Will Ronna McDaniel land another TV gig? There is already interest in the former Republican National Committee chair brewing from a couple of cable news outlets.
Sources at both Newsmax and NewsNation tell The Hollywood Reporter that they would be interested in pursuing a deal with McDaniel, should she ultimately finalize a separation agreement with NBC News.
McDaniel has been seeking a lawyer to negotiate an exit from NBC, which announced her hire as an NBC News contributor last Friday and reversed course just a few days later after facing backlash from MSNBC stars like Rachel Maddow and the Morning Joe team, not to mention an on-air rebuke from Chuck Todd on Meet the Press just minutes after McDaniel’s debut appearance.
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McDaniel is likely to receive a hefty payout from NBC, given her two-year, $300,000 per year deal, though sometimes negotiations result in a lower payout in exchange for a shorter noncompete. She may need to find someone else to negotiate a new deal, however, with CAA dropping McDaniel as a client.
If she does seek another deal, she may find that the upstart cable news channels are friendlier landing pads than the large broadcast networks CBS and ABC, which may want to avoid the backlash that NBC has endured over the past week.
CNN CEO Mark Thompson previously told his channel’s media reporter Oliver Darcy that he would not be interested in hiring McDaniel.
Meanwhile, a Fox News spokesperson said, “We routinely have conversations with people of interest of all different professional and political backgrounds for on-air contributor roles.”
Neither Newsmax nor NewsNation has the scale or ratings of their legacy competition, but both have seen their ratings increase substantially this year and are frequently on the lookout for headline-grabbing hires.
Newsmax is a conservative cable news channel led by CEO Chris Ruddy, with shows hosted by former Fox News hosts Greta Van Susteren and Eric Bolling, as well as Greg Kelly and Rob Schmitt.
NewsNation, owned by the local TV station giant Nexstar and led by president of news Michael Corn, has become a landing pad for former network and cable stars, with TV news veterans like Dan Abrams, Chris Cuomo, Elizabeth Vargas and Ashleigh Banfield all hosting programs. The channel also signed former Fox News correspondent Geraldo Rivera earlier this year.
The channel’s slogan is “News for all America,” trying to position itself as somewhere in between the other cable news channels in the market ideologically.
