“The Best Job in Cable News”: Meet the Power Agent Who Brokered the Deal for Rachel Maddow’s Replacement

WME’s Henry Reisch, who represents a murderers’ row of anchors, has 35 years of experience navigating the news business. He weighs in on the rise of streaming, the death of CNN+, and his client Alex Wagner’s triumphant comeback seven years after MSNBC canned her show.

NEW YORK CITY, NY – MAY 12: Jim Cramer and Henry Reisch attend WILLIAM MORRIS AGENCY Hosts a Cocktail Party Celebrating the Network Television Sales Season at The Museum of Modern Art on May 12, 2008 in New York City. (Photo by NEIL RASMUS/Patrick McMullan via Getty Images)Patrick McMullan/Getty Images

Alex Wagner’s debut this week as the new host of MSNBC’s 9 p.m. hour on Tuesdays through Fridays capped a year’s worth of speculation about who would land Rachel Maddow’s powerhouse time slot, now that she was stepping back from hosting five nights a week to pursue a slew of multiplatform creative projects. For Wagner, it more than validated her decision to return to MSNBC seven years after the network canceled her previous show. In the interim, the 44-year-old newswoman had raised her profile by cohosting Showtime’s The Circus alongside John Heilemann.

And for Henry Reisch, Wagner’s agent at William Morris Endeavor—which has so many MSNBC clients that some joke the agency runs the network—it was a major coup in a long career spent cultivating TV-news talent. Reisch, 63, cuts a lower profile than Endeavor honchos Ari Emanuel and Mark Shapiro, who were the driving forces behind Maddow’s recent megadeal. But Reisch has been at it forever—2022 marks his 35th year in the business—and he knows the rapidly transforming TV-news landscape as well as anyone, which is why I was game when Endeavor offered him up for an interview.

After ditching his first job as a lawyer back in 1987, the Long Island–born music fanatic got his start in the mailroom of what was then called the William Morris Agency, quickly climbing the ladder and assembling a roster of news luminaries that included Bob Woodruff (now of ABC News) and John Roberts (now of Fox News). Today his clients collectively anchor 45 hours a week on MSNBC (Wagner, Joe Scarborough, Mika Brzezinski, Joy Reid, Lawrence O’Donnell, Stephanie Ruhle, Tiffany Cross) and 60 hours on CNBC (Jim Cramer, Joe Kernan, Kelly Evans, and others).

Although Reisch happens to live up the road from me, he’s vacationing on Shelter Island this week, so we had to do a video call. But that didn’t put a damper on our wide-ranging conversation, condensed and edited below, which covers everything you’d hope for from a longtime industry insider: the backstory of Wagner’s deal, the decline of cable news, the future of streaming, the implosion of CNN+, and lots more.

Vanity Fair: Tell me about how Alex Wagner got Rachel Maddow’s time slot.

Henry Reisch: Alex and I were, in the late fall of 2021, trying to figure out what another interesting step for her would be. She was doing incredible stuff with The Circus, but The Circus was once a week and there was just so much happening. So I began having conversations with various networks. When she left MSNBC seven years ago, she didn’t leave under the best of circumstances, but a lot of the people at NBC were people who she knew and respected and sort of kept relationships with. She was open. And so we made an arrangement where she was going to begin contributing. Truthfully, we weren’t really thinking about the Rachel thing at that moment. It was sort of like, let’s just go do this and see what happens. This was maybe in January of 2022. She started doing a lot of fill-in anchoring, and she started filling in for Rachel. But she and I weren’t really having that conversation about where it was gonna lead. It’s almost like we didn’t wanna jinx anything or be seen as going for it. We just wanted to be in the moment. I didn’t even have conversations with MSNBC about it for a really long time. Although this was literally, like, the best job in cable news.

So when did it start to become more serious?

I would say the very end of May or early June. A month before it was announced, I began having more persistent conversations with them. Like, What are we doing here? And just so we’re clear, we would like this job! They were very careful about it, very measured. And then there came the point where I got the call, and they were like, Let’s do it.

And when you say “they,” who were you primarily dealing with?

Jessica Kurdali, their head of talent negotiations. She replaced Elena Nachmanoff, who’d been in that role for decades.

