Greetings from Los Angeles, and welcome back to In the Room, my private email on the media business and media people. In tonight’s edition, more dispatches from Universal City and 30 Rock in the wake of the Comcast cable networks spinoff—from the agita at MSNBC and CNBC to the details of Rachel Maddow’s new nine-figure deal. Speaking of which…

🎙️🍸 The Grill Room: On today’s podcast, Puck bossman Jon Kelly and I dissect the “SpinCo” news, as well as all the second- and third-order effects for MSNBC, CNBC, and the industry at large. Yes, these businesses are going to be smaller, operated more efficiently, and inevitably sold off to private equity. And just because Maddow got another fat deal doesn’t mean things are business as usual. (More on all that below). Be sure to follow The Grill Room on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Also mentioned in this email: Bonnie Hammer, Ben Sherwood, Mark Shapiro, Jim VandeHei, Cliff Levy, Donna Langley, Dick Stevenson, Anna Wintour, Andrew Ross Sorkin, Cesar Conde, Matt Murray, Mark Lazarus, Jimmy Horowitz, Radhika Jones, and many, many more.

But first…

• Trump ratings watch: The exodus of viewers from CNN and (especially) MSNBC since the election has been nothing short of staggering. Since November 5, CNN and MSNBC have seen their total audiences decline by 27 percent and 38 percent, respectively, when compared to their 2024 average from the previous 10 months. It’s even worse in primetime, where CNN is down 35 percent and MSNBC is down 47 percent. But the numbers themselves are perhaps even more dispiriting: Since Trump’s victory, CNN has averaged just 368,000 total viewers and 70,000 in the advertiser-relevant 25-to-54 demo, while MSNBC has averaged 527,000 total viewers and just 53,000 in the demo.

  Meanwhile, Fox News has seen its audience surge 41 percent overall and 48 percent in the demo, with an average of 2 million viewers and 267,000 in the demo. Indeed, across every category—total, 25-to-54, and 18-to-49—Fox News now accounts for roughly 70 percent of the total cable news audience since Election Day.

• Peacock shuffle: While I’ve been busy analyzing the big-picture implications of Comcast’s cable spinoff and taking stock of Mark Lazarus’s new portfolio, my partner Matt Belloni has been considering the SpinCo’s org-chart implications back in Universal City—specifically, Donna Langley’s elevation to one of the most powerful positions in Hollywood, with greenlight authority over all of NBCUniversal’s movies, television, and streaming. As Matt noted last night, “Donna has been asking for this role for a while now, and her elevation finally settles the low-key turf war” with Lazarus, who is now left to manage a portfolio of declining assets. In related news, NBC’s longtime cable queen Bonnie Hammer is now planning to leave the company at year’s end.

• Beltway trade window: Back in D.C., several media companies have entered the quadrennial post-election turnover period. Elisabeth Bumiller, The New York Times’s Washington bureau chief, is stepping down, and will be replaced by her deputy, Dick Stevenson, as I reported earlier this week. The Wall Street Journal laid off its politics editor, Ben Pershing—due, I’m told, to a desire to reinvigorate its coverage with stories that are more relevant to the Journal’s readers (the paper has since posted new job openings for at least three D.C. reporting positions). And The Washington Post’s politics editor, Dan Eggen, was abruptly ousted for personal reasons. (“I will leave it to others to explain why,” he wrote in a memo, though no one seems eager to do so.)

  Most notably, Post C.E.O. Will Lewis is now in the process of determining the paper’s next executive editor. The internal contenders are Matt Murray, the former Journal editor who came over to help Lewis run the newsroom through the end of the election, but who has since put down roots in D.C., and Matea Gold, a veteran Post editor. As New York’s Charlotte Klein first reported the other day, the Times’s Cliff Levy, who currently serves as deputy publisher of The Athletic and Wirecutter, is also in contention for the top Post job.

• The Beast awakens: On the heels of that not terribly flattering Times piece, Daily Beast chiefs Ben Sherwood and Joanna Coles are now touting some points on the board: The company told Adweek that the site increased year-over-year revenue by 81 percent in the last quarter, the first profitable quarter in the site’s 16-year history. The Beast is now projecting 40 percent revenue growth for the year. Of course, that’s one quarter on the heels of a 35 percent staff reduction. But, I suppose, it’s something.

• Finally…: If you’re a journalist looking for a pep talk, watch Jim VandeHei’s keynote address last night at the National Press Club, where he and Mike Allen picked up the Fourth Estate Award.

And now, the main event…

On the surface, that seems like a staggering amount of money to confer upon a marquee talent while cutting costs elsewhere, spinning the company off, and positioning it for an eventual sale to private equity. But that is precisely why MSNBC wants—indeed, needs—to keep Maddow in its stable and justify its affiliate fees in this brave new world. “The spinoff makes her more valuable than ever,” one industry veteran said of the primetime host. (Presumably, the same is true for Andrew Ross Sorkin over at CNBC).

Strategically, the MSNBC business essentially comprises just two franchises: Maddow and Morning Joe, both of which have endured a staggering ratings drop since the election (and, for the latter, since Joe and Mika’s diplomatic mission to Mar-a-Lago). Still, NBC executives have been in this business long enough to know that this is a moment in time, and that Maddow, especially, is integral to the network’s identity—particularly during both the business transformation and this uncertain political moment.

But Maddow’s deal does not portend business-as-usual across the rest of MSNBC. When businesses start to downsize like this, they tend to barbell: The most essential talent becomes even more rare and far more essential—and is compensated accordingly—while the rest of the team shrinks and is managed for cost. Think of Anna Wintour’s stature at Condé Nast growing even as its backend units are centralized, the once-robust print titles go digital-only or disappear, top editors make a relative pittance, and Radhika Jones, who never even got a taste of the perks Graydon Carter enjoyed, is forced to downsize to a closet-size office… and resort to running a seemingly unedited account of Cormac McCarthy’s affair with a 16-year-old, but that’s another story.

In MSNBC’s case, much of the backend production will similarly be centralized, while fewer anchors will be required to work longer hours for less money, all while being judged according to a minute-by-minute cost-benefit analysis of their performance. Meanwhile, the news net is likely to move out of its historic 30 Rock headquarters, probably to Stamford, where NBCUniversal houses NBC Sports and its Olympics center, or to the Tech Center in Englewood Cliffs, which is already the home of CNBC.

In the early stages of this transition, MSNBC is likely to strike an affiliate-style “transaction services agreement” with NBC News that will allow it to continue using the news network’s resources, as I reported earlier this week. But over the long term, it’s possible the network will forgo that arrangement and simply rely on the contributions of journalists from digital news sites who are already willing to come on the air for free. If it seems depressing, well, you just wait.