MS NOW: When brand independence becomes brand confusion

Analysis: The cable news industry has never shied away from awkward rebrands. From CNN+’s short-lived experiment to Fox Nation’s attempt to be something more than a merch table with streaming rights, we’ve seen plenty of head-scratchers.

But MSNBC’s rechristening as MS NOW (or MSNOW as some are writing it) may be the new gold standard for branding by committee.

The “MS” has always been a vestige of a long-dissolved Microsoft partnership.

Microsoft bailed on MSNBC two decades ago, and yet here we are, pretending those two letters are still meaningful. Now we’re told they stand for “My Source for News, Opinion and the World.” That’s not a name, it’s a term paper acronym.

The kind of backronym you trot out when the deadline hits and the whiteboard is still empty. Jack Donaghy would have called it “synergy.” Liz Lemon would have just said “blerg.”

The deeper issue isn’t just the name, it’s the confusion it creates.

NBC News already has a product called NBC News Now. So why spin off MSNBC into something that sounds like the knockoff version of your own sibling brand? If you’re Versant and your strategy for independence is to put your network in competition with your old corporate roommate, that’s less brand clarity and more Tracy Jordan running through the halls yelling “Me too!”

And then there’s CNBC, which gets to keep its NBC letters without fuss.

Advertisement

Why the double standard? If “Consumer News and Business Channel” still earns its acronym, why does MSNBC get the scissors? The inconsistency suggests this wasn’t a carefully drawn identity shift so much as a rushed divorce settlement.

The logo doesn’t help.

Early previews suggest something slapped together, more placeholder than vision. For a network that prides itself on gravitas and analysis, the branding looks like it wandered out of a mid-tier OTT startup pitch deck. Viewers won’t see a bold new identity… they’ll see a confused wordmark and wonder if their channel guide glitched.

If this all feels familiar, it should.

Think Gap’s aborted logo rebrand in 2010 or JCPenney’s ill-fated “we’re hip now” experiment. The pattern is always the same: a brand forgets that names and logos aren’t magic spells, they only work if they carry meaning. Strip away the history and audience connection, and all you’ve got left is a three-letter riddle nobody asked to solve.

Rebrands matter less for what they say and more for what they signal. And here the signal is muddled.

Yes, MSNBC – or MS NOW, if we must – is moving into events, podcasts and digital extensions. Yes, it needs distance from NBC News as it prepares to live inside Versant. But independence doesn’t require incoherence. This feels like a bid to be taken seriously that actually undercuts the network’s hard-earned recognition.

The irony? In trying to assert a separate identity, MS NOW has made itself harder to define. Which begs the question: if your new name requires a paragraph of explanation every time you say it, is it really a brand… or just a branding problem?