchor at Dateline, a role he has held for nearly 15 years.
The significant programming changes result from a reshuffling by the network’s new president, Rebecca Kutler, who took over the role in February.
Kutler, who was previously MSNBC’s senior vice-president for content strategy, succeeds Rashida Jones.
In her show on Monday evening, Maddow was highly critical of the shakeup, including the cancellation of Reid’s show, and the network’s handling of the changes.
“Personally, I think it is a bad mistake to let her walk out the door,” she said of Reid.
Maddow described it as “unnerving” and “indefensible” for the network’s only two non-white primetime hosts lose their shows. Meanwhile, dozens of producers and staffers are facing layoffs or being invited to reapply for new jobs, she said.
“That has never happened at this scale in this way before when it comes to programming changes – presumably because it’s not the right way to treat people,” she said. “This is a difficult time in the news business but it does not need to be this difficult.”
Staff of Mohyeldin’s show, named Ayman, learned on Monday that the last episode of Ayman is likely to air on 20 April.
In a recording of a meeting about the cancellation of Mohyeldin’s show, an MSNBC official said the network was “making several changes to our programming lineup”.
The official subsequently said the network had “hit success” with ensemble shows and was looking to invest in shows with the ensemble format in order to meet “audience needs”.
Mohyeldin has hosted several shows at MSNBC, including Morning Joe First Look, an early morning pre-show for one of the network’s flagship shows. In 2021, his namesake show was given a prime-time weekend evening slot.
The anchor also served as a correspondent for NBC in Gaza during a month-long conflict in 2014, receiving praise from media critics for reporting that departed from “the standard pro-Israel coverage that dominates establishment American press coverage”.
MSNBC said in a statement that the network will introduce a new trio of co-hosts to anchor a morning and evening edition of The Weekend on Saturdays and Sundays at 7am and 6pm ET.
Capehart, an MSNBC host and Washington Post associate editor, will serve as one co-anchor of the morning edition.
Mohyeldin will serve as anchor of a different group on the evening addition. Ali Velshi will also expand his namesake program, Velshi, to three hours on the weekends.
MSNBC confirmed that Reid will be leaving the network. Rotating anchors will host the hour in the coming weeks.
The network plans to replace Reid’s show with a new one led by three co-anchors: Symone Sanders-Townsend, Alicia Menendez and Michael Steele, who have been co-hosting MSNBC’s The Weekend Show.
Reid spoke out about her ousting from MSNBC during a Zoom call on Sunday’s edition of the Win With Black Women podcast, saying that she was “not sorry” for how she “went hard” while tackling certain difficult issues.
“I’ve been through every emotion from anger, rage, disappointment, hurt, and a feeling of guilt that I let my team lose their jobs,” Reid said.
The news of The ReidOut being canceled was leaked to the press before the staff were notified of the cancelation.
“Whether it’s talking about Gaza and the fact that we as the American people have a right to object, to have a right to object to little babies being bombed … Where I come down on that is I’m not sorry,” she said.
According to a source, the entire staff of The ReidOut, José Díaz-Balart Reports and The Katie Phang Show are being let go. Staff will be given the option to reapply for a job on one of the shows or take severance and quit. They have six weeks to decide which option to take, the source said.
That source added that the changes were due in part to MSNBC no longer wanting to use Telemundo, the Spanish-language network that is headquartered in Miami.
In November, Comcast announced plans to spin off several cable networks, including MSNBC, as the TV networks faced declining ratings, which only further declined following election fatigue.
Chuck Todd, a prominent anchor and former host of Meet the Press, announced in January that he was leaving NBC, another Comcast company, after 18 years. The announcement followed Todd’s pushback against NBC’s decision to hire Ronna McDaniel, the former Republican National Committee chairperson during Donald Trump’s first presidency, in March 2024. McDaniel was eventually removed from her position.
Trump, who has previously described news media as “the enemy of the people”, celebrated the cancelation of Reid’s show on his platform Truth Social, saying she should have been “canned long ago”.
The Associated Press contributed reporting
