MSNBC Shakes Up Schedule With New Panel Show ‘The Weekend’

Alex Weprin
·3 min read
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MSNBC is overhauling its weekend lineup ahead of the 2024 election season.

The biggest change is a new morning panel show, called The Weekend, which will be hosted by Symone Sanders-Townsend, Alicia Menendez and Michael Steele. The program will run from 8-10 a.m. and originate from Washington D.C., with Kyle Griffin as executive producer.

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Sanders-Townsend and Menendez currently host weekend afternoon hours on MSNBC, but will shift to focus on the morning show.

“As we emerge from a multitude of historic events these past months, we have an opportunity to build on our accomplishments and keep the momentum going into 2024 and beyond,” MSNBC president Rashida Jones wrote to staff at the channel Thursday morning, outlining the plans.

The new schedule will also bring a wave of adjustments to the lineups on both Saturday and Sunday.

Two current MSNBC weekend hosts will be losing their hours: Mehdi Hasan, who will give up his 8 p.m. Sunday show and become a political analyst and fill-in anchor; and Yasmin Vossoughian, who will depart her weekend afternoon hours and shift to a national reporter and fill-in anchor role.

Among the other changes:

Ayman Mohyeldin will move to 7 p.m. on both Saturday and Sunday; Alex Witt will anchor from 1-4 p.m. both days; Jonathan Capehart will shift to 6 p.m. on both days; Katie Phang will anchor from 12-1 p.m. on Saturdays.

The programs hosted by Ali Velshi, Jen Psaki, Al Sharpton, and Richard Lui will remain in their current timeslots.

All of the changes, including the launch of the new show, will go into effect Jan. 13.

“These changes build upon the excellent foundation of the MSNBC brand across our portfolio. I can’t thank you enough for your commitment and dedication this season,” Jones added in her note, adding that “If you are part of the weekend team, your leader and HR manager will delve further into the new structure in the next few hours.”

MSNBC has been tweaking its lineup over the past year, on both the weekend and weekdays. Earlier this year the channel made changes to its dayside lineup on both weekdays and weekends, and gave former Biden White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki a weekend hour.

Psaki, of course, would go on to add an hour in weekday primetime on Monday nights, serving as the lead-in to Rachel Maddow, who continues to host the 9 p.m. hour that evening.

“With the five-days-a-week show, I became a pretty good compartmentalizer,” Maddow told THR last month about her new schedule. “We built a staff cadence where, unless something really crazy happened, we were not calling each other on weekends. I think that’s how we were able to avoid burnout for all that time. Now I have an uncompartmentalizable work life, and I haven’t figured it out yet. I work seven days a week instead of five. But it doesn’t feel like as much of a grind.”

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