‘Meet the Press Now’ continues franchise’s practice of blending two distinct designs

Meet the Press Now,” the heir apparent to MSNBC’sMTP Daily” debuted June 6, 2022, on streaming service NBC News Now with a look and sound that was both familiar and continued to meld two distinct looks.

It was back in May 2022 that NBC announced “MTP Daily” would no longer air on MSNBC and would be rebranded as “Meet the Press Now” and relaunch on the network’s free news streamer.

As promised, the show debuted June 6 from Studio N1 in NBC’s Washington, D.C., hub, which is home to “Meet the Press,” the network’s Sunday morning political affairs program. “MTP Daily” also typically used the studio. The first-floor space with a blend of colonial and modern design influences, first debuted in January 2021.

“Meet the Press Now” uses a graphics package that shifts the warm-toned look to a blue and yellow palette — one that, interestingly, looks very similar to MSNBC’s default colors. It retains the angular, fractal look that the show introduced in November 2017 blended with the rectangular look NBC News Now as a whole began using in November 2021.

Under the “Daily” name, the show had to blend two looks as well — MSNBC uses a boxy look that has many similarities with NBC News Now’s graphics.

The new look includes an angular graphic along the left side of the screen used during the show’s teases along with a blue banner that wedges the show’s logo in a yellow polygon segment between the overlay and text bar. That yellow block uses two different angles which appear to be inspired by the intersecting lines found the graphics package, but the angles are so similar it ends up looking a bit like an error.

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There’s also a new open that follows the “MTP” practice of combining political-themed imagery tinted in shades of blue and yellow.

Sound-wise, the show continues to use the “Pulse of Events” movement from “The Mission” theme that has served as the theme of both “Meet the Press” and “MTP Daily” for years.

“Now” continues the practice of “Daily” of not using an announcer, though the flagship program uses the voice of actor Dennis Haysbert (also known for appearing in Allstate commercials).

Also retained is having the open end on a distinct note that is synchronized with a bright transitional element that goes from fullscreen animation to a camera shot.

The logo as shown in the open is slightly different than one the network originally released.

It does not, notably, use the initialism “MTP” as “MTP Daily” did; the official name of the former MSNBC show used the three letters rather than the full show name. That final burst of animation in the open also uses the NBC peacock, as “Meet the Press” does, instead of the letters “MTP” as “Daily” did. The slight gradient effect on the lettering has also been removed. 

The logo still combines the “Meet the Press” logotype with NBC News Now’s sans serif typeface for the final word in the title, which is stylized as “Now_,” following the streamer’s practice of using an underscore in many of its textual elements.

In placing the “Now_” line within the logo, the lockup no longer allows underscore to “hang” outside of the footprint of the logo, unlike it does in the streamer’s bug. 

The open and logo also typically do not include the “with Chuck Todd” notation that is used on the flagship show and was used on “Daily.”

During the bulk of the show, the logo is placed in the lower left of the screen, opposite the bug, where other “Now” shows place a topical label.

The show continues to be shot in a similar way inside of Studio N1, including an opening segment presented from a corner between two arched video walls. The bold vertical red band used as background behind the show logo has been turned blue, including when the logo moves higher up to make way for OTS-style graphics and video.

Meanwhile, the Washington, D.C. cityscapes remain a common look in the other video walls and also continue to include a blue bar with repeating logo. Added in, however, are more of the micro triangular elements found in the open.

This video wall graphic features a strong diagonal line that appears to simulate a glass overlay that changes the perspective of and slightly blurrs the image behind it.

There is also a variation that incorporates a strong diagonal line, an element that is also found in wipes and transitions used between video clips or as bumps heading in and out of breaks.

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The primary text use in lower third banners continues to be Roboto, the open source font that both MSNBC and NBC News Now use.

The on-set picture frames, which are really integrated LED panels, are set to feature a D.C.-themed variation of what the opens used during live coverage on Now.