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Greta Van Susteren Gets The Boot At MSNBC As Ari Melber To Replace Her At 6 PM

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Greta Van Susteren’s time at MSNBC came to an end on Thursday as it is being reported that she is being replaced at 6 PM by Ari Melber.

Vanity Fair reported, “But a few days shy of her six-month mark on air, Van Susteren’s business is finished on MSNBC, according to people familiar with the situation. The anchor, whose show struggled to gain traction even as the rest of her colleagues were buoyed by anti-Trump hysteria, has parted ways with the network. She will not appear on the show on Thursday evening. She will be permanently replaced by Ari Melber, the network’s chief legal correspondent and host of The Point on weekends. He will continue to appear across NBC and MSNBC shows as he takes over the 6 p.m. slot next month. (MSNBC and NBC News declined to comment. Reached by phone Thursday afternoon, Van Susteren had no comment.)”

The problem wasn’t anything personal. The issue was quite simply that her show didn’t catch on with MSNBC viewers. The times that I watched her program, I came away thinking that Van Susteren’s tone and style didn’t mesh well with the direction that MSNBC’s viewers were moving in. The network is surging and more and more regularly dominating Fox News in the ratings on the basis of coverage of Trump scandals.

Ari Melber has been exceptional as a fill-in host and as host of his own weekend program. He will do well at 6 PM, as the Greta Van Susteren experiment looks like a wrong guess by MSNBC management of what the Trump era political climate would look like. Van Susteren was a square peg in a round hole, and Ari Melber will be a better fit in MSNBC’s weeknight lineup.

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Jason Easley

Jason is the managing editor. He is also a White House Press Pool and a Congressional correspondent for PoliticusUSA. Jason has a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science. His graduate work focused on public policy, with a specialization in social reform movements.

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Member of the Society of Professional Journalists and The American Political Science Association

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