What’s in a reputation? MS NOW – previously MSNBC – will quickly discover out

[ad_1] “M S NOW: Don’t Fear, You’ll Get Used To It,” that’s how Morning Joe’ co-host Mika Brzezinski put it on 11 October throughout an onstage look at MSNBC’s annual stay occasion for superfans in New York Metropolis.

The occasion, which largely crammed up Manhattan’s Hammerstein Ballroom with a bunch of keen power-viewers gawking to see their favourite cable information hosts, was the community’s final as MSNBC.

Beginning Saturday, the US’s largest liberal-leaning community – which has been generally known as MSNBC since its launch in 1996 – will formally turn out to be generally known as MS NOW. The considerably pressured acronym stands for My Supply for Information, Opinion, and the World. The “MS” comes from the community’s authentic partnership with Microsoft again within the Nineteen Nineties, which ended greater than a decade in the past. Community president Rebecca Kutler advised the Guardian final week that she felt “very strongly” about protecting the letters due to the historical past of the model and since it’s how many individuals confer with the channel anyway.

The change was pressured on the community by its father or mother firm, NBCUniversal, which is breaking off MSNBC together with just a few different cable networks into a brand new, separate firm referred to as Versant. MSNBC/MS Now's attempting to make the perfect of it, utilizing it as a possibility to advertise the model anew as a supply of patriotic, reliable information and evaluation.

MSNBC TV anchor Mika Brzezinski, co-host of the present Morning Joe, takes questions from the viewers on 11 October 2017 at a Harvard College discussion board in Cambridge, Massachusetts. {Photograph}: Steven Senne/AP The change comes at a very difficult time for tv networks, that are weathering declines in subscription charges as viewers more and more drop dear cable packages for cheaper streaming choices.

On the stay occasion, Brzezinski – like many MSNBC stars who've sat just lately for interviews – assured the gang that she was pleased with the change. “MS Now. I like it,” she stated. “We get to remain in 30 Rock, proper?” her husband and co-anchor Joe Scarborough jokingly requested. Sadly not – the community has moved from New York’s most well-known media hub over to a far much less glamorous workplace constructing in Occasions Sq. that after housed The New York Occasions.

Whereas Brzezinski received just a few laughs with a riff about how she was attempting to get used to the change prematurely (“It’s like I’m 58 however I say I’m 60 – I prefer to get forward of issues,” she joked) few within the crowd appeared to pay attention to the brand new identify.

Possible sensing this, the community just lately invested $20m in a nationwide promoting marketing campaign to convey viewers on top of things on the identify change – and perhaps even get them a little bit enthusiastic about it. On 4 November, election night time, the community aired two 60-second advertisements – one featured star host Rachel Maddow studying the preamble to the structure whereas patriotic imagery and vignettes from US historical past flashed throughout the display screen, and the opposite Maya Angelou’s speech on the United Nations in 1996.

MS NOW’s studio. {Photograph}: Versant Each advertisements, which highlighted the community’s largest stars, ended with the identical message: “MS NOW. Similar Mission. New identify.”

Scarborough additionally conveyed consolation with the identify change, telling the gang on the fan fest: “If you happen to do a great job, and you've got first rate lighting, and you'll discuss to folks, they usually need to hear your take, they need to hear the story – it doesn’t matter what we name the community, it doesn’t matter the place we movie it.”

However names do matter, significantly after they have outlined a model for many years. “It's a massive deal to rebrand an organization after 30 years. We perceive that,” Kutler stated at an occasion for reporters final week. “We perceive it's a problem, and we’re right here for it.”

One in all her largest stars, primetime host and former White Home press secretary Jen Psaki, acknowledged that she initially seen the identify change as a “headache” for branding functions. However, she stated on the identical occasion, she got here to comprehend that the community’s viewers care extra about their favourite hosts than the community’s identify. “There’s a dedication and dedication to sure faces who're a part of the model that I feel folks search them out wherever they could be,” she stated. “And that made me really feel higher.”

