First on TVNewser: A year-old experiment at MSNBC is coming to an end. As TVNewser first told you earlier today, “The Reid Report” is being canceled, and we can now confirm that “Ronan Farrow Daily” is also being shelved. Both Reid and Farrow will take on new roles with the network.
At the same time, “Way Too Early” anchor Thomas Roberts heads back to dayside, as the network returns to a more traditional news day. Farrow and Reid will host their shows next week. Then, beginning March 2, Roberts will anchor from 1-3pmET, preceded by José Díaz-Balart (9-11am), Tamron Hall (11-Noon) and Andrea Mitchell (Noon-1pm).
The Farrow and Reid shows were meant to extend MSNBC’s progressive point-of-view to the daytime hours, but they got off to a slow start and didn’t catch on from there.
Roberts joined MSNBC in Dec. 2010, after filling in as an anchor for the network. He’s been hosting “Way to Early” and contributing to “Morning Joe” for the last year.
An MSNBC spokesperson tells TVNewser the changes will allow for more in depth and original reporting. For Farrow, that means more interviews with business and political leaders, athletes, and celebrities which will run across MSNBC platforms. He’ll also be a special correspondent traveling to where news is happening, as he did recently to Dallas covering the Ebola cases, and Paris for the Charlie Hebdo attacks. And he’ll continue to work with the NBC News investigative unit.
Reid becomes national correspondent for MSNBC on-air and online. She’ll also be a dedicated reporter for “Now This News,” which has a partnership with MSNBC.
No one is expected to lose a job in the transition. The staffs of both Farrow’s and Reid’s shows will work on Roberts’s 2-hour news show. Others might move to The Bridge, which is MSNBC’s integrated content center for covering and delivering straight news coverage across multiple platforms.
MSNBC has evolved over the years from a straight news channel leveraging the resources of NBC News, to a progressive news and opinion network, to one that is expanding its digital offerings while trying to come up with a winning formula on TV. While this is a return to a more traditional lineup, the network is moving forward with specialized content, as evidenced by yesterday’s hiring of celebrity chef Tom Colicchio as its first food correspondent.
These changes are also part of a larger strategy laid out by MSNBC president Phil Griffin late last year: “Technology is continuing to drive unprecedented changes across the media landscape,” Griffin wrote, “and we all should be taking a hard, honest look at how we need to evolve along with it.”
Today, the MSNBC evolution continues.