The Hollywood Reporter reports that it is now official, MSNBC has hired Alec Baldwin to host a weekly talk show on its cable news channel. The show will called “Up Late with Alec Baldwin” and starting in October it will air for an hour every Friday night at 10pm.
This is a curious move for a news outlet that has recently insisted that its entertainment and news divisions are separated by a firewall. Baldwin is an actor whose only real brush with journalism has come in the form of repeated verbal and physical attacks, including a homophobic rant against a Daily News editor last year, and another homophobic rant and threats of violence against a gay reporter earlier this year.
Follow John Nolte on Twitter @NolteNC