On Monday morning, MSNBC and new parent company Versant — consisting of seven cable channels being spun off by Comcast’s NBCUniversal — announced after what must have been pallets of cash spent on consultants that they would change their name later this year to MS NOW, an acronym for My Source for News Opinion World. So, no, it won’t be MSNDC.
Versant chief executive Mark Lazarus explained in a company memo and a Wall Street Journal interview the change was likely given its split from NBCUniversal, but was exacerbated when they were all but told they couldn’t keep the NBC part of their peacock logo.
Check out Lazarus’s corporate speak to WSJ as well as their insistence they’re “progressive” but still hold “both parties to account”:
“I had said that to them very early on in the process,” Lazarus said in an interview with the Journal. The name change came about during discussions about what MSNBC would focus on after the spinoff. When it became clear the network would include both news and opinion, NBCUniversal executives said that they preferred to keep the NBC brand themselves, Lazarus said. The rebrand is also meant to ease “brand confusion,” he said.
He said the network will continue to serve a “progressive audience” and focus on “holding the political figures from both parties to account.”
This has to be their dumbest branding move since that comical “Lean Forward” slogan campaign.
Here was how the change was announced on-air. The network made Morning Joe co-host Joe Scarborough do it in the four hour.
Take notice of the fact they brought in CNBC’s Squawk Box co-host and New York Times writer Andrew Ross Sorkin to join the not-so-merry band in claiming this was a big deal as a sign they’re “push[ing] the boundaries” as one of new parent company Versant’s “insurgent networks.”
“I like this because it does have the sort of independence and actually gets away in some ways from even the idea of legacy media. I mean, I think what you're seeing MS do and what you're seeing some of these other networks do now is not just linear. But by the way, I'm watching you on TikTok now. Do you know that,” Sorkin added.
The takes were voluminous and spectacular. Starting in-house, our Jorge Bonilla pointed out this unfortunate alternative name:
2025 MRC Bulldog Award winner Erick Erickson had another hilarious alternative name:
The great Varad Mehta also took notice of the MS tie-in:
Former NewsBusters intern Greg Price made this quip:
Just the News’s Jerry Dunleavy took it one step further:
National Review’s Rich Lowry made the important distinction that nothing will change about the vile bile coming out of our TVs:
Finally Nathan Brand, an advisor to Senator Tim Scott (R-SC), acknowledged the fact that the MS part is outlasting the NBC one:
