TV host Rachel Maddow has revealed she thinks Fox News host Tucker Carlson is “doing great at the moment” as Roger Ailes mentored her and also opened up about being hounded by CNN – only to have her agents buck the salary offer of 10 to 15 million dollars.
In April, Maddow, who began work on the “talented” Carson’s 11 p.m. show on the liberal news network in 2005, shocked her audience by announcing that she would be hosting “The Rachel Maddow Show” weekly instead of five nights a week Week.
NBCUniversal had reportedly offered her $30 million to be on the air one night a week and the flexibility to focus on longer projects like podcasts, specials, documentaries, etc., Vanity Fair reported.
Speaking about her success in an interview with the magazine, Maddow, 49, credited her relationship with the late Fox News executive Roger Ailes and described how he mentored and helped her.
Jeff Zucker, former president of CNN, wanted to snap Maddow for the now-defunct CNN+, but Maddow and her agents “resisted” the proposed $10 million to $15 million salary
“There’s a way of respecting the game in terms of people who are good at it and people who are good at it. I mean, that was the foundation of my professional friendship with Roger Ailes,” Maddow said.
“I wanted tips from him on how to get better on TV. And he was willing to talk to me about what I’m good at and what I’m bad at to help me get better,” she continued.
Ailes was once a top executive at Fox before more than a dozen women, including host Megyn Kelly, filed sexual harassment charges against him, forcing him to resign.
Maddow said Carlson has “always been talented” and admitted the Fox News host is “doing great at the moment.”
Maddow revealed she was close to Roger Ailes, the late former Fox News executive who was ousted from the company after allegations of sexual harassment
Maddow compared her view of the Fox News kings to baseball players, saying, “Some of those rivalries are bitter rivalries, it doesn’t mean you don’t study your star pitcher’s pitching technique.”
Maddow now wants to expand her career into different mediums, but revealed that she looked through a variety of offers before settling down.
Jeff Zucker, the former president of CNN, wanted to snag Maddow for the now-defunct CNN+, but Maddow and her agents “resisted” the proposed $10 million to $15 million salary.
There were reportedly far more lucrative deals on the table: SiriusXM was willing to offer Maddow a $40 million deal following their hit Bag Man podcast.
She eventually brokered the stunning deal with NBCUniversal to have more creative freedom for her other projects.
“What I’ve asked for, and I realize it’s really hard to ask of a large business entity, is flexibility, flexibility and forgiveness,” she said.
But Maddow’s departure from her show wasn’t immediately good for NBC: In the first week of her hiatus, which began in February, ratings from MSNBC fell 26% and stayed low for weeks until she returned in April.
Numerically, Maddow is a cable news heavyweight, accounting for 11% of MSNBC’s total ratings, a higher proportion than any other solo television host.
Maddow got her start in television when she appeared on Tucker Carlson’s MSNBC show in 2005
But the stress of a late-night news program, which she sometimes only had to prepare for a few hours, seriously affected her health.
Maddow claims one reason for her resignation was the workload, which caused her back problems, including seven herniated discs, which she is treating through physical therapy.
She says she has other projects in the works now, including “two potential films and two potential TV shows,” a book, and a podcast.
Other hosts at MSNBC were pleased to hear Maddow decided to stay with the network.
Joy-Ann Reid said “we’ve all felt that kind of pit in my stomach” and admitted she’s pleased Maddow “stays on in every capacity.”
All In with Chris Hayes host Chris Hayes said: “The fact that she’s not going makes it less upsetting. If it was like, “Oh, she’s on CNN now,” it would be different.
Maddow has made several missteps in her television career, most notably her consistent attempts to sensationalize the infamous Steele dossier, which reportedly involved former President Donald Trump in a Russian collusion scheme.
The dossier proved inaccurate and many publications, including The New York Times, insisted that their journalists not appear on their show.
Maddow says that informal embargo ended and called the release “sad” after “they just quietly changed their minds without ever saying why they changed their minds.”
She claims the attempts to portray her as a conspiracy theorist in relation to the dossier are “a revisionist story designed to discourage people from reporting such stories in the future.”
She went on to say that efforts were being made to “disguise the seriousness of what Russia has done and the relationship of the Trump campaign to what Russia has done.”
Maddow also admitted that she shuns physical releases and cable news when she stays informed, sticking to digital releases.