US news channel MSNBC, available in Australia on Foxtel, BINGE, FLASH, and Fetch TV, has today unveiled a radical rebrand of the channel.
MSNBC is one of seven US cable channels being spun off by owner NBC Universal into a new company branded Versant. It’s sister channels include USA Network, CNBC, Oxygen, E!, SYFY, and Golf Channel. It is part of an effort to divorce the legacy media assets from the digital assets seen as the future of the business, with an eye towards an eventual Versant sale.
As part of Versant, MSNBC needed a rebrand to remove both the name NBC from its brand, along with the iconic NBC peacock logo.
MSNBC will now be branded as MS NOW, which is an acronym that stands for: My Source | News | Opinion | World.
Fellow Versant channels CNBC and Golf Channel, which also use the peacock logo, will also receive refreshed visual branding, but both will retain their names.
In a memo issued to staff, MSNBC president Rebecca Kutler advised: “This new branding underscores our mission: to serve as a destination for breaking news and best-in-class opinion journalism, all rooted in accurate and reported facts.
“This decision now allows us to set our own course and assert our independence as we continue to build our own modern news-gathering operation.
“While our name will be changing, who we are and what we do will not.
“Our commitment to our work and our audiences will not waiver from what the brand promise has been for three decades.”
The MSNBC brand has its origins in a business partnership between NBC and Microsoft. It launched in 1996 with the linear news TV channel and news website MSNBC.com. Microsoft exited the TV business in 2005, followed by the website in 2012. MS has remained in the branding since.
The channel will continue to be branded as MSNBC, with the new MS NOW brand to come into effect before the end of the year.