Maddow on rising popularity: ‘I’m assuming I’m like a fad diet’

MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow says her recent ratings hike is like a “fad diet,” adding that viewers have an “appetite” for her brand of context-heavy newscasts. 

“I do this one thing: I do long, detailed, context-driven narratives about things that are going on in the news,” she told Glamour in an interview. “I did that before, and I’ll be doing it when this time period is over. People have an appetite for that now. I’m assuming that I’m like a fad diet.”

Asked which diet she would compare her show to, Maddow replied that it would be “something that involves no vegetables.”

{mosads}Maddow’s prime-time cable news show has seen a spike in its ratings since President Trump took office in January, helping MSNBC challenge Fox News, which has long held the No. 1 cable news slot.

In July, MSNBC beat out Fox News and CNN for the top spot in the coveted 25- to 54-year-old demographic.

But Maddow also acknowledged the potentially precarious nature of her program, saying that “every night there’s a chance to fail.”

“The ratings failure. The content failure, if you get something wrong — or, God forbid, you accidentally burn a source,” she said. “Or drop an f-bomb.”