Rachel stepping back from 9 p.m. seemed to set up the deck chairs for a few of WME’s clients. Aside from Alex, obviously, it seems like with less Rachel, it made sense to double down on Joe and Mika as the network’s other tentpole and give them that extra hour in the morning. And with Morning Joe getting that fourth hour, it then seems logical that Stephanie Ruhle would move to 11 p.m. to fill Brian Williams’s slot.

The beauty of what happened here with Rachel is that it’s sort of how I’ve counseled my clients over the years. You’re doing your job, and you feel like you’re ready for that next step, and you look around and it feels like everything is status quo. Nothing’s moving. You feel locked in. The guidance I give my clients is that things change on a dime. Nothing ever stays the same. Suddenly, Rachel changes her role, and it puts in motion a whole lot of other changes.

When I talked to Rashida Jones [the president of MSNBC] a few months back for my Maddow profile, she said, “I’m not looking for someone to come in and mimic Rachel’s performance or success.… Our metric isn’t Rachel’s numbers or bust.… My focus is less about: How does this one hour perform in this one space?” Is that just spin to manage expectations? Or do you agree?

There’s been zero conversation about ratings and ratings performance. Even when I’ve tried to bring it up, NBC has shut me down. They’re like, We’re not gonna talk about that! So I think there’s absolutely truth in there. You know, obviously, as a person who is competitive and wants to succeed, Alex is going to do the best that she possibly can. But to know that you’re not going to be judged solely on that as a metric is incredibly supportive and reassuring and, probably, somewhat liberating.

We’re also in this new multiplatform realm. What does success look like in a world where, increasingly, it’s no longer just about how many people are watching you in a certain hour, but people are also watching you online or in streaming, or they’re listening to your podcast or whatever?

That’s a really good question. There’s a desire, for many people, to step out of their lane and express themselves in some other creative ways. What is success? For some people, it’s still going to be, how well are they doing on their show? Success might be achieving that prime-time slot, and that might be enough. But then there are people who have an interest in podcasting, or writing books, or other ways of telling stories. And I think for them, success is being able to find an outlet, hopefully within their own network, where both they and the network can benefit.

When all of the networks started their digital platforms, the networks suddenly had all this real estate. They didn’t really know what to do with it, but they knew they needed to plant the flag because it was part of the future, and everything was going to migrate to digital or streaming. And so the networks went to the talent, and it was like when Oprah was giving away cars—giving people shows to put on these digital platforms. That was when a lot of the networks weren’t quite sure how to even monetize digital. So the talent wanted to be in this new, cool space; the networks wanted the talent to be in there because they knew, at some point, it was going to be of value; but nobody quite knew what the timetables were going to be. Now the networks are looking at the digital space in a much more serious way. Is this gonna be a show that’s gonna be of value? Is this gonna be a show that people are gonna wanna watch? Is this gonna be a show that’s gonna help grow your brand? That shift has happened over the last several years.

How has that changed the way you negotiate talent deals now versus five years ago?

Five years ago the networks were like, You work for us, you will be on our air. The audience will be confused if they see you on another platform. And I think what we’re now seeing is that there is a benefit for the right person, for the right programming, for them to be able to seen on another platform, because there are audiences that carry back and forth. Ultimately, you want to aggregate the most amount of eyeballs that you possibly can. So I think they’re much more open to that than they were before.

More open to it or more proactive about it?

Um, I think they are more open to being proactive.

It sounds like you’re saying that, despite all the digital evangelizing, traditional television is still the priority when you’re having these conversations with network executives.

For the most part, the presidents of the cable news networks and the news divisions are hiring people principally because of their value on television. You need to be successful there. It all starts there. If you can’t have

success there, all of this other stuff is sort of meaningless. You need to create value. You need to become valuable on air, on cable, and that will help create business. Principally, all these network executives, they care about what the numbers are at the end of the day. So if [one of their hosts is] doing, you know, X amount of downloads on a podcast or whatever, that’s great. And if that ultimately translates back to more viewers, that’s even better. But ultimately, they need people to succeed on their air.

What do you think about podcasts. Should every successful host be doing one at this point?

If you are at a place or in a position where you have an opportunity and an interest, or a passion project you can produce and execute on, I think it’s great. And then there’s all the rights that flow from the podcast, you know? But a successful podcast takes time to develop. So again, you need to be successful in your day job. But if you do achieve that level of success, I think it makes a lot of sense for everyone involved.

