MSNBC to Change Name to MS NOW
MSNBC to Change Name to MS NOW
The News
Lefty cable channel MSNBC is being forced to take on a new name after its spinoff – as the NBC brand strips the network of its iconic peacock symbol.
Mark Lazarus, who will lead Versant, the new company consisting of MSNBC and other cable assets, announced that the channel will be renamed to MS NOW — short for My Source News Opinion World.
Its logo will change from NBC’s trademark rainbow peacock to a blue background with a red-and-white striped flag.
That’s a sharp turnaround from his assurances earlier this year that the cable news channel would be able to hold onto its name.
The CNBC business news channel, meanwhile, will keep its “Consumer News and Business Channel” name, though it will be forced to launch a new logo without the peacock.
Other cable assets like Golf Channel, GolfNow and SportsEngine will also be rebranded.
Timeline
Comcast announced in November its plans for a $7 billion spinoff of its cable assets into a separate publicly-traded company by the end of 2025.
Reactions
“I know there was some discussion with the MSNBC name, so you can take that off of your worry list on things,” Lazarus told staffers during a meeting in January.
“During this time of transition, it has become clear that our brands need separation, and NBCUniversal decided to retain ‘NBC’ and the peacock,” MSNBC President Rebbeca Kutler told staffers in a memo Monday morning.
Kutler, who replaced Rashida Jones earlier this year, tried to assuage staffers, telling them that the rebrand “allows us to set our own course and assert our independence.”
“The future of our success is not tied to keeping ‘NBC’ as part of our identity.”
What's Next
As part of the rebrand, there will be a massive marketing campaign “unlike anything we have done in recent memory,” Kutler added.
The network will be referred to as MSNBC over the next few months as it wraps up this process.
More
MSNBC has been working to build out its own newsroom operations separate from NBCUniversal over the past eight months.
It has hired dozens of journalists from CNN, Bloomberg, Politico, The Washington Post and several other news organizations.
MSNBC, which launched in 1996, has remained in the No. 2 cable news network slot, stubbornly behind Fox News over the past few years.
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