Rachel Maddow Returns To MSNBC, Will Transition To Anchoring One Night A Week

Rachel Maddow returned from hiatus Monday night and told viewers of The Rachel Maddow Show that starting May 2 she would transition to hosting her show just once a week. “I’m going to be here on Monday nights,” Maddow said. “Again to give myself just more time to work on some of this other stuff that I’ve got cooking for MSNBC and NBC. So Monday to Thursday nights this month, starting next month, I will be here weekly.”

When Maddow is not hosting the show, a rotating group of hosts will fill in on the 9 p.m. ET hour. MSNBC expects that Maddow will continue to feature during major news events and for special coverage, including the mid-term elections. “And again, this might change… we’ll see how things go, but that’s the plan as of now,” Maddow said. “So now you know and we will never speak of it again. Enough of that, let’s start the show, we have a lot to get to tonight.”

Maddow had announced her hiatus earlier this year, saying she wanted time to focus on developing projects for NBCUniversal, including a new podcast and creating a film adaptation of her book and podcast, The Bag Man. “I took a hiatus to give myself a little reset, and to work on some other MSNBC projects that I’ve got cooking. I’ve got to tell you, the hiatus has been fantastic, I’m really, really grateful for it,” Maddow said Monday. “I know it is an unusual thing to get in this business. I’m very grateful to MSNBC and MSNBC’s president for letting me do it.”

Maddow told viewers that while she will shift to one night a week, she doesn’t plan to take another extended hiatus away from the show, which has long been MSNBC’s top-rated prime time hour. “I said when I left before that I might eventually be taking another hiatus later on this year, things were fluid, that we’d taking it one step at a time,” she said. “That is still true-ish, but one of the things I realized while I was on hiatus, working on these other projects these past few weeks. One of the things I realized is to my surprise, is that I actually don’t really need another hiatus! This one was great, but I think I only needed the one. I do still have all these other irons in the fire, all these other things I’m working on that I want to bring to fruition, none of them are fast, all of them take a long time, and I’m still working on all of them, but I don’t think I need another big stretch of time off.”