MSNBC has set a date for its upcoming name and logo change.
Beginning on Saturday, Nov. 15, MSNBC will be known as MS NOW. The new name is an acronym for My Source for News, Opinion, and the World. The rebrand is the final stage of the cable news channel’s split from NBC News and parent company Comcast.
In an interview published on Tuesday, Nov. 4, prominent MS NOW political commentator Rachel Maddow told the New York Times that the name change “isn’t something that [MSNBC] sought” out. Now that NBC News and MSNBC are no longer sister networks, Comcast executives wanted them to have distinct names “to avoid any potential confusion.”
While Maddow was “annoyed” by the decision at first, she now sees it as a positive.
“[It’s a chance] to reintroduce ourselves to people, to reintroduce ourselves to the country, and remind our viewers what it is they like about us,” she told the New York Times. “I’m kind of happy about it.”
NBCUniversal announced in November 2024 that most of its cable networks, including MSNBC, would be spinning off to a new publicly traded company called Versant. Oxygen, E!, USA, SyFy, and CNBC are also under the Versant umbrella.
In August, Versant CEO Mark Lazarus noted that NBCU had decided to keep its iconic peacock symbol within the NBCU family. That led to the creation of the new MS NOW logo: a waving banner with two red stripes.
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“This gives us the opportunity to chart our own path forward, create distinct brand identities, and establish an independent news organization following the spin,” Lazarus said in a memo at the time.
For all of the talk of establishing MS NOW as its own distinct entity, the network’s president, Rebecca Kutler, said in August that although the name and logo is changing, “who we are and what we do will not.”
The “MS” in MSNBC originally stood for Microsoft. When MSNBC was launched in July 1996, it was a joint venture between NBC News and the tech company. Microsoft divested its stake from the channel in 2005 and from the website in 2012.
According to the New York Times, MS NOW is spending about $20 million on a marketing campaign to introduce viewers to the new name.
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