MSNBC will change its name to My Source News Opinion World (MS NOW) in its spinoff from Comcast’s NBCUniversal, The Wall Street Journal first reported on Monday.
Comcast approved a $7 billion spinoff of its NBCUniversal channels, including MSNBC, CNBC, E! and SyFy, in November as ratings crashed following the 2024 election. Along with the name change, MSNBC will lose the peacock brand logo as part of an effort to distance itself from NBC News and create its own identity, the WSJ reported.
MSNBC staffers were informed about the upcoming name change on Monday, the WSJ reported.
Big change in the cable news world: later this year, MSNBC is changing its name to MS NOW, which stands for My Source for News, Opinion, and the World.
Earlier this year, Mark Lazarus said the name wouldn’t change. Decision was made up high.https://t.co/BNFPSG0VE3
— Jeremy Barr (@jeremymbarr) August 18, 2025
The new publicly traded company spun off by Comcast NBCUniversal will be known as Versant, the WSJ reported. Mark Lazarus, who will serve as Versant’s chief executive officer, initially told staff that they would not have to worry about a name change.
During internal discussions, NBCUniversal executives said they preferred to keep the NBC brand when it had been decided that the spun off MSNBC would still include news and opinion, the WSJ reported. The rebranded MS NOW will continue appealing to left-wing audiences and focus on “holding the political figures from both parties to account,” Lazarus told the WSJ.
NBC, Bravo and the Peacock streaming service will remain under Comcast and NBCUniversal.
Comcast announced the new spinoff venture after MSNBC’s ratings fell 53% after the 2024 election, though the network has since seen fluctuations in its viewership. The network averaged 1.008 million total primetime viewers and 596,000 daytime viewers in the second quarter of 2025, which lags far behind Fox News and is well above CNN’s overall ratings, according to AdWeek.
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