The president of MSNBC, Rashida Jones, stepped down on Tuesday, a major change at the cable network as it waits to see if loyal liberal viewers will tune back in when President-elect Donald J. Trump takes office.

Rebecca Kutler, senior vice president for content strategy at MSNBC, succeeded Ms. Jones as interim president, the company said. Ms. Jones, who held the job for nearly four years, will stay on in an advisory role through March.

Ms. Jones exited amid ratings pressure on the cable news industry and on MSNBC in particular, whose left-leaning programming has suffered a sharp decline in viewership since Mr. Trump’s election in November. Executives have said that the post-election ratings dip is normal and that they anticipate a rebound as Mr. Trump settles into his second term.

MSNBC is also among a bundle of cable channels that its parent company, Comcast, will spin out this year into a new company. The spinoff will sever MSNBC from the news-gathering engine of NBC News, its longtime corporate cousin, and the cable network said on Tuesday that it would seek to hire a new head of news gathering and a new head of talent.

“We have a lot to do,” Mark Lazarus, the chairman of NBCUniversal Media Group, who will oversee the new company that includes MSNBC, told colleagues in a call on Tuesday announcing Ms. Jones’s departure.

Mr. Lazarus also said MSNBC would retain its name after the spinoff, and he offered a vote of confidence in Ms. Kutler, calling her “the ideal leader to guide us through this moment.”