Jen Psaki, former White Home press secretary, seems on Meet the Press in Washington DC on 25 September 2022. {Photograph}: NBC/William B. Plowman/Getty Photographs Quizzed concerning the change in an internet group for MSNBC superfans, most stated they have been superb with the channel’s new identify – although there was some confusion about easy methods to entry it and whether or not it might stay on the identical dial. “So long as the journalists, commentators, writers, and so on, stay and are free to current information with out interference, they'll name it something they need,” one fan stated.

One of many community’s former prime stars, Pleasure Reid, is much less positive. In a wide-ranging interview with the Guardian just lately, she cited her previous expertise working as an analyst for a beverage firm. “I don’t suppose it’ll cease folks from watching their favourite hosts,” she stated. “However as an total advertising train, I'll wait and see. I'm doubtful. I don’t know that identify modifications are often ever a good suggestion, to be sincere.”

Whereas company management has hailed the cut up as a possibility for better funding in MSNBC, there's one other upside for the community’s longtime father or mother firm, Comcast. At a time when the Federal Communications Fee and its Trump-appointed chair, Brendan Carr, have been pressuring tv community house owners to stick to their statutory obligations, Comcast might profit from now not being related to a community generally known as a spot for criticism of the Trump administration. As a cable community, MSNBC can also be out of Carr’s purview.

In some methods, although, the fan competition highlighted one of many community’s largest challenges: that, like many cable information networks, its most loyal viewers are older. Some within the crowd struggled to navigate the steps and unwieldy steps of the live performance venue’s second flooring – although they confirmed loads of verve and power when the community’s stars pumped them up with requires democratic participation and criticisms of the Trump administration.

MS now studio. {Photograph}: Versant Requested by the Guardian concerning the community’s median age (72), Kutler pointed to its success on YouTube and TikTok, two key platforms that stay difficult to monetize. “I feel once you mix the power of our viewers on [traditional television], after which fold in type of the platforms of the long run, I feel we have now a fairly nice story to inform,” she stated.

Splitting off from NBCUniversal and its longtime sister community NBC Information has meant massive modifications for MSNBC/MS NOW. Along with shifting out of 30 Rockefeller Middle, the community was pressured to construct a news-gathering operation from scratch as a result of it might now not depend on NBC Information correspondents to offer on-air experiences. Over the previous few months, the community has assembled a big bureau in Washington DC, staffed with veterans of stories organizations just like the Washington Submit, and led by Scott Matthews, a former CNN and CNBC government.

Election night time was the primary trial of the community’s new in-house reporting operation and executives and hosts seen it as a powerful success. “We had a news-gathering operation that didn't miss a beat,” Kutler stated. “We have been forward or in each single one of many proper locations, and that group didn't exist six months in the past. In order that makes me extremely proud.” (MSNBC received very near matching Fox Information in primetime on election night time and soundly defeated CNN.)

As NBC Information and MSNBC cut up aside, a number of correspondents who had appeared recurrently on each networks needed to decide one long-term dwelling. Steve Kornacki, who grew to become synonymous with MSNBC’s election night time protection because the khaki-wearing wonk-in-chief guiding viewers by electoral maps, signed a deal to affix NBC Information. On election night time, he was changed by veteran MSNBC journalist Ali Velshi.

However Los Angeles-based correspondent Jacob Soboroff determined this previous summer time that he needed to be on Staff MSNBC. Soboroff started with MSNBC in 2015 however had drifted over to the NBC Information aspect and have become an everyday contributor on the Immediately present earlier than coming again towards the cable community throughout the 2024 election. “I fell again in love with being at MSNBC, and I had no thought the spin was coming,” he stated.

When the company decoupling was introduced in November 2024, “for me, it was a direct no-brainer that I needed to return to MS,” stated Soboroff, who added that his work for the cable community has allowed him to be the “most genuine model” of himself as a journalist. He has additionally gotten to fill in as a primetime host on MSNBC, one thing he couldn’t have finished whereas reporting for NBC Information.

“I feel there’s loads of runway for me and for anyone who's obsessed with authentic journalism at MS,” he stated. “For me, it’s at all times been about connecting with actual folks in actual locations to inform their tales, not concerning the politics.”