Rachel Maddow has announced that she will be stepping back from the MSNBC show, and will host only Monday nights starting in May

MSNBC star Rachel Maddow She came back from her long hiatus to announce that she will be officially stepping back from being on the air.

After numerous reports that she was looking to cut back on hosting “The Rachel Maddow Show” every night of the week, Maddow confirmed this on Monday night, telling viewers that she will be hosting Monday through Thursday for the remainder of April, but will then host Monday nights only starting in May.

MSNBC’s “The RACHEL MADDOW” continues to grapple with the host’s initial agony.

Having previously raised the possibility of more hiatus, Madhu assured her viewers that she wouldn’t need one, explaining that turning her nightly show into a weekly one would give her time to work on other projects but that she would appear to get news of “big” events and election coverage.

However, Madhu quipped that “this could change” and “we’ll see how it goes”, but suggested that this would be the plan going forward.

Maddow left broadcasts on MSNBC in February to pursue various projects including a podcast and even film collaborations with Ben Stiller and Lorne Michaels, only returning to the network for its coverage of President Biden’s State of the Union address.

The vacant time slot during Maddow’s hiatus was largely held by MSNBC’s Ali Felshi between the rotations of the other hosts.

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A source familiar with the situation told Fox News that her allotted time for the rest of the week will be hosted by a group of rotating hosts and that there are no immediate plans to choose a permanent host.

Fox News has reached out to MSNBC for comment.

MSNBC hosts Rachel Maddow. (Photo: Nathan Congleton/NBCU Photo Bank/NBCUniversal via Getty Images via Getty Images)

“The Rachel Maddow Show” was the most-watched show on MSNBC in 2021, with an average of 2.6 million viewers at 9 p.m. ET, trailing Fox News’ Hannity at 2.9 million in the same time period but by a large margin of its peers. At prime time, Lawrence OR. Donnell and Chris Hayes, who averaged 1.8 million and 1.6 million viewers, respectively.

Maddow is the only MSNBC host to consistently exceed the average performance benchmark of 2 million viewers and rank among the top ten most-watched cable news programmes, the other nine being Fox News.

However, Maddow’s show of the same name suffered greatly during its hiatus.

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The week of April 4-8 is running as the lowest-rated week for “The Rachel Maddow Show” since 2016, averaging just 1.3 million viewers during Thursday’s episode. The last time the average audience for “Maddow” was lower was in the week of December 26, 2016.

During the host’s long absence, MSNBC has continued to describe the 9 p.m. hour as “The Rachel Maddow Show.” It has lost an astonishing 40% of its viewers compared to last week that Maddow actually hosted. The show averaged 1.6 million viewers, compared to 3.1 million viewers of Fox News’ Hannity, which airs in the same time slot at 9 p.m. EST.

Brian Flood of Fox News contributed to this report.