in World News MSNBC Is a ‘Money-Losing Operation’
Victor Davis Hanson @VDHanson
Victor Davis Hanson, a senior contributor for The Daily Signal, is a classicist and historian at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University and author of the book “The Second World Wars: How the First Global Conflict Was Fought and Won.” You can reach him by emailing [email protected].
Hello, this is Victor Davis Hanson for The Daily Signal. I’d like to talk about some hypocrisy that’s been in the news lately. And it tends to be mostly on the Left and mostly by very elite people that we wouldn’t expect because we were told, of course, they were populists and men and women of the people.
Let’s take Rachel Maddow. She’s on MSNBC. Her audience has declined drastically. She typically works one day out of five, per week. I think, after the election, she was coming in a little bit more often and that’s going to terminate and she’ll go back to her one day. She took a pay cut from $30 million to $25 million.
MSNBC is a money-losing operation. They are firing entire swaths of news presenters and readers and also staff. But here’s my point. She went on MSNBC this week and blasted them for firing Joy Reid and especially treating, she said, their shared staff poorly. And they laid them off and she was very angry.
But if you look at the size of her audience, about a million, more or less, and you look at the size of her salary, and you look at—unlike her Fox counterparts, who come in five days a week—she only comes in one day. And you look at how long she’s had this sweetheart deal.
Don’t you think you could say to this woman of the people, this socialist, Rachel, you probably made $100 or $200 million. If you really are upset about the firing of poor Joy Reid and the firing of the staff, I have a polite suggestion for you.
You make now $25 million. Let’s say that those staffers were making $100,000. Do you realize, if you just said, “I, Rachel Maddow, tonight promise that I will work my 52 days this year for free, given the ample compensation I have received, and I will fund 250 staffers at MSNBC for $100,000 a year, given what I make, $25 million.” Let’s just try that.