(Headline USA) MSNBC President Rashida Jones revealed Tuesday that she was stepping down from the network just days before President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration and would be replaced by Rebecca Kutler, a former CNN executive, USA Today reported.
Jones took over as MSNBC’s president in February 2021. By the end of her first year, the network’s viewership had dropped from an average of 1.6 million primetime viewers in 2021 to 830,000 in 2022, according to AdWeek.
“Rashida has expertly navigated MSNBC through a years-long, unrelenting and unprecedented news cycle, all while driving the network to record viewership and making investments in nonlinear businesses,” said Mark Lazarus, the chairman of NBCUniversal Media Group, who will oversee the new company that includes MSNBC.
In her own statement, Jones insisted the decision to step down was her own.
“I came to this decision over the holidays while reflecting on our remarkable journey and the many successes we’ve achieved together as a team,” Jones wrote in a memo to staff. “This has been the most rewarding chapter of my professional career and I am immensely proud of what we have accomplished, which has been made possible only by you.”
The announcement comes nearly two months after Comcast announced it plans to sell most of its cable networks, including MSNBC and NBC News, both of which have suffered massive drops in their viewership over the past several years.
Kutler, who will be replacing Jones, helped launch CNN’s failed CNN+ streaming service before she moved to MSNBC to serve as the network’s senior vice president of content strategy.
MSNBC isn’t the only leftist media outlet undergoing upheaval in the wake of Trump’s sweeping electoral victory. The Washington Post, owned by billionaire Jeff Bezos, also announced this year that it would be firing 4% of its workforce after the paper lost more than 250,000 subscribers following its decision not to endorse Vice President Kamala Harris.
