Beginning Saturday, NBCUniversal’s cable information channel MSNBC can be known as MS NOW, a makeover which will come as a shock to its loyal viewers.
It’s why each MSNBC host has been sending the identical message in promotional spots, on their packages and in press interviews concerning the new moniker. They are saying: We’re not going wherever and we’re not altering.
“ ‘Morning Joe’ will nonetheless be ‘Morning Joe,’ ” stated this system’s co-host Joe Scarborough in a latest Zoom dialog. “Chris Hayes will nonetheless be Chris Hayes. Rachel Maddow will nonetheless be Rachel. Lawrence O’Donnell will nonetheless be Lawrence.”
“We’re simply going to maintain doing what we do,” added Scarborough’s spouse and co-host, Mika Brzezinski.
Whereas no programming modifications are deliberate, the rebranding can be a take a look at in an age when model consciousness is troublesome to realize because the media market is very fractured. MSNBC stored its identify for 29 years even after its founding companion Microsoft gave up its stake within the community.
Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough on “Morning Joe.”
(MSNBC)
MS NOW — an acronym for “My Supply for Information, Opinion and the World” — is the results of the politically progressive community being spun off into an organization known as Versant. Mother or father firm Comcast introduced the transfer final 12 months because it now not desires the sluggish, regular decline of the cable enterprise holding again its inventory worth. Versant, which additionally consists of CNBC, USA Community, Oxygen, E! and Golf Channel, can be its personal publicly traded firm beginning in January.
The brand new possession for MSNBC led to a separation from NBC Information, which operated MSNBC since its launch in 1996. Though Versant management initially stated the identify would stay, NBCUniversal wished to keep away from having the community’s model connected to a channel it now not managed.
Versant executives will doubtless be nervous after they have a look at the Nielsen rankings the primary few weeks after the identify change. However Julie Doughty, regional government director of naming and verbal id for the worldwide model consulting agency Landor, believes the shift is minor sufficient for customers to get used to rapidly.
“I’m positive they had been involved about disrupting the model consciousness they’ve constructed and shedding the legitimacy and gravitas of the NBC identify,” Doughty stated. “This new identify intently tracks the unique. It has the identical variety of letters. MS remains to be within the entrance, which is a pleasant little bit of continuity for these prospects who already simply shorten the identify to MS.”
Doughty added, “The true take a look at will come within the content material. Will it proceed to have excessive requirements and deserve their belief as a mainstream new supply?”
The community appeared to cross its first massive take a look at as a freestanding information group with protection of the Nov. 4 off-year election that noticed a robust exhibiting for the Democrats and the passage of the congressional redistricting proposition in California.
Nielsen knowledge confirmed MSNBC completed properly forward of CNN on the evening and simply barely behind perennial cable information rankings chief Fox Information.
MSNBC turns into MS NOW on Nov. 15.
(MSNBC)
MS NOW executives say they continue to be dedicated to masking breaking information, staffing the channel’s personal Washington bureau and getting into news-gathering agreements with Sky for worldwide protection and AccuWeather. A variety of NBC Information journalists, together with White Home correspondent Vaughn Hillyard, justice and intelligence correspondent Ken Dilanian and nationwide correspondent Jacob Soboroff, moved to MS NOW with the idea there can be extra alternatives for expansive reporting.
“I received’t say their names, however among the finest reporters at NBC are way more dissatisfied with this than we’re,” Scarborough stated. “Their window simply went from having half-hour on ‘Morning Joe,’ the place influencers are, to 35 seconds on a morning present or perhaps a sound chew on ‘NBC Nightly Information.’”
The community is leaning closely into selling its lineup of personalities who within the present period of divided politics function tribal leaders for the viewers.
“One of many issues that so impressed me three years in the past once I joined MS was the depth of the connection with the followers,” MSNBC President Rebecca Kutler stated at a latest press breakfast on the community’s new headquarters in Midtown Manhattan as soon as occupied by the New York Occasions. “Eight hours per week — that could be a ton of time and that’s how a lot individuals watch us.”
The one signature MSNBC expertise who selected to go along with NBC Information is political analyst Steve Kornacki. Willie Geist will stay host of NBC’s “Sunday In the present day” along with his duties on “Morning Joe.”
MSNBC on-air personalities consider the dearth of a big company proprietor can be releasing at a time when journalism organizations and their mum or dad firms are fearing the wrath of President Trump and his threats of business-related retribution over protection he doesn’t like.
Final month at an MSNBC fan occasion in Manhattan, Maddow stirred up the gang by touting the community’s editorial independence. She known as the community a “unhazardous office” that’s “at no threat of right-wing bloggers who’re some billionaire’s buddy.”
The remark was a reference to Bari Weiss, founding father of anti-”woke” web site the Free Press, who was employed to be editor in chief of CBS Information and is a transparent favourite of mum or dad firm Paramount’s chief government, David Ellison.
Scarborough and Brzezinski stated they’ve observed how followers greet them with a bit extra depth since Trump has returned to the White Home.
“When individuals see us on the road or the airport, they hug us a bit longer and so they thank us a bit extra,” Scarborough stated. “They ask if the whole lot goes to be OK.”
Scarborough stated the brand new company setup will enable extra entrepreneurial alternatives for the on-air expertise in different platforms akin to newsletters, podcasts and reside occasions.
