Microsoft sold off their shares of the network in 2005 and the website in 2012 leaving NBCUniversal News Group a wholly owned division of NBCUniversal. And all of it, of course, owned by Comcast. In recent years, Comcast has been confronted by cord cutting in cable and has looked to organize the company so that cable would be separate from network and from streaming.
Comcast is one of the largest communications companies in the world. It is still controlled by the Roberts family in Philadelphia that own a chunk of the shares. Comcast has its headquarters in Philadelphia. The company has owned NBCUniversal and all its operations since 2013. In recent years President Trump has taken to attacking Brian Roberts for the viewpoints of MSNBC and for the removal of a controversial Republican from the station. Since 2012 though, Roberts has not donated to any party nor endorsed any of them.
MSNBC started off, much like CNN, as a straight forwards news channel. Leaning almost completely on NBC, the channel ran rolling news coverage and broadcast quite a bit of programming from the local affiliates of the main channel. Meanwhile FOX had political leanings quite early on and couldn't lean on the FOX channel for news material since there was no national broadcast. Heck, even FOX Sports had only started in 1994 so the network was building everything from the ground up. This largely came from recruiting people from other networks including their exec Roger Ailes who came from the precursor to MSNBC.
CNN has always has had their there own service which theur built from the beginning 1980. Presently, in a more polarized America, CNN has ranked third among news services but internationally, it is the gold standard and runs well. CNN also recruited from U.S. and world networks but they built their own reporting infrastructure. Many times CNN just kept rolling coverage and beat all the competitors with being present and reporting. It wasn't all punditry which has people switching off if it isn't reporting an ongoing event.
The FOX approach to all politics all the time and the flashy, eye-catching graphics changed both CNN and MSNBC to feature the same. MSNBC decides to lean towards the Democrats whereas FOX was all in for Republicans. CNN was more in the middle and as such, bled viewers to the upstart networks. No network mainstream or cable has not seen a plunge in numbers year over year. It remains to be seen whether changes by MSNBC or any anything in television will work to keep news networks functional.
The host-based programming tends to eat their own. It doesn't matter what the networks do. The days of Larry King being around for decades on CNN is unheard of today. In the constant jockeying for position comes burnout and scandal in the the various hosts. Ratings have always been important going back to the radio days. However, the levels of scandal taking down hosts, execs and the like has been rather astounding.
Not many of those hosts of shows around the time of the pandemic are around on many of the news networks today, including MSNBC. Rachel Maddow, one of the stars for years is down to one day a week. However, she is the only one to crack the top 15 shows in the ratings. The rest all belong to FOX. There are no CNN programs in the top 15. Given the decline in overall numbers and the cord-cutting, no network can be happy with their ratings if profitability keeps declining.
The changes of MSNBC to MS Now could give it the leadership and resources needed to help it be less reliant on NBC and more likely able to move to digital more fully. There are some mocking the new call sign and logo. Some of that is political mockery from Trump and his allies on the right in media. There are others legitimately questioning using MS with it being known as a shorthand for Multiple Sclerosis. Some even thinking using NOW is questionable since so many titles include it already. Some on the right are calling BS Now.
MSNBC probably thought they couldn't use MS+ or MS Max either with the plus and max being a frequent add on. Personally, I would have opened for The Independent which was Universal Studios original name and in keeping with the present ownership but now independent of NBC. To distinguish from the British online newspaper of same name, they could have just added a tagline such as Citizen or News or whatever.
The important thing for the new enterprise is to make the most of their new start. Subscription and digital remains the future of almost all cable television. And mainstream TV for that matter. It is hard to know what the future will be for news and broadcast in general. I should make clear that I want a variety of news options. When local news closes, it starts to limit the information coming in. I have repeated that Winnipeg is lucky to have to daily newspapers owned by Winnipeggers. We have sports and news podcasts. We have two radio stations that do regular news. We have several ethnic press and radio news. We have a national indigenous broadcaster based in the city.
Nationally, I read Toronto Star, the Globe and Mail and National Post. I watch CBC, CTV and local TV news. In the U.S, I read or watch whatever I can from FOX to CNN, I listened on Sirius XM. I read British, Australian and Israeli newspapers fairly often. I listen to news and opinion podcasts. The point is: I like a wide range of material to stay informed across the spectrum. I hope the new MS Now will be part of the conversation.
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