MS NOW anchors Ali Velshi and Stephanie Ruhle. Ralph Bavaro/MSNBC MS NOW is overhauling its lineup from morning through night, moving anchors around and adjusting time periods as the Versant-owned cable channel prepares to cover the looming 2026 midterm elections.
MS NOW president Rebecca Kutler announced the changes on the channel’s daily editorial call Wednesday.
The changes, which will go into effect come June, will include Ali Velshi taking over the late night show The 11th Hour from his friend and It’s Happening co-host Stephanie Ruhle, with Ruhle moving to a new morning period from 9-11 a.m. weekdays where she will delve into money and politics as the opening bell rings.
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With that new change, Morning Joe will return to three hours from 6-9 a.m. Joe Lemire, who had been co-anchor of the 9 a.m. hour, will become co-anchor of the 8 a.m. hour. Morning Joe’s ratings have been strong, but the demands of leading a four-hour show five days a week has taken its toll, as Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski have noted before. The change will also allow the team to build new offerings for MS NOW’s upcoming digital subscription product.
Alicia Menendez, co-host of The Weeknight, will take over the 12-2 p.m. time period, with Luke Russert (who has been a frequent fill-in host on the show) joining the program full time (her family is in New Jersey, and she had been commuting to Washington D.C.). The Weeknight will also go from two hours to one hour on Mondays, with Chris Hayes once again anchoring Mondays at 8 p.m. after cutting back in 2023.
Russert, of course, leads MS NOW’s live events business, and is a former anchor on MSNBC.
Jacob Soboroff will take over Velshi’s time period over the weekend from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m.
Chris Jansing, currently the 12-2 p.m. anchor, will shift to a new role as chief political reporter (a sizable role for the midterms) while Ana Cabrera, who leads the 10 a.m. to 12 p.m. period, will leave the channel.
The dayside programs are still expected to be rooted in hard news and reporting, though they will get new branding away from the “Reports” name they had been using. The channel is also expected to name a new 11 a.m. anchor in the near future.
The changes impact essentially every daypart, and are the first since MS NOW rebranded from MSNBC and spun out into Versant earlier this year. They will also lead to some staff changes, though in a memo to employees Kutler emphasized that the channel is not cutting back on resources.
“As part of these programming changes, team members will have the opportunity to shift into new roles to support new priorities,” Kutler wrote. “In most cases, comparable opportunities will be available to employees as these changes take shape. Overall, we expect to have more people working at MS NOW by the end of 2026 than we do today.”
The changes are dramatic, and come as Kutler seeks to not only grow MS NOW’s market share in the largely declining pay-TV business, but launch a subscription product that will appeal to super-fans of the platform.
MS NOW’s new schedule is below:
WEEKDAYS 5 a.m. ET Way Too Early with Ali Vitali 6-9 a.m. ET Morning Joe 9-11 a.m. ET Stephanie Ruhle anchors 11 a.m. ET Anchor to be announced 12-2 p.m. ET Alicia Menendez anchors 2-4 p.m. ET Katy Tur anchors 4-6 p.m. ET Deadline: White House 6 p.m. ET The Beat with Ari Melber 7 p.m. ET The Weeknight 8 p.m. ET All In with Chris Hayes 9 p.m. ET The Rachel Maddow Show (Monday) The Briefing with Jen Psaki (Tuesday-Friday) 10 p.m. ET The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell 11 p.m. ET The 11th Hour with Ali Velshi WEEKENDS 7-10 a.m. ET The Weekend 10 a.m. -1 p.m. ET Jacob Soboroff anchors 1-4 p.m. ET Alex Witt anchors 4-5 p.m. ET The Beat: Weekend (Saturday) Deadline: White House Weekend (Saturday) 5-6 p.m. ET PoliticsNation 6-9 p.m. ET The Weekend: Primetime 9 p.m. ET Crooked on MS NOW (Saturday)
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