MSNBC’s Rebrand Invites Bemusement and Ridicule

 

MSNBC’s Rebrand Invites Bemusement and Ridicule

 

The cable TV network’s new name, MS NOW, became the subject of mockery on social media soon after it was announced on Monday.

 

John Yoon Emmett Lindner

By John Yoon and Emmett Lindner

Aug. 19, 2025

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/19/business/msnbc-ms-now-rebranding.html

 

When MSNBC announced on Monday that it was being renamed MS NOW, some of the cable network’s biggest stars expressed their support.

 

“It looks very sporty,” Joe Scarborough said on air as he announced the brand change, which includes a new logo. A graphic showed a striped flag and five capital letters: MS NOW, for My Source News Opinion World.

 

“For our viewers who have watched us for decades, it may be hard to imagine this network by any other name,” MSNBC said in a statement. The change, it added, “gives us the freedom to chart our own path forward, and we’re excited about where it’s headed.”

 

Outside the network, especially on social media, the rebrand became a subject of bemusement and mockery.

 

A political strategist in Milwaukee, Gabriella Suliga, wrote that the red, white and blue design “looks like something you’d scroll past in a pile of political campaign logos from 2004.”

 

“Multiple sclerosis now. Is this some kind of new show?” said Rob Archer, who has worked as a news anchor in Los Angeles, playing on the chronic neurological disorder commonly abbreviated to M.S.

 

Some conservatives gave the left-leaning network their own name: “Most Surely No One Watching.” (MSNBC trails Fox News in ratings, drawing 865,000 average prime-time viewers in July, according to Nielsen. But it is ahead of CNN, which averaged about 497,000 in the same period.)

 

MSNBC began in 1996 as a joint venture between the National Broadcasting Company, NBC, and Microsoft. Microsoft eventually sold its stake in the venture, but its abbreviation remained in the MSNBC brand.

 

The rebranding is expected by the end of the year as part of MSNBC’s corporate spinoff from Comcast’s NBCUniversal TV empire. The spinoff required the new company to stop using the NBC brand and its signature Peacock, which are both staying with Comcast.

 

“Some folks think that changing the logo is changing the brand, and that’s not necessarily the same thing,” Americus Reed, a professor of marketing at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, said in an interview.

 

People might interpret the transition differently, but there won’t likely be major changes in the MSNBC audience. If a viewer gets their news from the network, there may not be incentive to look elsewhere, and MSNBC’s announcements tried to clearly explain the decision to its audience.

 

“You’re providing the narrative,” Mr. Reed said. “You’re making sure they understand why you’re doing this, and you’re trying to maintain that relationship, maintain that trust.”

 

A flurry of changes, though, can affect a company’s public image. When Warner Bros. Discovery switched back and forth between calling its streaming service “HBO Max” and simply “Max,” it had the potential to undermine its gravitas.

 

In those cases, “you’re signaling that you’re unsure about things, and you’re signaling that you don’t really have a strategy,” Mr. Reed said.

 

Aberdeen, a British investment firm, dropped most of its vowels in 2021 and became “abrdn” in a widely mocked effort to seem more “modern.” Gap, the clothing retailer, changed its logo in 2010 and drew a flood of negative comments online. Both companies eventually reversed the changes.

 

“I would not be surprised in the next six months to see a slight shift,” Zachary Winterton, a creative director in Portland, Ore., said of MS NOW.

 

The new logo “does not have the same charm to it,” said Allan Peters, a graphic designer in Eagan, Minn., who has written a book about logo design.

 

Some social media users expressed confusion around why the “MS” remained in the network’s name 20 years after the end of its TV partnership with Microsoft, outlasting the “NBC” association that only just finished.

 

Mr. Peters said that the space between the logo and the capital letters was larger than that between “MS” and “NOW,” exacerbating the confusion by drawing attention to the “MS.”

 

“Microsoft hasn’t been involved in years,” Carmen Harris, a communications specialist in McKinney, Texas, wrote on social media. “I don’t get it.”

 

Some said the new branding bore a resemblance to that of some conservative cable networks, such as the right-wing One America News Network.

 

“I wonder if this is a purposeful reimagining to try to appropriate that conservative image, but I don’t see the network itself really doing that,” said Mr. Archer, the news anchor.

 

Rebecca Kutler, MSNBC’s president, said in a memo that the rebrand will not change the network’s core identity or its editorial focus. MS NOW has plans to launch a marketing campaign that will aim to settle any confusion.

 

“While our name will be changing, who we are and what we do will not,” she said.

 

Rebranding