Maddow, 48, has reached a new deal that will allow her to develop projects outside of MSNBC while working less days
Rachel Maddow will get a whopping $30 million a year to stay at MSNBC through the 2024 election, despite recent and 'heated' negotiations that landed the longtime host in a cushy weekly format, according to a Daily Beast report.
The multi-year deal will let Maddow, who is said to currently make at least $7 million a year on her current contract, develop new projects at the cable channel and with parent company NBCUniversal, according to Business Insider.
She also will transition in 2022 from her five-day-a-week show to airing just one day a week next year, sources told CNN.
The 48-year-old former Rhodes scholar, who is the highest-rated host for MSNBC, has talked about streaming and podcasting as an alternative to hosting a nightly show, the Daily Beast reports.
Maddow wants more 'freedom, time for her personal life, and for other projects'
Maddow has hosted the show since 2008.
According to insiders close to the new deal, Maddow will step away from The Rachel Maddow Show around spring 2022, and will instead host a broadcast that will run weekly for about 30 weeks per year, the Daily Beast reports.
The outlet reports that NBCUniversal, which is MSNBC's parent company, was forced to make a number of concessions to keep Maddow on board, including significantly less time on-air, which was described as a 'dealbreaker' by some.
Maddow wants more 'freedom, time for her personal life and for other projects,' sources told the website.
Insiders told the outlet that Maddow's cushy new contract was meant to give the network more time to find her eventual replacement.
She was 'seriously' considering leaving for another network or starting her own media company prior to signing the new deal.
In 2013, Maddow was making $7 million a year according to a TV Guide survey, though that figure almost-certainly has grown since.
Meanwhile, her current 9pm time slot competes directly with Fox News' Sean Hannity, the leader of the ratings scoreboard, and fellow liberal Chris Cuomo of CNN. Cuomo has taken a hit after his brother, former Gov. Andrew Cuomo's sex scandal led him to resign as governor of New York earlier this month. Maddow is now regularly beating him in the ratings.
For the month of July, she came in second in ratings after Hannity.
The trend held steady on August 19, when the conservative Hannity scored 3.3 million viewers, a full million more than Maddow's 2.28 million, according to AdWeek.
Still, she beat fellow liberal Cuomo's measly 969,000 viewers.
Former MSNBC president Phil Griffin was brought in to advise negotiations for Maddow's contract renewal, which grew 'heated.'
Maddow competes for 9pm ratings with Fox's Sean Hannity and CNN's Chris Cuomo. Hannity beat Maddow by a million viewers on August 19, with Cuomo coming in far behind
Ex-MSNBC head Phil Griffin was reportedly brought in to tame Maddow's 'heated' negotiations
She was represented by agent Ari Emanuel, the CEO of Endeavor, which also represents Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski of MSNBC's Morning Joe.
In a New York Times Magazine article from 2019, Maddow lamented how much she worked while on her way to Raoul's, a French bistro with a $54 steak entree, in the SoHo neighborhood of Manhattan.
'I'm realizing now - 10, 11 years into this - that it's fine to work long days,' she said.
'But it's not good for you to work incessant long days, five days a week, 50 weeks a year for 10 years.'
At the time, she edged out Fox News' Megyn Kelly, who made $6 million a year. CNN's Chris Cuomo made about $2.5 million a year at the time.
Maddow graduated from Stanford University in 1994 and got her PhD in politics at Oxford in 2001.
Maddow's partner of 22 years got COVID last year, saying she she thought it 'might kill her'
She has been with her partner Susan Mikula since 1999. Maddow was off the air for almost two weeks after Mikula got COVID-19 last year.
'Susan has been sick with COVID these past couple of weeks,' she told her audience while broadcasting from home on November 19, 2020.
'And, at one point, we really thought that there was a possibility that it might kill her. And that's why I've been away.'
She warned her viewers to do their best to avoid contracting the virus.
'It won't necessarily be you. It'll be the person you most care about in the world. And how can you bear that? And all you can do to stop that is move heaven and earth to not get it and to not transmit it.'