The conventional wisdom is that the cable news networks, particularly MSNBC and CNN, really just have to manage the decline of their traditional businesses for the next however many years until streaming fully takes over. What’s your view on that?

There is obviously a declining linear-cable audience. They do have to manage that. I think what’ll be interesting is, the next, you know, 14, 16, 18 months, we’re going into these probably incredible midterms and going into a general election. So there’s no doubt that there’s a decline in audience, but I think it still might be a tiny bit premature to start planning for the funeral, because I think there’s gonna be a lot of interest and a lot of drama. Look, let’s face it, sports is probably the best nonfiction television, but after sports, I think news and politics is right there. Let’s see where we are after this next election. I’m sure the viewership will be smaller, but it might not be appreciably smaller.

Do you think the recent stumbles in streaming growth suggest anything for the future of cable news in streaming?

When CNN+ was launching, it was very exciting for a lot of people because it was going to be a streaming product that actually was attached to a major news entity. Everyone was like, Streaming is the future of TV news. And that, unfortunately, didn’t work. But the thing is, I don’t think you’re gonna see streaming daily news on Netflix. Ultimately, Peacock’s gonna figure this out. ABC’s gonna figure this out with Hulu or whatever. They all need to figure this out as a business model, because everyone wants a direct connection to the consumer. In the meantime, the carriage fees that the cable networks are getting are still very substantial.

The plan for CNN+—and I reported this—was to put the main CNN live feed on the service within another couple of years. That would’ve been a pretty quick timeline. How much longer do you think cable news will exist primarily in the form in which it was created?

Because news and cable news is such a part of my DNA, it almost feels like I don’t want to predict that, you know? I still get the print edition of The New York Times. I’m still sort of holding on to what I grew up with. So I’m not sure when exactly that is going to happen, but hopefully when it does happen, all of the great voices, and the important way of telling stories, will be treated as substantially and effectively on streaming as on cable.

Can we talk about CNN in particular? I’m sure you’ve been closely watching the changes that Chris Licht and David Zaslav are starting to set in motion.

I actually think Chris and David have really good intentions. They see CNN as this extraordinary news organization, and I think it’s very reassuring to all the people who work at CNN. I think they just have to figure out how to get people refocused on the brand. But again, I do think that once we get through this summer period and we hit the midterms, people are gonna come back. And you know what? At MSNBC, they want CNN to be competitive, and CNN wants MSNBC to be competitive. They push each other to be better and smarter and faster. Competition is great.

What about broadcast? Where do you see things headed for the morning and evening shows?

I think that at some point, the evening broadcasts are going to change. I don’t know what that change is going to be, but if you take a look at the evening broadcasts, they’re still really, really good. But a lot of people just aren’t watching broadcast television at 6:30, and people aren’t DVR-ing it. I don’t know what the fix is. There’s a declining audience, but it’s not because of the quality of the product. It’s just that the audience is getting older. You have to go where the audience is.

Let’s finish with a quick lightning round, starting with: What’s the biggest deal you’ve done in all your years in the business?

One of the most important deals I ever made, and I’m gonna leave the client’s name out, but I had a client who was a contributor at one of the cable news networks, and right before the holidays, their contract expired and they weren’t renewed. And I spent two weeks trying to get this person another contributor deal somewhere because, number one, they really needed the money—it was a significant proportion of their income—and number two, what they had to say was important. I was with my family on Christmas Eve, at a Chinese restaurant having the traditional Jewish Christmas Eve dinner, and I got a call from a network telling me that they were offering this person a job. It was maybe a six-figure job at most, but it was so important to me that I found something for this person. Even though it was, in the scheme of things, insignificant in terms of the commission or anything like that, it meant so much to me because of who this person was and what it meant to them.

One client you always wanted to work with but never got to?

I would’ve loved to have worked with the Edward R. Murrows—the early, early guys of broadcast news. You know, the guys who were reporting during the Second World War in London during the bombings. They were all radio guys before they were television people, and I would’ve loved to have worked with them because it was just an extraordinary time in history, and also a major change in our broadcast world. Also, my other person would be Prince.

You can only read, watch, or listen to one news outlet. Which would it be?

You’re gonna get me in trouble. Pass.

Same idea, but pick one: Netflix, HBO Max, Hulu, Apple TV+, or Disney+?

You know what, it’s gonna be Netflix.

You’ve been at this for 35 years. When will it be time to retire?

When it no longer matters to me.