MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” team of Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski is looking to expand their empire — perhaps by expanding their show onto NBC’s once-golden Sunday morning lineup, The Post has learned.
While no such deal is done, persons close to the show have been telling friends that the team is taking over “Weekend Today” ’s Sunday show, sources said.
The talks are very much fluid and there is no guarantee of any expansion, other sources said.
An NBC spokeswoman said, “No comment.”
Just two years ago, the political TV duo were ready to bolt NBC for CBS News before NBCUniversal boss Steve Burke stepped in to keep them in the fold.
The talks, several sources said, dovetail with the arrival last summer of Deborah Turness as the NBC News chief.
“They made a big play for ‘Sunday Today’ and ‘Meet The Press,’ but Turness is not inclined to dump [‘MTP’ host] David Gregory,” one source noted.
Giving them “Sunday Today” could be seen as a compromise — or an interim step, the source added.
The “Morning Joe” hosts are represented by William Morris Endeavor boss Ari Emanuel.
In addition to expanding the “Morning Joe” empire, there have also been tentative discussions about a syndicated show, one source close to the hosts said.
“Weekend Today” on Sunday attracted an average 3.1 million viewers in the third quarter — that’s up 8.4 percent from the year-earlier period but down 6.3 percent from the second quarter and 9.6 percent from the first three months of the year.
Its audience in the key 25-to-54 year-old demographic — about 1 million in the third quarter — had similar swings.
“Morning Joe” drew 398,000 total viewers and 133,000 in the demographic over the same period, up 13 percent and 7 percent, respectively, compared to the second quarter.
If Scarborough and Brzezinski — who wrote a book called “Knowing Your Value” — are successful in expanding to the pre-“Meet the Press” time slot, they could compete for guests with Gregory.
Of course, the addition of “Morning Joe” could boost “Meet the Press” if NBC is able to rebuild a longer block of political programming.
“Meet the Press” has been under pressure from “Face the Nation” on CBS and “This Week” on ABC, with CBS touting Bob Schieffer’s show as No. 1 on Sunday.
In New York, “Meet the Press,” airs at 10.30 a.m. but in most of the country it occupies the 9 a.m. to 10 a.m. slot.
In the 25-to-54 year-old age group, “Meet the Press” drew an audience of 696,000 in the most recent quarter, according to Nielsen numbers provided by Horizon Media’s Brad Adgate.
That’s down from an average of 896,000 in the 12-month period that ended September 2012 and from an average of 1 million the previous year.
Additional reporting by Emily Smith