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Is There Life After Maddow?

Alex Wagner is, by all accounts, a brilliant and seasoned anchor. The TV insiders I speak to sing her praises while simultaneously scratching their heads about the hire and what it suggests about MSNBC’s future.

Alex Wagner
MSNBC anchor Alex Wagner, who will succeed Rachel Maddow. Photo: Paul Morigi/WireImage
Dylan Byers
June 29, 2022

Five years ago, in the still early days of Donald Trump’s presidency, when the news industry was riding high on the nation’s endless fascination and angst regarding the former Apprentice star’s rise to power, then-CNN president Jeff Zucker sounded a note of caution. In a Q&A session with staff at the network’s Los Angeles bureau, where I was a reporter, Zucker noted that the Trump-fueled surge in ratings that had been so lucrative for CNN and its rivals was ultimately an oasis in the desert, a mere mirage of hope amid the otherwise irreversible secular decline of the linear television business.