MSNBC fans who are disappointed in the progressive-leaning network after Donald Trump’s victory in the 2024 election may no longer have it to kick around.
The cable-news outlet could have to consider changing its name and familiar markings under a spin-off of the bulk of the cable assets of parent company Comcast, one of the nascent company’s new top executives suggested to an assemblage of MSNBC staffers Wednesday morning, according to two people familiar with the gathering.
Mark Lazarus, who will lead the spin-off after it separates from Comcast, told an audience that included Rachel Maddow, Chris Jansing and Katy Tur that he was not sure whether MSNBC would have to change its identity as part of the transaction, which will split the cable network and its business-news sibling CNBC from NBC News and NBCUniversal. If the two networks are no longer part of the NBC corporate entity, attendees wanted to know, will they still be able to carry marks that are part of their former home?
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MSNBC’s newsgathering process may also be ripe for transformation in the coming transaction, with people familiar with the meeting indicating the executive did not have immediate answers about whether a unit for collecting and verifying news separate from that of NBC would have to “built from scratch.”
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The prospect of being separated from NBC News has raised alarms among journalists at the company, because MSNBC and CNBC routinely share reportage, contributors and more, and because much of MSNBC’s daytime schedule is filled with correspondents affiliated with the more traditional NBC News, not the opinion programs that are MSNBC’s most-watched properties.
Like other cable networks, MSNBC is facing significant business challenges. More of the viewers who settle in each evening to watch a few hours of commentary on MSNBC are migrating elsewhere. MSNBC is projected to shed approximately 10.5% of its subscribers between the end of 2023 and the end of 2025, according to estimates from Kagan, a market-research firm that is part of S&P Global Intelligence. Rivals Fox News Channel and CNN are seen experiencing similar erosions in that period. MSNBC could be left with an average of 61.3 million viewers at the end of 2025, compared with 68.5 million in 2023 — and this with an election year, typically an event that brings viewers back to news, between the two milestones.
During the meeting, Lazarus described the new company as “a well-funded start-up,” these people said, and indicated the new entity would have a presence in Manhattan, but noted that executives weren’t certain at present where the corporation would be based.
He also suggested the company might look to such entities as a TV-station group or a sports operation as potential acquisition targets, these people said.
There has long been an argument for overhauling the MSNBC identity. The network originally launched in 1996 as a joint venture of Microsoft and NBC, which is how executives arrived at its letters. As the years progressed, the network ventured further into politics and opinion programming, tapping hosts that ranged from Phil Donahue to Tucker Carlson. Microsoft would divest its stake in the TV network in 2005 and its interest in MSNBC.com in 2012.
