On Monday, MSNBC announced that it’ll be changing its name to “MS NOW,” an acronym meaning “My Source for News, Opinion and the World.” The name change, to launch “later this year” (I couldn’t find a specific date, given it’s already August), will come with the planned spin-off of nearly all of Comcast’s cable channels (save for Bravo) into a stand-alone new company, “Versant.” The spin-off is a way for Comcast to ditch its cable channel side, given the decline in cable TV subscriptions, and keep the more lucrative aspects under the Comcast umbrella: NBC, the Peacock streaming service, Universal Studios, and a single cable channel, Bravo. (Bravo’s reality shows are popular, especially on Peacock, thus the reason it’s staying put.)
Since MSNBC will soon be separated from Comcast, it won’t be able to rely on NBC News anymore. Executives also felt that keeping MSNBC’s name would create brand confusion with NBC. Along with the new name, MS NOW is also getting its own logo, losing the NBC peacock.
The new name? Meh.
MSNBC launched back in 1996 to compete with CNN and Fox News. It’s settled into a niche as the United States’ “left leaning” cable news channel (yes, left-leaning by American standards).
The name is a legacy of the channel’s two founders, Microsoft and NBC. Microsoft sold off its share of the network in 2005, and ended its web partnership in 2012. As such, the “MS” part is basically a vestige that doesn’t mean anything at this point.
I was never big on the MSNBC name in the first place (“Microsoft NBC?”), but the new name feels like a step down from that. For starters, the new logo looks generic. “MS NOW” also looks awkward; it’s supposed to be spelled with a space?
There’s also the new name’s awkward acronym. Most people don’t think of what MSNBC stands for, just as the full names of the traditional broadcast networks rarely ever come up: the National Broadcasting Company (NBC), the American Broadcasting Company (ABC), the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS), the Fox Broadcasting Company (Fox), and the Public Broadcasting System (PBS). MSNBC could’ve been kept as-is and just stand for, well, nothing?
I note CNBC is keeping its name, despite also losing its ties to NBC; like MS NOW, CNBC is gaining a new logo. CNBC was founded in 1989 as “the Consumer News and Business Channel,” as a joint venture between NBC and Cablevision. That said, nobody thinks of its full name, and just view it as “CNBC.”
On top of all this, MSNBC never bothered claiming the .com domain name for “MS NOW”… or, I assume, even Google searching the new name first? (Unless they plan on paying the .com owners for the name, or going with some alternate domain/URL.) The same goes for not checking availability of social media handles. All Website Naming 101 for something like my blog, not a major TV news network.
Ultimately, if MSNBC really felt like they needed a new name, they should’ve just shed all vestiges of its “MS”-related name (which has long since lost its meaning) and chosen a completely new name. Of course, the new name’s already being criticized and made fun of online; a lot of jokes about how “MS NOW” sounds like a turn-of-the-millennium version of Windows, or something one uninstalls to clear hard drive space.
As for the future of MS NOW, it still faces the same problems of being a cable TV channel, as well as one behind the ratings leader in cable TV news, Fox News. (*Sigh.*) The fact it’ll now be competing with NBC News doesn’t help its fortunes? Meanwhile, on the Comcast side, I assume this means Peacock will be downgrading or removing the presence of MSNBC from its streaming service, since they already have NBC News? Which would be yet another loss of content from Peacock (after losing Hallmark and live WWE events.)
Image: MS NOW logo. (Versant)
