MS NOW

Overview

MS NOW is the cable news network that used to be called MSNBC — and a year after the most jarring rebrand in cable news history, the results are a paradox. The new name worked for viewers: CEO Mark Lazarus told investors the network posted double-digit viewership growth after the November 2025 switch, with its most loyal fans watching eight to nine hours a week (The Guardian). But the owner is shrinking: Versant, the Comcast spin-off that houses the network, reported 2025 revenue of $6.69 billion — down 5.3 percent — with advertising revenue falling to $1.58 billion from $1.73 billion and the stock down about 27 percent (The Guardian). MS NOW is the American left’s biggest television megaphone, home to Morning Joe and The Rachel Maddow Show — and it is now a company that had to rebuild its entire newsroom from zero after losing access to NBC News (The Guardian; NewscastStudio).

The rename that worked — for viewers

MSNBC had carried its name since its 1996 launch (The Guardian). The end came as Comcast moved to spin off most of its linear cable properties — MSNBC, CNBC, the Golf Channel, USA Network and others — into a new company called Versant (The Hill). In August 2025 Versant announced the new name: MS NOW, a backronym for “My Source for News, Opinion and the World” (NewscastStudio; The Hill). Keeping the “MS” — a nod to original part-owner Microsoft, and the channel’s longtime shorthand — was a deliberate bid to hold on to brand recognition while cutting the “NBC” cord (The Hill).

The peacock had to go. “As we all know, the peacock is synonymous with NBCUniversal, and it is a symbol they have decided to keep within the NBCU family,” Versant CEO Mark Lazarus wrote in an employee memo shared with The Hill — adding that the split was “the opportunity to chart our own path forward, create distinct brand identities, and establish an independent news organization following the spin” (The Hill). From October 27 the network aired a transition campaign built around the theme “Same Mission. New Name.” (NewscastStudio). On Saturday, November 15, 2025, MSNBC officially became MS NOW; every programme kept its timeslot and channel number, and the network told viewers: “While our name has changed, who we are has not. You’ll find the same commitment to justice, progress, and the truth” (The Hill). Nighttime host Michael Steele framed it for the Associated Press as a coming of age: “I didn’t see this as a divorce. I see this as the kid growing up and leaving home” (The Hill).

Early polling had shown viewers were nervous about the name change (The Guardian). The numbers Lazarus later cited suggest the anxiety faded: “Since the rebrand to MS NOW in the fourth quarter, that momentum has not only held, it has accelerated with double-digit growth in total viewers since November,” he said, adding that the most passionate viewers watched between eight and nine hours a week — “the second highest engagement across the entire media TV landscape” (The Guardian). Those are the company’s claims, not independently verified measurements — but they sit alongside the harder financial figures: $6.69 billion in 2025 revenue, down 5.3 percent; cable subscription revenue down 5.4 percent; net income of $930 million; and 2026 revenue guidance of $6.15 to $6.4 billion, with midterm-election advertising and a planned direct-to-consumer MS NOW streaming service expected to help (The Guardian).

A newsroom built from scratch

The rebrand’s hardest problem was not the name — it was the journalism. For decades MSNBC had drawn on NBC News for resources, correspondents and newsgathering; the spin-off cut that cord (The Hill). Over the nine months before the switch, the organization built what Versant described as an ambitious new newsgathering model: a central reporting apparatus designed to feed the cable network plus digital-first products, podcasts, social video and newsletters, “untethered from a legacy media model” (NewscastStudio).

The centerpiece was a new Washington Bureau producing original, evidence-based reporting. Even before launch it had broken back-to-back exclusives on border czar Tom Homan, the indictments of Ambassador John Bolton, New York Attorney General Letitia James and former FBI Director James Comey, and scoops from inside the Trump White House including a drug-pricing deal with the administration (NewscastStudio). A multi-year deal with Sky News brought international reporting from 11 overseas bureaus to MS NOW’s platforms (NewscastStudio). The network published 10 core journalistic principles for its staff — integrity, accuracy, fairness, opinion grounded in reported fact, a preference for named sources, and notably a rule on emerging technology: “We use generative AI and other technology tools when they can improve our journalism, but we will not publish content created solely by AI, and we disclose any public-facing use of AI” (NewscastStudio).

The hiring spree pulled in dozens of journalists from The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN, Politico, Bloomberg, ABC News and NBC News itself — names like Carol Leonnig as senior investigative reporter, Laura Barrón-López and Jake Traylor at the White House, Ken Dilanian on justice and intelligence, Jacob Soboroff as senior national and political correspondent, and Vaughn Hillyard as senior White House reporter (NewscastStudio). The audience figures the company cites are striking for an industry in secular decline: in the first nine months of 2025 the average viewer watched eight hours a week — nearly double CNN’s average — the network ranked as the number-one cable network in the Washington, D.C. market, it averaged 1.2 million weekday primetime viewers, and it was drawing 83 percent more primetime viewers than in the first nine months of 2015 despite a 33 percent drop in pay-TV households (NewscastStudio). Beyond cable, the brand counted 6.7 billion combined TikTok and YouTube views in 2025 through late October, more than 112 million podcast downloads, and — per Comscore — the number-one political news site for minutes spent, a streak of 54 consecutive months (NewscastStudio).

The on-air spine stayed familiar: more than 120 hours of live news programming a week from 25-plus anchors and hosts — Morning Joe with Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski, Nicolle Wallace’s Deadline: White House, Ari Melber’s The Beat, Chris Hayes’s All In, Jen Psaki’s The Briefing, Rachel Maddow’s weekly show, Lawrence O’Donnell’s The Last Word, Stephanie Ruhle’s The 11th Hour — backed by nearly 100 expert contributors including former CIA director John Brennan, former ambassador Michael McFaul and historian Jon Meacham (NewscastStudio).

The MSNBC it replaced

The network MS NOW replaced had just been through its own convulsion. In February 2025, new MSNBC president Rebecca Kutler cancelled The ReidOut, and longtime anchor Joy Reid left the network (Akron Beacon Journal). The decision drew an extraordinary on-air rebuke from Rachel Maddow, the network’s biggest star: “I do not want to lose her as a colleague here at MSNBC, and personally, I think it is a bad mistake to let her walk out the door,” Maddow said, calling the removal of the network’s nonwhite primetime hosts “indefensible” — Alex Wagner had also lost her show that week, though she stayed on as a senior political analyst, and Katie Phang lost her weekend programme (Akron Beacon Journal). Reid’s 7 p.m. hour went to a new panel show, The Weeknight, hosted by Symone Sanders-Townsend, Michael Steele and Alicia Menendez — the first Latina to host a primetime MSNBC show (Akron Beacon Journal). Maddow also used the moment to criticize how production staff were being treated, calling the handling “not the right way to treat people” (Akron Beacon Journal).

What this profile does not claim

This profile presents MS NOW’s audience and viewership figures as the company’s own claims — Versant’s statements at its 2025 results call and in its rebrand announcements — not as independently verified measurements. It does not pin down the exact date Comcast completed the Versant spin-off, which no source read for this profile confirmed. It does not cover MSNBC’s pre-2025 history beyond its 1996 launch, and it makes no claims about the network’s internal editorial decision-making beyond the published principles and the reported 2025 lineup changes.