MSNBC’s New Name, Branding Revealed Amid Breakup With Comcast

Leftist news network MSNBC is planning to undergo a name change later this year, along with tossing out the famous peacock logo from its branding, as a result of public changes being made by Versant to separate from NBC Universal.

MSNBC will then be known as My Source News Opinion World — MS Now for short — as announced by Versant Chief Executive Officer Mark Lazarus in an internal memo sent to all company employees.

Lazarus spoke with a group of staffers at the network in January, stating the company wouldn’t be changing its name. However, during the last several months of transition planning, leaders with NBCUniversal said that MSNBC needed a new name to “accelerate the distinction between the MSNBC and NBC News organizations,” the memo read.

Rebecca Kutler, president of MSNBC, gave her own two cents about the changes in a memo to employees, stating the company’s primary focus will remain the same.

“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,” she wrote in the note.

“MSNBC has been undergoing aggressive hiring for about 100 new positions to stand up its own newsroom independent from NBC News. The network has already hired about 40 journalists from CNN, Bloomberg, Politico and other news organizations to establish its first-ever Washington, D.C., bureau,” CNBC reported.

“During this time of transition, NBCUniversal decided that our brand requires a new, separate identity,” Kutler said. “This decision now allows us to set our own course and assert our independence as we continue to build our own modern newsgathering operation.”

The news left many viewers wondering why MSNBC has to change its name and CNBC does not, despite both being part of the same company. The report stated that MSNBC and NBC News would have duplicate coverage with politics; however, CNBC’s organization is already far enough removed that executives believed a name change was unnecessary.

Another reason CNBC gets to skip a name change is that the network acronym was never related to the National Broadcasting Company, but stands for “Consumer News and Business Channel.” While not being given a new name, CNBC will be getting a new logo sans peacock.

For those interested in sports coverage, content on both USA Network and the Golf Channel will now be branded together as USA Sports. Along with them, GolfNow and SportsEngine will receive new logos as well.

Kutler also revealed in her memo on Monday that MSNBC will also be launching a marketing campaign along with the new name, which she says is “unlike anything we have done in recent memory.”

Shockingly, MSNBC is the second-most-watched cable news network on the air with an average of 1.2 million primetime viewers.