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As the cable news channel MSNBC splits up with NBC News, it is also dropping the NBC from its name.
Later this year, the channel will become MS NOW, which stands for My Source for News, Opinion, and the World.
“This new branding underscores our mission: to serve as a destination for breaking news and best-in-class opinion journalism, all rooted in accurate and reported facts,” MSNBC president Rebecca Kutler said in an internal memo.
MSNBC was originally launched in 1996 as a partnership between Microsoft (The MS part) and NBC. When Microsoft sold its stake in the venture, the name stayed the same.
But MSNBC is going through a much bigger change this year as corporate parent Comcast spins off most of its cable channels into a new company called Versant. The split is set to take effect later this year.
Versant CEO Mark Lazarus said Monday that Comcast’s NBCUniversal, which is keeping the NBC broadcast network and other assets, has decided to keep the iconic peacock symbol for its own purposes.
“This means we will redesign our logos where the peacock has been incorporated into our brands,” he wrote a memo, like at the Golf Channel and CNBC.
He said the business news channel CNBC will keep its moniker, noting that it was originally the Consumer News and Business Channel. (The brand also has multiple licensing deals outside the US that utilize the name.)
Renaming MSNBC will go a long way toward resolving the brand confusion that has roiled MSNBC and NBC News for decades.
The cable channel has long relied on NBC News correspondents and infrastructure for news coverage. But as the channel’s top-rated shows moved to the left in the Bush and Obama years, and NBC News stayed in the proverbial middle, the cross-pollination caused internal headaches and some suggestions about a name change.
During the Trump years, the differences between the two entities have been even more pronounced; MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow recently said “we have a consolidating dictatorship in our country,” which is certainly not how NBC News anchors describe the Trump administration.
Comcast’s cable channel spinoff has been seen by both sides as an opportunity to clarify the two different news brands.
MSNBC has been on a hiring spree of late, out of necessity, scooping up dozens of journalists for a new newsroom that will compete with NBC News, along with countless other outlets.
When the spinoff was first announced last winter, executives signaled that MSNBC would be keeping its name. But “during this time of transition, NBCUniversal decided that our brand requires a new, separate identity,” Kutler wrote in her memo. “This decision now allows us to set our own course and assert our independence as we continue to build our own modern newsgathering operation.”
“While our name will be changing, who we are and what we do will not,” she added. “Our commitment to our work and our audiences will not waiver from what the brand promise has been for three decades.”
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