Update 2:45 p.m. PT:
TheWrap spoke with Chris Hayes, newly named weekend MSNBC host, on Monday about his new show, TV mentor Rachel Maddow and the impossibility of covering the debt crisis. The Washington editor of The Nation talked diversity and the transition from print to TV formats.
Cable news is very white, male and straight," Hayes told TheWrap. "I feel extremely strongly given the fact that I can't do anything about my own white male straightness that I have the duty to double down in efforts to make sure what we present is reflective of the diversity of the country at large in a way that cable news doesn't always do a good job of."
He praised Maddow, who gave him his first guest-hosting gig, saying, "I absolutely would not be doing this if it weren't for her."
As someone who has predominantly been a print journalist, how does it feel to be a TV host now?
I’m super stoked. It's like planting a flag in virgin soil. I don’t think there is anything else on cable news that looks like this. Obviously Alex Witt has being doing weekends for a while but it’s the first post-Lean Forward weekend programming.
So in what way is it unique?
The way I’ve been describing it to people in a Tim Robbins in “The Player” shorthand is if you took the format and aesthetic sensibility of “Morning Joe” and the substantive perspective and sensibility of “The [Rachel] Maddow Show” and fused them. It will less prompter driven and more multi-vocal with chances for the explanatory journalism that I like to do.
You say multi-vocal, do you already have a list of guests in mind?
I don’t want to do that because I don’t want to get out ahead of myself. But I will say I want a very diverse, young and ideologically idiosyncratic group.
Diverse in what way?
Race, gender and sexual orientation. Cable news is very white, male and straight. I feel extremely strongly given the fact that I can't do anything about my own white male straightness that I have the duty to double down in efforts to make sure what we present is reflective of the diversity of the country at large in a way that cable news doesn't always do a good job of.
You have mentioned Rachel Maddow a few times. She is part of MSNBC's recent success in prime time, but the network has not found the same audience on the weekend. How do you change that?
Building an audience might take a little while just because of the fact that we haven't had something like this on the network. But there are viewers there to be had. I know just from my Twitter stream today that there are a lot of MSNBC viewers excited about it.
So is Maddow your model as an anchor?
I admire what Rachel has done and I absolutely would not be doing this if it weren't for her.
