Comcast’s cable news channel MSNBC has hired Scott Matthews to serve as its Senior Vice President of Newsgathering, and the channel has grander ambitions to rebuild its editorial operations with the future hiring of more than 100 journalists.

“Scott’s new role reflects our plans to build out MSNBC’s domestic, Washington and international newsgathering operations and expand our presence in the field,” Rebecca Kutler, the President of MSNBC, said in a memo to employees on Thursday. He starts at the network on March 17.

Matthews comes to MSNBC from WABC-TV (Channel 7), the ABC-owned station in New York City that regularly tops the local news ratings. But he is no stranger to NBC and Comcast: From 2011 to 2019, he served as the Vice President of News Specials at Comcast’s financial news channel CNBC, where he led breaking news and special event initiatives for the cable news outlet and CNBC’s digital platforms. He has also worked in other newsrooms during his lengthy career, including CNN, WTXF (Channel 29, Fox) in Philadelphia, WNYW (Channel 5, Fox) in New York City, WFXT (Channel 25, Fox) in Boston and WWOR-TV (Channel 9) in Secaucus, New Jersey.

At MSNBC, Matthews will be tasked with rebuilding MSNBC almost from the ground up, at a time when the network is set to undergo a major business-related transformation of its own. Later this year, MSNBC and other Comcast-owned cable channels will be spun off from the cable giant and exist as a standalone entity, one that will also see MSNBC move out of its headquarters at 30 Rockefeller Center into a new production facility somewhere else in Manhattan — the precise location is still to be determined.

Those efforts will be no small task, and MSNBC will be looking to hire more than 100 journalists ranging from on-air talent, correspondents, producers and other workers to help effectuate Kutler and Matthews’ visions of how MSNBC should operate in the years to come.

Part of that will involve building out MSNBC’s multi-platform approach, so the network is not as dependent on cable news ratings and associated advertising and distribution dollars — all of which have waned in recent years as the rate of cable and satellite subscription churn accelerates. The drop in pay TV customers has caused lower ratings for all cable news channels, but MSNBC and CNN have suffered the greatest, in part because their audiences are switching over to upstart cable news operations like NewsNation.

Last year, the Fox News Channel dominated the cable news ratings in prime-time, averaging nearly 2.4 million viewers and growing its audience by 30 percent compared to 2023, according to Nielsen ratings. By comparison, MSNBC averaged around 1.2 million viewers, up 1 percent, while CNN had 685,000 viewers, an increase of 18 percent.

Across the three cornerstone cable news channels, MSNBC fared the worst when it came to prime-time viewership among adults between the ages of 25 and 54 years old (A25-54), the group that cable news advertisers target with their campaigns. Fox News had an average prime-time audience of 294,000 A25-54 viewers, while CNN had 147,000 A25-54 viewers. MSNBC was third with 133,000 A25-54 prime-time viewers.

While Fox increased its audience in the weeks after the November presidential election, CNN and MSNBC saw significant viewership declines during the day and in prime-time. Both CNN and MSNBC have laid off workers over the past few months, largely to address broader restructuring efforts triggered by their parent companies.

At least at MSNBC, things appear to be turning around. After dropping a number of on-air hosts and behind-the-scenes workers, the network recently announced it was hiring Eugene Daniels away from Politico to serve as MSNBC’s Senior Washington Correspondent; he will also host a new roundtable program called “The Weekend” with Jonathan Capehart. On Tuesday, MSNBC announced Jackie Alemany will also join as  co-host of The Weekend and serve as a Washington-area correspondent; she joins the network from the Washington Post.