MSNBC to Change Its Name Amid Spin-Off From NBC

Courtesy of Versant

MSNBC has a new face — and name.

The 24-hour cable news network, launched in 1996 as a joint venture between NBC and Microsoft, announced on Monday that it is taking on a new name in the wake of its spinoff from NBCUniversal.

That new name: My Source News Opinion World, long for MS NOW.

A press release for the rebrand noted that NBCU had previously told MSNBC it could keep its name in the spin-off from Comcast, which owns NBC News. Apparently, the company decided it might be awkward to have the competition bear strikingly similar branding to its flagship broadcast network.

As Mark Lazarus, the CEO of Versant, the new parent company of MSNBC and CNBC, put it in a memo: “During this time of transition, NBCUniversal decided that our brands require a new, separate identity. This decision now allows us to set our own course and assert our independence as we continue to build our own modern newsgathering operation.”

It’s not just the NBC acronym that Versant is losing. Lazarus announced that NBCU also decided to keep its famed peacock branding.

“The future of our success is not tied to remaining within the NBC family and using the peacock as part of our identity,” he said. “As we all know, the peacock is synonymous with NBCUniversal, and it is a symbol they have decided to keep within the NBCU family.”

“This gives us the opportunity to chart our own path forward, create distinct brand identities, and establish an independent news organization following the spin,” he added.

CNBC will be keeping its name, the company said. That is apparently due to some pesky (or fortuitous, depending on where you landed in the breakup) contractual obligations. But like MSNBC it will be adopting a new, peacock-free logo to be unveiled at some future date.

MSNBC President Rebecca Kutler teased in her own memo a promotional campaign for the rebrand “unlike anything we have done in recent memory.”

She also offered some reassurances about the direction of the company post-spin-off. “While our name will be changing, who we are and what we do will not,” she wrote. “Our commitment to our work and our audiences will not waiver from what the brand promise has been for three decades.”