MSNBC Ditches the Peacock, Rebrands as MS NOW in Split From Comcast

MSNBC, the liberal-leaning cable news channel that’s been part of the NBC family for nearly three decades, is about to get a new identity. Later this year, it’ll officially become MS NOW — short for My Source News Opinion World — and will drop the iconic NBC peacock logo as part of parent company Comcast’s spinoff of its cable channels into a new company, Versant.

The move marks the first major public change in Versant’s separation from NBCUniversal and signals MSNBC’s effort to stand on its own.

According to Versant CEO Mark Lazarus, the new branding is meant to “accelerate the distinction between MSNBC and NBC News,” which have often had an uneasy relationship. NBC News has long pushed for straight reporting, while MSNBC has leaned heavily into opinion programming. The overlap created plenty of tension over the years, especially during the Trump era, when MSNBC hosts regularly took sharp aim at the White House while NBC News anchors stuck to middle ground.

In a memo to staff, MSNBC president Rebecca Kutler insisted the rebrand won’t change the network’s DNA.

“While our name will be changing, who we are and what we do will not,” she wrote. “Our commitment to our work and our audiences will not waiver.”

MSNBC has been on a hiring spree, bringing in around 100 new staffers — including reporters poached from CNN, Bloomberg, Politico, and the Washington Post — to build a newsroom that doesn’t rely on NBC News. The network even opened its first standalone Washington bureau, marking a real break from the shared infrastructure of the past.

Rachel Maddow recently framed it as a liberation:

“We’ll no longer be competing with NBC News for scraps. We can set our own priorities and chase our own stories.”

The peacock, one of TV’s most famous logos, will stay with NBCUniversal. That means Versant’s entire lineup — including CNBC, the Golf Channel, and digital brands like GolfNow and SportsEngine — will get fresh logos that leave the bird behind.

Interestingly, CNBC won’t change its name since the “NBC” in its title never actually referred to the National Broadcasting Co. but rather stood for “Consumer News and Business Channel.” Still, the peacock is gone there too.

For MSNBC, the rebrand comes at a pivotal moment. The network is averaging about 1.2 million prime-time viewers this year, making it the second-most-watched cable news channel behind Fox News. Versant hopes a fresh identity and independence will sharpen its competitive edge as it spins out into a publicly traded company by year’s end.

The rollout will be accompanied by a national marketing blitz — one exec described it as “unlike anything we’ve done in recent memory.”

With input from CNBC, CNN, the Associated Press, and Axios.