MSNBC to move Stephanie Ruhle to 11 p.m.

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MSNBC will move morning anchor and NBC business correspondent Stephanie Ruhle to its 11 p.m. eastern timeslot, Axios originally reported and the network later confirmed.

The network will then expand “Morning Joe” to 9 to 10 a.m. eastern to fill the spot Ruhle would vacate to move to nights.

That means “Morning Joe” will run four hours, from 6 to 10 a.m., as opposed to its current three.

Currently MSNBC airs “Stephanie Ruhle Reports,” a block of rolling news coverage, at 9 a.m.

A start date for the changes was not announced.

The 11 p.m. hour was vacated when Brian Williams, a longtime NBC News anchor and correspondent, opted to leave the network in late 2021.

Since then, the show has continued with “The 11th Hour” name sans Williams’ name with a variety of hosts filling in.

“Stephanie Ruhle Reports” is currently one of the network’s highest rated dayside hours, with most recent data showing about 657,000 viewers, well behind Fox’s “America’s Newsroom” at 1.729 million but slightly in front of “CNN Newsroom” with 528,000.

“The 11th Hour,” meanwhile, has dipped significant since Williams left. At the end of 2020 it was pulling in over a million viewers; that’s dipped to just under 790,000 in the most recent ratings, though news ratings are down in general after hitting all time highs due to the coronavirus coverage.

Perhaps most noteworthy is that “11th Hour” has a strong lead in with “The Last Word” at 1.4 million.

The 11 p.m. hour goes up against Fox’s late night style show “Gutfield!” which dominates with over 2 million viewers, but outperforms CNN by 350,000 or so.

NBC News and MSNBC did not respond to requests for comment about a potential move to evenings for Ruhle.

It is also not immediately clear if the show would keep “The 11th Hour” name or be rebranded.

“Morning Joe” was created in 2007 after MSNBC canceled its simulcast of Don Imus’ radio show. At the time, Joe Scarborough was anchoring “Scarborough Country” in the afternoons but pitched network bosses on a morning show.

Several other MSNBC personalities appear regularly on the show and Mika Brzezinski, who started as the show’s newsreader, is now the co-anchor. She and Scarborough reportedly carried on a behind the scenes romance while co-hosting the show and married in 2018.

Assuming MSNBC moves forward with this plan, it still has another big scheduling puzzle to figure out when Rachel Maddow ends daily production of “The Rachel Maddow Show” at 9 p.m., one of the most competitive hours in cable news.

“Maddow” is typically the highest rated show on MSNBC with over 2 million regular viewers. This also makes it one of the closest to Fox’s top rated schedule. “Hannity” typically gets closer to 3 million viewers.

Ruhle, meanwhile, has seen her star rise at NBC. She’s officially a senior business correspondent for NBC News and appears regularly on shows such as “Today” and “NBC Nightly News” for consumer and financial news of the day.

Even with moving to evenings, it’s likely should continue to make appearances on these programs as well as contribute to other programming across the two networks.