MSNBC completes talent decisions for ‘The Weekend: Primetime’ with Antonia Hylton, Elise Jordan

MSNBC has rounded out its panel for its new primetime edition of “The Weekend” with a bit of spin — the trio has become a quartet.

Officially titled “The Weekend: Primetime,” MSNBC will launch the new Saturday-Sunday evening show in May 2025 with Antonia Hylton and Elise Jordan joining the table alongside previously announced hosts Ayman Mohyeldin and Catherine Rampell.

The primetime edition of the show is based on the morning version of the show, which is also being relaunched after current hosts Symone Sanders Townsend, Michael Steele and Alicia Menendez shift to weekdays. MSNBC has already announced that Jonathan Capehart, Eugene Daniels and Jackie Alemany will host the morning edition.

Both Jordan and Hylton already have ties to MSNBC — Jordan is a political analyst and Hylton is a correspondent. 

MSNBC announces revised lineup

After MSNBC announced a significant programming lineup change that included the current “Weekend” hosts moving to the 7 p.m. eastern weekday timeslot and the new primetime version, it indicated it would begin a search to fill out the panels for both the morning and evening editions.

Capehart and Mohyeldin, who had been hosting their own weekend shows on the network, were named to the posts at the same the changes were first announced.

While “The Weekend” currently uses a three-person panel format, switching to four for one edition isn’t altogether surprising. 

Although no official word on what drove talent decisions has been put forward, there are a variety of reasons the panel could have gained a fourth member, including the fact that MSNBC did not necessarily indicate that expanding one or both panels was not an option.

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Perhaps the most likely scenarios are that both Hylton and Jordan had “try-outs” with the other panel members and MSNBC execs liked how well they both performed that they opted to take both of them. Similarly, the two could have added a dynamic that was somehow missing when only one of them was matched up against Mohyeldin and Rampell.

Like any type of programming, cable news shows with panels have seen mixed success — some, like FNC’s “The Five,” have been very successful, while MSNBC’s earlier attempt at “The Cycle” didn’t work out.

Of course, the success of a panel show depends largely on who’s on said panel — and how well they interact with each other, which can be a tricky thing to figure out even with the benefit of shooting test shows. 

Changes to panels in the months after launch are also not uncommon, decisions that are often driven by viewer reaction and performance of each panel member.

It’s also worth noting that MSNBC is taking a gamble on moving the weekend hosts to a Monday through Friday spot. There’s obviously no guarantee that taking three weekend morning show hosts is going to resonate the same during a 7 p.m. weekday slot, though, again, at least some of that will be determined by the panel members’ interactions with each other, though in the case of the Steele-Townsend-Menedez trio, the network has the benefit of having about a year’s worth of shows in the can.