MSNBC’s Morning Joe Bleeds Viewers After Mika and Joe Revealed Trump Meeting
MSNBC’s morning show, Morning Joe, notched some of its worst ratings for the year on Tuesday, a day after hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski revealed on air they had met with President-elect Donald Trump last Friday.
The 6 am hour of the program brought in 839,000 total viewers and 113,000 viewers in the key 25-54 age demographic on Monday, during which the hosts discussed their meeting that prompted a swift backlash from diehard Trump critics.
The same hour on Tuesday had dropped to 680,000 total viewers with 76,000 in the demo. Tuesday’s program overall saw an 11 percent drop in total viewers and a 12 percent drop in demo viewers from Monday. Compared to the program’s average viewership for 2024, Tuesday’s show was down some 38 percent in total viewers and 37 percent in the demo. The show, which runs for four hours from 6 to 10 am, also saw its third lowest-rated telecasts in the 3rd and 4th hour for the entire year.
The drop, however, can’t be entirely pegged to the Trump meeting as MSNBC in general has seen viewers tune out some since the election. MSNBC’s prime-time show All In With Chris Hayes also saw one of its lowest-rated episodes in the demo in nearly ten years. Chris Hayes’s program brought in its lowest demo rating since June of 2015 on Tuesday night. Meanwhile, Nicolle Wallace’s Deadline: White House and Chris Jansing’s daytime news program also struggled in the demo, with the latter seeing its lowest demo rating ever.
The drop in viewership also coincides with Tuesday’s announcement that Comcast would spin off MSNBC, CNBC, and other cable properties into a new venture, untethering it from NBC News and the rest of the NBC Universal divisions.
Scarborough discussed the news on air Wednesday, saying, “I mean, I could be completely wrong: we could all be fired a year from now. When this happens, you never know what’s going to happen.” Brzezinski simply added, “Or tomorrow.”
