• by Wayne Friedman , March 3, 2020

After a series of recent on-air gaffes, long time host of MSNBC's Hardball, Chris Matthews, is retiring.

Matthews made the announcement on-air on Monday -- which he said would be his last show after a 20-year run.

Matthews faced criticism for comparing Bernie Sanders’ primary win in Nevada to the Nazis taking over France. GQ journalist Laura Bassett revealed recently that before appearing on a 2017 Hardball episode, Matthews made inappropriate comments about her appearance before she went on the show.

Long before these events, reports suggested that MSNBC was already working with Matthews on his retirement, which would have taken place after the Presidential election.

During his on-air announcement, Matthews said: “The younger generations out there are ready to take the reins. We see them in politics and in the media fighting for their causes. We are talking here about better standards than we grew up with.”

Then Matthews offered up an apology -- which followed up an apology about Sanders some days ago, also on-air.

“Compliments on a woman's appearance that some men, including me, might have once incorrectly thought was okay -- they are never okay. Not then and certainly not today. And for making such comments in the past, I’m sorry.”

Matthews has been a key piece of MSNBC’s resurgence in recent years, which have seen the NBCUniversal cable news networks rocket up to major competitive prime-time and daytime ratings.

In 2019, MSNBC rose to second place among all U.S. cable networks -- averaging 1.8 million prime-time viewers, according to Nielsen live-program plus seven days of time-shifted viewing.

In February, “Hardball” at 7 p.m. averaged 1.5 million Nielsen-measured viewers, good for 21st place among all cable TV news shows for the month.