With apologies to Shakespeare, we had to borrow his line from “Romeo & Juliet.” In this case, it is what the folks at the “spinning-up-quick-co” known as Versant have taken out of the name of their flagship cable channel that matters. Faced with the need to drop the initials of the National Broadcasting Company, the future incarnation of what is known today as MSNBC wasted no small amount of time (and hopefully an even smaller amount of money) to announce the new name for the home of Maddow, Psaki, Wallace, Tur, Ruhle and Brzezinski, along with some dudes named Scarborough, Hayes and O’Donnell. 

And so, MSNBC will become…(drumroll)...MS NOW. As in, they just took out the NBC part and slapped the ubiquitous word “NOW” on the end.

We can imagine the writers of the archenemy, Fox News, just crushing their keyboards with the obvious misnomers to keep Greg Gutfeld laughing at his own jokes for the foreseeable future.

As the scientists in Jurassic Park ask each other as they are on the run from various killer dinosaurs brought back to modern-day life, “Just exactly how did this get out of the lab?” Color us as skeptical as Samuel L. Jackson in a lab coat.

First of all, the MS in MSNBC stood originally for Microsoft, which was a partner in the joint venture that created MSNBC when it launched from its newly constructed facility in Secaucus, New Jersey, back in July of 1996. It was touted as being the marriage of television with that new-fangled news platform of the day, the internet. Microsoft was bringing its expertise in the whole online thing that founder Bill Gates had laid out in his 1995 book, “The Road Ahead.” Gates was referring to the then newly emerging “information superhighway,” which his company was going to rule with the release of its Windows ’95 operating system and the bundled “Internet Explorer” web browser.

They were heady times, the mid-90s.

In less than a decade, the MS in MSNBC would be gone when Microsoft divested its interest in the cable TV channel in 2005. It would retain a piece of the online news website for another seven years. But by then, the odd five-letter brand name had stuck, and MSNBC kept the first two letters despite there being no Microsoft ownership.

Fast forward to 2025, when NBC owner Comcast decided it wanted to unburden itself of the underperforming linear television business, and packaged up a group of TV channels, including MSNBC, along with financial news-focused CNBC and other lesser-watched channels, and set them off on their own, aboard the newly christened liferaft named “Versant.” (Still no word yet on what CNBC will be renamed. We kind of doubt that just having the letter “C” would be that new moniker.)

We almost forgot, the MS NOW name actually stands for something. The “MS” is short for “My Source,” and the “NOW” is not the shortened imperative version of “right NOW,” but rather an abbreviation for “News, Opinion, World."

Ah, that fixes it. Much better now, yes?

There are so many questions from our friends who specialize in branding, and so little time for them all. But again, as Sam Jackson delivered his classic line in Jurassic Park: “Hold on to your butts!"

Color us underwhelmed with the new name. Sure, we get the fact that, along with having to get the hell out of 30 Rockefeller Plaza (where the channel moved from its original home in Secaucus, NJ, in 2007), MSNBC also had to leave the NBC brand behind. But why would you pick a name that sounds like you are either updating the feminist magazine that Gloria Steinem started up in 1971, or creating a local news operation in the state of Mississippi, or fundraising for the chronic disease of Multiple Sclerosis?

What’s also missing? What is that four-letter word that means “newly received or noteworthy information?” Often preceded these days by another word like “breaking”, “old”, or regrettably, “fake”?  Oh yes, the word is “news”! What they will ostensibly be delivering much of the day on “MS NOW."

Yes, yes, we know that what passes for news on 24-hour cable channels across the spectrum is mainly talking about the news. But even the late Roger Ailes figured out after his time with “America’s Talking”, the cable channel that MSNBC would replace after Ailes convinced Rupert Murdoch to build the Fox News channel, that you needed news in the name to have credibility with viewers. And you know how that turned out. (Fun fact, MSNBC’s facility in Secaucus was initially used by “America’s Talking.” Currently, it is the home of the MLB Network’s studios.)

Then there is the whole explosion of the word “NOW” as branding for news. Way back in 1998, when we were in a meeting about creating a tag line for a new 24-hour local news channel to be launched in Austin, Texas, we were trying to shorten a previously well-received slogan of “Your News All The Time.” After a whiteboard was filled with ideas, the one that made the most sense to go with was "Your News Now.” The underlining of the word made it read as so much more strident. At least we thought so at the time.

Again, the 90s were heady times.

In the years since, the word “now” has become part of the branding for news operations in numerous markets across the country. Morgan Murphy Media uses it on their TV stations in Madison (“News 3 Now”), Spokane (“4 News Now”), and Yakima (“Apple Valley News Now”). They aren’t alone; the word appears on stations owned by Gray (Hawaii News Now), Lilly (“Erie News Now” in Erie, PA), Scripps (“News 3 Now” in Omaha, NE), and countless other stations. NBC even calls their rolling daily news livestream, “NBC News Now."

Speaking of NBC, the last time there was a branding blunder of this magnitude was back in 1976, when NBC paid $750,000 (about $4 million in today’s dollars) to have their red and blue “Big N” logo designed, only to learn that the Nebraska Educational Television Network had the exact same logo design, just in all red. Nebraska ETV had spent about $100 on its version. NBC ended up paying off Nebraska ETV with $500,000 of shiny new RCA broadcast equipment and about $50,000 so they could get a shiny new logo. That let NBC use the “Big N” logo for another ten years before embracing its long-lost peacock motif.

If we were highly-paid "brand consultants," we would have suggested just pulling out our Sean Parker-inspired playbook and dubbing the new MSNBC as just “NOW.” To refresh some memories, Parker told Mark Zuckerberg to drop the word “The” and just call his growing online social network “Facebook.” As played by Justin Timberlake in the movie (“The Social Network”), Parker tells Zuckerberg as he strolls away from their first meeting: “It’s cleaner.” We would have only suggested this after the check for our large fee had cleared.

Whether it would stand for three words, as in “News, Opinion, World” or just one name, “News Opinion World,” just going with “NOW” would be distinctive and memorable. And it’s only three letters. Of course, there might be some confusion with other groups that use those same three letters as an abbreviation for their name.

Come to think of it, maybe the name “America’s Talking” is still available? 

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