MSNBC announces new name

MSNBC will drop the references to its soon-to-be former parent network as part of a rebranding expected to go live in late 2025.

The network will become known as MS NOW after Comcast finishes spinning off most of NBCUniversal’s linear cable properties later in 2025. The new parent company will be known as Versant.

A look back at the history of MSNBC’s logo

In addition to dropping the letters “NBC,” the network will also lose the peacock — a symbol that has grown to become one of the most recognizable logos in the world and is almost synonymous with the letters. 

The NBC broadcast network logo, which includes a redrawn peacock and switch to the custom font Tinker, introduced in December 2022.

The NBC television network is not changing its name and will continue to use the peacock icon.

Versant says that the new name stands for “My Source (for) News Opinion World,” which appears to be more of a backronym. 

MSNBC originally stood for “Microsoft NBC,” after it original co-founders, NBC News and Microsoft. After NBC bought out Microsoft’s share of the venture, the name remained and officially no longer referred to the tech giant.

In a logo released Aug. 18, 2025, the network’s new name is shown in all caps with a space between “MS” and “NOW,” which aligns with the “My Source” being a sort of lead-in to the other three words.

The 2022 version of the ‘Decision 2022’ logo.

To the left of the name is flowing banner icon show in red and white which has some similarities to the “Decision (Year)” election branding that NBC and MSNBC have often shared in recent years, though it has been relocated to the opposite side of most lockups.

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The MS NOW logo examples release Aug. 18 uses blue as either a background or primary stroke color. When set on a darker background, the lettering becomes white.

The banner-flag icon also gained a notched end somewhat reminiscent of a ribbon, but also notably forms a left-pointing arrow out of the negative space between it and the neighboring “M.” MSNBC is considered a left-leaning network, having also used the tagline “Lean forward,” which could be interpreted as a reference to progressive politics, in the past.

Versant did not indicate if MS NOW will use the “Decision” branding, though it’s probably not likely given that the two operations will no longer share key editorial operations, which had been one of the reasons for the shared branding. MSNBC did stray from the “Decision” banner a few times in the past.

In the released logo, the MS NOW name is set in a wide, clean sans serif. It’s not immediately clear what font is being used, but it does have a notably circular “O” and wide “M” and “W.” It’s also possible some of the letterforms were customized for the look. Prior to Tinker, MSNBC used another proprietary font called Wordmark Sans.

The lockup also includes the full backronym under its name with “My Source” and each of the rest of the single words separated by a vertical pipe. This appears to be set in Publico, which is the font both NBC and MSNBC use in body text on their respective websites, which share a similar look and layout.

MSNBC tends to prefer the headline version of Publico for its story page titles while NBC News uses the sans serif Bureau Grotesque for most of its headlines. MSNBC’s website currently uses Bureau Grot for headlines on section fronts and other locations.

MSNBC had been using NBC’s proprietary Tinker font, though it’s likely that approach couldn’t continue due to the upcoming split. NBC had been the process of converting many of its business units over to Tinker, much like CBS’s strategy with TT Norms. 

It’s not clear if some of the currently MSNBC naming conventions, such as “MSNBC Reports” will be simply updated with the new network name or get entirely new branding. 

It’s hard not to note the similarity of the MS NOW name to NBC News Now, which is NBC News’ free ad-supported streamer. NBC News Now is remaining part of NBCUniversal after the spin-off. 

NBCU stylizes the word “Now” in all caps when referring to the streaming service, though it is not an acronym for anything, which is why NCS typically styles it as “Now.” NBC News also tends to put the “Today” show name in all caps as well, but since it’s not an acronym, NCS runs it in title case.

Meanwhile, Versant and NBCUniversal announced that CNBC would retain its name but switch to a new logo, though no example was released. CNBC made prominent use of the peacock and had also switched to Tinker. 

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The name CNBC had once stood for “Consumer News and Business Channel,” a decidedly better acronym than “MS NOW.” It has also colloquially been thought to stand for “Cable NBC,” though that was never made official by NBC.

Both MSNBC and CNBC also transitioned to the redrawn NBC peacock introduced in December 2022.

There had been earlier reports that MSNBC would keep its name once the spin-off was done, though that is obviously not the case now (pun intended).