Dylan Ratigan Announces He's Out as Host at MSNBC

The late afternoon lineup of MSNBC is losing one of its liberal voices. Dylan Ratigan has announced he is leaving network after three years.

“Think of it like ending a Broadway play,” Ratigan told the New York Times.

With Ratigan's departure, ardent anti-conservative Martin Bashir will be moving from 3 pm ET to Ratigan's spot of 4 pm ET. The changes will take effect June 25 with Ratigan's last day being June 22.

According to Ratigan, he's leaving to expand on the elements he has been preaching on his show, and includes plans to "meet with tons of people, learn from tons of people, and then figure out a way to take the narrative I’ve been talking about, and show the most effective ways to resolve it.”

He explained more in a blog post on the Huffington Post:

I left a 15 year career in financial journalism amid the crisis of 2008. I did this to join the traditional cable news ranks with a clear goal of revealing the ruthless truth about our biggest problems and telling the inspiring stories of those who are resolving them despite all odds.

After three years at MSNBC, two national roadshows and one book, (and a couple of rants) my objections to our current political process and our dominance-at-all-costs culture that gives us all less, while we pay more is well documented.

According to the Times, this has been months in the making:

Mr. Ratigan’s current contract expires this month. He was unusually highly paid by MSNBC daytime anchor standards — about $1 million a year, according to several staff members, who insisted on anonymity because they were not authorized to speak on the matter. Mr. Ratigan said there was no negotiation about a new contract because he told the company three months ago that he was planning to leave. He released his television agent in January, he added.

“Once you’ve said your piece, you can either keep saying it — and then it’s a job, good job, pays well, everybody knows your name, it’s great — or you can decide what you’re going to do about it,” Ratigan said. “And the answer is, I don’t know. But I do know, in order to figure it out, I have to dismount.”