Less than six months after taking on a new name, MS NOW is giving its lineup a fresh look.
The network said on Wednesday it was overhauling daytime, primetime and weekend programming, with the changes taking effect in June. Anchors Stephanie Ruhle, Ali Velshi, Alicia Menendez and Luke Russert will be taking on new roles, while “Morning Joe” returns to three hours daily and “All In with Chris Hayes” resumes airing on Mondays. Anchors Chris Jansing and Ana Cabrera, meanwhile, will lose their daytime news shows, and Cabrera will leave MS NOW.
“I am confident that these changes will make what is already a successful lineup even stronger in the future,” MS NOW president Rebecca Kutler wrote to staff on Wednesday. “We are fortunate to have so many exceptional journalists on our air, online, and behind the scenes.”
Here are the changes:
“Morning Joe” will now air from 6 a.m. to 9 a.m., down from the four hours it has aired since 2022. Co-host Jonathan Lemire, who has co-anchored the 9 a.m. hour, will now co-anchor the 8 a.m. hour.
Ruhle, currently the host of “The 11th Hour,” will move to a new morning show from 9 a.m. to 11 a.m., running into Cabrera’s old timeslot of 10 a.m. to noon. The network plans to announce a new 11 a.m. anchor soon. “The Weeknight” host Alicia Menendez will leave her show for a new daytime slot from noon to 2 p.m.
Filling in her place alongside Symone Sanders Townsend and Michael Steele on “The Weeknight” is Luke Russert, the host and creative director of “MS NOW Live” and a frequent fill-in anchor for the primetime program. The show will also air from 7 p.m. to 8 p.m. five days a week as “All In with Chris Hayes” moves back to Mondays. Hayes‘ show had aired four days a week since September 2023.
Ali Velshi, MS NOW’s chief data reporter, will move from his eponymous weekend show to host “The 11th Hour,” while senior national and political reporter Jacob Soboroff will now anchor on weekends from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. Both Velshi and Ruhle will continue to co-host the network’s YouTube Live show “It’s Happening with Velshi & Ruhle.”
Chris Jansing, who has anchored weekdays from noon to 2 p.m., will now return to reporting full-time with the new title of chief political reporter. Ana Cabrera, who joined the network in 2023 from CNN to anchor from 10 a.m. to noon, will leave the network.
“I am truly grateful for my time at MS NOW, for my wonderful colleagues, my amazing team that works so hard every day, and for you, the viewers who’ve put your trust in me to serve you through this most meaningful work,” Cabrera said in a video posted on X.
Staffers on shows undergoing a change will be given a survey in the coming weeks to find opportunities for new roles on shows, and the network expects most employees will find similar jobs and have more overall employees by the end of 2026.
Some of the changes were first reported by Status.
The news comes as MS NOW stakes out its own identity in its early months since cleaving from NBC News, following its parent company, Versant, splitting from Comcast over the last year.
Kutler has led the network through a February 2025 primetime shakeup and rebranding from MSNBC to MS NOW. She has also helped expand existing franchises. “Morning Joe” co-hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski have long complained about the demands of anchoring four hours a day even as they sought to grow franchise beyond linear television, including through Scarborough’s newsletter “The Tea, Spilled by Morning Joe.” The newsletter now has more than 116,000 subscribers.
Podcasts including “The Best People,” helmed by “Deadline: White House” anchor Nicolle Wallace, and “Clock It,” hosted by Sanders Townsend and “The Weekend” host Eugene Daniels, have also been top franchises for the network, while it introduced a new compilation show produced by Crooked Media this month. The network is also expected to release its direct-to-consumer streaming product this summer.
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