MSNBC Is Changing Its Name, And Its Viewers Should Be Asking 3 Big Questions

MSNBC still exists for now, but in the coming months, it’ll be broadcasting under a new name. The cable news network’s soon-to-be parent company Versant announced this morning that it’ll be giving many of its brands new logos and will officially be rebranding MSNBC to MS Now (My Source News Opinion World) at a yet to be announced date in the future.

If all that sounds very confusing for you, I can assure you it is. I really try to keep up with this stuff, and there’s a lot I remain confused about. Still, let me try to sum up in an easy to follow way. Comcast has decided to split up NBC’s television and streaming empire. NBC Network is going in one direction, along with NBC Sports, Bravo, Peacock and the theme parks. The other cable networks including USA, E!, SyFy, Oxygen, CNBC and MSNBC, among others, will all join forces under a new publicly traded company called Versant, which will be run by Mark Lazarus.

We’ve known about the split for awhile, but this is, perhaps, the first time where its consequences have been felt. MSNBC had apparently planned to keep its name, but at some point, it was decided that the Versant brands would no longer be allowed to use the NBC logo or logos that included nods to the classic Peacock. That forced rebrand allegedly inspired the news network to just start fresh with a new name.

Versant has vowed to create a “totally independent news operation” with its new identity, but there remains some big questions that still don’t have answers. In fact, viewers should all be wondering what this means in a few big areas. So, let’s run down the most important TBDs.

What’s The Budget For The New Network Going To Look Like?

It’s no secret that MSNBC has been going through hard times the past few years. The network has been beating rival CNN in primetime lately, but it still remains significantly behind FOX News, sometimes barely getting half as many viewers as its rightwing counterpart. The ratings situation has gotten a lot worse since the election, and with advertisers now splitting their money between TV, streaming services and the Internet, the financial situation is likely complicated. There's also been plenty of stories about alleged conflicts between the on-air hosts and the network itself.

Earlier this year, MSNBC did some layoffs that targeted Rachel Maddow’s show, which scaled back to one day a week. The network also let longtime talking head Joy Reid and her staff go. Those cuts were at least somewhat counterbalanced with new roles that were posted by the network’s president Rebecca Kutler, but questions remain as to what the network’s budget will look like moving forward. It’s unclear what the financial picture is really like, and it’s unclear if the spend will need to change without NBC providing some level of support.

In theory, viewers might not care how much money the company is spending, but they certainly will care if it changes the on-air talent. They certainly will care if it means less on-location reporting or less original news segments.

Is MSNBC Going To Keep Its Same Ideological Stance?

All three of the major cable news networks might say they report the news accurately and fairly, but we’re all well aware of what’s really going on. Fox News offers a right wing perspective on the news. MSNBC (or MS Now) offers a left wing perspective, and CNN has kind of waffled between moderate and center-left, depending on its current goals. Is that going to change?

If MSNBC was going to radically shift in position, now would be the time to do so, but it’s hard for me to imagine the network moving that much. It just doesn’t make much sense from a business perspective.

FOX News has a strong grip on the viewing habits of the Center-Right. In recent years, they’ve faced some competition from upstarts like Newsmax and OAN, who have been able to take some viewers. There may be space for another network with major resources to find an audience, but it’s hard to imagine those viewers would embrace MS Now, given where MSNBC has sat ideologically over the last few decades.

That being said, the left wing encompasses a lot of different viewpoints. There’s plenty of difference between the center-left and the far-left, and it’ll be interesting to see whether MS Now moves around a bit on the spectrum to find its voice. It’s unclear what role NBC News had in grounding MSNBC. It’s possible the network may allow its anchors to cover stories they shied away from in the past. Then again, it’s also possible the network may want to move a little to the center and try to pick up more of CNN’s viewers and/ or moderates and former Republicans. We’ll see.

Can MS Now Continue To Be A Major Player Without NBC News?

While there are still a lot of details to work out, we do know there is going to be a complete separation between MSNBC and NBC News. Both companies have always had their own talking heads and separate visions, but by all accounts, they also did a lot of sharing when it came to the news gathering department. That’s not going to be the case anymore; so, what is MS Now going to be losing?

We know MS Now has been hiring journalists and staffing up in some areas. Whether that means the network is going to continue to try to break news or those journalists are merely going to be commenting on the news other people break is an open question, however. Rachel Maddow said in a recent statement that she thought getting away from NBC’s legacy timeslots that do news in a very different way would be good for the network. She emphasized the 24/7 nature of the news cycle. That would seem to imply being on the frontlines and breaking stories, but we’ll just have to see. Original reporting costs a lot of money, which brings us back to the budget question.

To Sum Up

I don’t think this move is inherently a good thing or inherently a bad thing. There’s a future in which this is looked at as a really positive moment in MS Now’s history, which allowed the network to fully do its own thing and find an audience outside NBC’s influence. There’s also a future in which this feels like the beginning of the end, and it becomes clear the spinoff can’t really compete without NBC’s resources.

We’ll just have to wait and see.