What’s in a name? MS NOW – formerly MSNBC – will soon find out

“MS NOW: Don’t Worry, You’ll Get Used To It,” that’s how Morning Joe’ co-host Mika Brzezinski put it on 11 October during an onstage appearance at MSNBC’s annual live event for superfans in New York City. The event, which mostly filled up Manhattan’s Hammerstein Ballroom with a group of eager power-viewers gawking to see their favorite cable news hosts, was the network’s last as MSNBC. Starting Saturday, the US’s biggest liberal-leaning network – which has been known as MSNBC since its launch in 1996 – will officially become known as MS NOW. The somewhat forced acronym stands for My Source for News, Opinion, and the World. The “MS” comes from the network’s original partnership with Microsoft back in the 1990s, which ended more than a decade ago. Network president Rebecca Kutler told the Guardian last week that she felt “very strongly” about keeping the letters because of the history of the brand and because it’s how many people refer to the channel anyway. Related: Joy Reid on her ouster from MSNBC: ‘In this moment, not being a part of corporate media is a gift’ The change was forced on the network by its parent company, NBCUniversal, which is breaking off MSNBC along with a few other cable networks into a new, separate company called Versant. MSNBC/MS Now is trying to make the best of it, using it as an opportunity to promote the brand anew as a source of patriotic, trustworthy news and analysis. The change comes at a particularly challenging time for television networks, which are weathering declines in subscription fees as viewers increasingly drop pricey cable packages for cheaper streaming options. At the live event, Brzezinski – like many MSNBC stars who have sat recently for interviews – assured the crowd that she was happy with the change. “MS Now. I love it,” she said. “We get to stay in 30 Rock, right?” her husband and co-anchor Joe Scarborough jokingly asked. Sadly not – the network has moved from New York’s most famous media hub over to a far less glamorous office building in Times Square that once housed The New York Times. While Brzezinski got a few laughs with a riff about how she was trying to get used to the change in advance (“It’s like I’m 58 but I say I’m 60 – I like to get ahead of things,” she joked) few in the crowd seemed to be aware of the new name. Likely sensing this, the network recently invested $20m in a national advertising campaign to bring viewers up to speed on the name change – and maybe even get them a little excited about it. On 4 November, election night, the network aired two 60-second ads – one featured star host Rachel Maddow reading the preamble to the constitution while patriotic imagery and vignettes from US history flashed across the screen, and the other Maya Angelou’s speech at the United Nations in 1996. Both ads, which highlighted the network’s biggest stars, ended with the same message: “MS NOW. Same Mission. New name.” Scarborough also conveyed comfort with the name change, telling the crowd at the fan fest: “If you do a good job, and you have decent lighting, and you can talk to people, and they want to hear your take, they want to hear the story – it doesn’t matter what we call the network, it doesn’t matter where we film it.” But names do matter, particularly when they have defined a brand for decades. “It is a big deal to rebrand a company after 30 years. We understand that,” Kutler said at an event for reporters last week. “We understand it is a challenge, and we’re here for it.” One of her biggest stars, primetime host and former White House press secretary Jen Psaki, acknowledged that she initially viewed the name change as a “headache” for branding purposes. But, she said at the same event, she came to realize that the network’s viewers care more about their favorite hosts than the network’s name. “There’s a commitment and dedication to certain faces who are part of the brand that I think people seek them out wherever they may be,” she said. “And that made me feel better.” Quizzed about the change in an online group for MSNBC superfans, most said they were fine with the channel’s new name – though there was some confusion about how to access it and whether it would remain on the same dial. “As long as the journalists, commentators, writers, etc, remain and are free to present news without interference, they can call it anything they want,” one fan said. One of the network’s former top stars, Joy Reid, is less sure. In a wide-ranging interview with the Guardian recently, she cited her past experience working as an analyst for a beverage company. “I don’t think it’ll stop people from watching their favorite hosts,” she said. “But as an overall marketing exercise, I will wait and see. I am dubious. I don’t know that name changes are usually ever a good idea, to be honest.” While corporate leadership has hailed the split as an opportunity for greater investment in MSNBC, there is another upside for the network’s longtime parent company, Comcast. At a time when the Federal Communications Commission and its Trump-appointed chair, Brendan Carr, have been pressuring television network owners to adhere to their statutory obligations, Comcast may benefit from no longer being associated with a network known as a place for criticism of the Trump administration. As a cable network, MSNBC is also out of Carr’s purview. In some ways, though, the fan festival highlighted one of the network’s biggest challenges: that, like many cable news networks, its most loyal viewers are older. Some in the crowd struggled to navigate the stairs and unwieldy steps of the concert venue’s second floor – though they showed plenty of verve and energy when the network’s stars pumped them up with calls for democratic participation and criticisms of the Trump administration. Asked by the Guardian about the network’s median age (72), Kutler pointed to its success on YouTube and TikTok, two key platforms that remain challenging to monetize. “I think when you combine the strength of our audience on [traditional television], and then fold in kind of the platforms of the future, I think we have a pretty great story to tell,” she said. Splitting off from NBCUniversal and its longtime sister network NBC News has meant big changes for MSNBC/MS NOW. In addition to moving out of 30 Rockefeller Center, the network was forced to build a news-gathering operation from scratch because it could no longer rely on NBC News correspondents to provide on-air reports. Over the last few months, the network has assembled a large bureau in Washington DC, staffed with veterans of news organizations like the Washington Post, and led by Scott Matthews, a former CNN and CNBC executive. Election night was the first trial of the network’s new in-house reporting operation and executives and hosts viewed it as a resounding success. “We had a news-gathering operation that did not miss a beat,” Kutler said. “We were ahead or in every single one of the right places, and that organization did not exist six months ago. So that makes me incredibly proud.” (MSNBC got very close to matching Fox News in primetime on election night and soundly defeated CNN.) As NBC News and MSNBC split apart, several correspondents who had appeared regularly on both networks had to pick one long-term home. Steve Kornacki, who became synonymous with MSNBC’s election night coverage as the khaki-wearing wonk-in-chief guiding viewers through electoral maps, signed a deal to join NBC News. On election night, he was replaced by veteran MSNBC journalist Ali Velshi. But Los Angeles-based correspondent Jacob Soboroff decided this past summer that he wanted to be on Team MSNBC. Soboroff began with MSNBC in 2015 but had drifted over to the NBC News side and became a regular contributor on the Today show before coming back toward the cable network during the 2024 election. “I fell back in love with being at MSNBC, and I had no idea the spin was coming,” he said. When the corporate decoupling was announced in November 2024, “for me, it was an immediate no-brainer that I wanted to go back to MS,” said Soboroff, who added that his work for the cable network has allowed him to be the “most authentic version” of himself as a journalist. He has also gotten to fill in as a primetime host on MSNBC, something he couldn’t have done while reporting for NBC News. “I think there’s a lot of runway for me and for anybody who is passionate about original journalism at MS,” he said. “For me, it’s always been about connecting with real people in real places to tell their stories, not about the politics.”