MSNBC viewers accustomed to being greeted by the Morning Joe on-air team of Joe Scarborough, Mike Brzezinski, and Willie Geist at 6 a.m. ET were instead treated to 10 minutes worth of promos and a brief clip of a repeat episode of The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell as MSNBC dealt with some technical difficulties.
Around 6:11 a.m. ET, Brzezinski surfaced on screen acknowledging the unusual start to the program by saying, “Thanks for bearing with us, everybody,” with the program resuming its standard flow after that.
The technical difficulties were not just confined to Morning Joe, however. MSNBC’s 5 a.m. E.T. show Way Too Early with Jonathan Lemire also experienced on-air glitches. The screen became distorted during Way Too Early, with MSNBC quickly switching to a repeat episode of The Rachel Maddow Show as it tried to resolve the problem.
In a social media posting, Lemire attributed the problems experienced by the morning shows to “technical difficulties.”
To those looking for @WayTooEarly this morning – we are experiencing technical difficulties
Our apologies. Keep watching @MSNBC and we hope to have @WayTooEarly and @Morning_Joe back up soon pic.twitter.com/YrbkPCl64y
— Jonathan Lemire (@JonLemire) December 12, 2023
MSNBC, according to Variety’s Brian Steinberg, has declined to provide any comment regarding the early morning incidents.