Alex Wagner to Succeed Rachel Maddow at MSNBC

 Alex Wagner is the 9pm host for MSNBC.

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Business News: On April 6, 2013, in St. Louis, Missouri, Alex Wagner, a host for MSNBC, led a panel discussion on human trafficking at the Clinton Global Initiative University at Washington University.

New York (CNN Business): MSNBC said Monday that Alex Wagner will take over the important 9pm time slot four days a week.

Rashida Jones, the president of MSNBC, chose to promote Wagner. This may be the most important programming choice Jones has made since she took over as head of the cable news channel last year.

Rachel Maddow's show used to be on at 9pm every night, but she said earlier this year that she would only host it once a week, on Mondays. This left a big hole in MSNBC's prime time schedule.

In the last few months, the rest of the week has been filled by a different host each time.

Wagner will now take his place.

Jones gave interviews to Variety and The New York Times, which is how MSNBC found out about it.

"She gives the big picture. She talks about some of the background as she talks, "Jones said it to Variety. "She is aware of politics. She knows everything, from culture to foreign policy."

Jones told The Times in a separate interview, "This is not a show where our hair is on fire and we're yelling at each other and making these manufactured moments of tension." "I really want people to learn more about what's going on in the world because of this show."

"OUR CRITERIA ISN'T RACHEL'S NUMBERS OR BUST": CAN ALEX WAGNER KEEP THE MADDOW FAITHFUL TUNED IN?

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Wagner, who is 44 years old, is represented by WME, just like Maddow and a number of other MSNBC hosts. Henry Reisch is her agent there. Maddow mostly works with Mark Shapiro. She started working at MSNBC in 2010 as a political analyst and daily host, but her show, Now With Alex Wagner, was cancelled in 2015 as part of a larger network change. Later, in 2018, she joined Showtime's The Circus, where she went on the road and talked politics with John Heilemann and the rest of the cast. Someone who knows her told me, "She did a great job at Showtime." "I think it was a time when she had a chance to spread her wings a bit." She was also a special correspondent for CBS News and a cohost of CBS This Morning: Saturday. In the beginning of her career, she worked at The Atlantic and HuffPost for a while. She went back to MSNBC in February of this year as a senior analyst and fill-in anchor. "She's definitely progressive," said another expert, "but she has a different voice, which may attract a different crowd."

About those people: When Maddow isn't on at 9 p.m., the ratings tend to go down, down, and down. When she took over the time slot 14 years ago, she was an instant hit. She beat Larry King and quickly established herself as the natural successor to then-superstar Keith Olbermann, who was fired a few years later. Wagner has a big job ahead of her, but let's get back to Jones: When we talked last month, she said, "I think it's an unrealistic expectation," bringing up how TV is changing, the future of streaming on multiple platforms, and other things. "The world has changed a lot since Rachel joined the cable news world. Less important to me is "How does this one hour work in this one place?" For her part, Maddow seems very happy with the choice of new host. "Woooooot!" she wrote on Twitter. "What great news! Let's get started!"