MSNBC staffers are "cautiously optimistic" about the uncharted territory their network is heading into once its separation with NBC News is finally complete. Except the channel's new name has not received the warmest reception.
On Monday, MSNBC announced the new name: MS NOW, an acronym for "My Source for News, Opinion, and the World."
"I did see somebody joke on social media that pretty soon we're just going to call it MS-13, which I thought was kind of funny," one MSNBC staffer told Fox News Digital.
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Last year, Comcast announced it was spinning off its cable networks into a separate company, now named Versant. Versant will be the new home of MSNBC, CNBC, USA Network, Oxygen, E!, SYFY and the Golf Channel among other assets, while NBCUniversal maintains NBC News, the NBC News Now streaming network, Telemundo and Bravo.
"I don't get it," the staffer said. "I would have thought if we had changed our name, we should change it in a meaningful way, not this. This doesn't feel all that meaningful."
The network insider knocked how the full name of MS NOW is grammatically incorrect and noted that while "news" and "opinion" are standard in journalism, "world" is not and world events would simply fall under news and opinion.
They also pointed out that "MS," which has been the network's nickname within the company, is the "least relevant" part of the name since "MS" originally stood for Microsoft, NBC's former partner in launching the network, but it severed ties in 2012.
"I assume we hired experts for this, and it's a little puzzling. I hope it's not indicative of how we're gonna make decisions in the future," they said of the name.
A second MSNBC insider said it was good for the new network to have similar initials for the sake of familiarity with loyal viewers, but that MS NOW was far from perfect. A third liked the name change.
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While the debut of MS NOW has had a rough go on social media, staffers remain positive ahead of the NBC split.
"The media world, especially old media, is just so splintered and things are changing so much that I think it's sort of a wait and see. The feeling from people that are running it is they want to be entrepreneurial. They know that they can take chances that they weren't able to take under NBC," an NBC insider said.
They added there is a massive "bureaucracy" that MSNBC shows have had to grapple with from Comcast and NBC when it came to wanting to expand their shows or budgets.
"Just layer, after layer, after layer," they said.
The awkward marriage at times of NBC News and its progressive cable arm was crystallized last year after the disastrous, short-lived hiring of former Republican National Committee chairwoman Ronna McDaniel as a political analyst.
While NBC touted the hiring as a slam dunk for the organization, MSNBC hosts revolted on-air. In her on-air debut, McDaniel was subjected to a painful interview by her new "colleague" Kristen Welker on "Meet the Press" over her past efforts surrounding overturning the 2020 election and support for Donald Trump.
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MSNBC figures from the "Morning Joe" hosts to Nicolle Wallace to Rachel Maddow spoke out against the move publicly, and McDaniel was let go less than a week later. NBCUniversal News Group chairman Cesar Conde apologized to staffers for the embarrassing episode that revealed a sharp disconnect between NBC brass and MSNBC sensibilities.
"It was a clunky move," the insider said. "There were dozens of people that NBC could have selected that were more sympathetic toward the Republican Party and even Trump's policies that didn't carry the baggage that she carried."
The first MSNBC insider similarly remains "cautiously optimistic" about their network's future post-NBC.
"I think it is probably better than not to not be associated with NBC. I actually think losing the NBC branding is good for us," the MSNBC insider said. "Because NBC will be a target of this administration and will be all up in our grill about doing things that ruin their reputation and their access with the administration. So, the less we have to do with NBC, the better."
"I think sticking with NBC just would have been limiting for us… We were not free to do what we wanted to do because it would piss off Comcast and NBC all the time, and it was going to end up with Donald Trump suing NBC over something we said or saying that they wanted to cancel their licenses or whatever the case is. So I've always thought we would be better off without NBC."
A fourth insider told Fox News Digital that MSNBC colleagues kept referring to Monday's announcement as "Independence Day," touting the network's liberation from its broadcasting sister.
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MSNBC has been on a hiring spree since the network will be losing all of NBC's newsroom resources as part of the separation. And as part of the divorce, NBC gets to keep the house, meaning MSNBC is packing up its boxes and leaving Rockefeller Center in New York City and vacating NBC's Washington, D.C., bureau near the U.S. Capitol.
The first MSNBC staffer predicted MS NOW "will hobble" when it launches this fall, particularly the daytime programming, but will eventually find its footing by January.
"Where you're gonna see the lack of news-gathering is in our actual reporting and in our dayside, where they depend on reporters a lot. That's gonna struggle, but dayside's struggling anyway," they said. "Primetime will chug along as normal, because we have contributors and we've got free guests and I think that'll work fine."
MSNBC staffers believe the network is in a "strong position" with its adversarial dynamic with the Trump administration and embrace the role of being the "opposition," separating itself from other networks and appealing to liberal viewers who need a go-to outlet during the current era of GOP-controlled government.
However, the "open question" that MSNBC staffers have is regarding its new corporate leadership and the mixed signals they say they've received about MS NOW's direction by appointed Versant CEO Mark Lazarus, who previously served as NBCUniversal's television and streaming chief.
"When the split-off was announced and all the MSNBC people were asking Mark Lazarus are we still going to be leaning into liberal perspectives and all this kind of stuff?, he sort of gave off a vibe that said, 'Guys, that's 99th on my list of things to worry about. You don't seem to understand I've got to worry about splitting the buildings and splitting the staff and getting us a studio and operationally-' He said 'What MSNBC is on TV isn't even in the top 25 things we're worried about' and I think people read that to mean that we're just going to become more conservative. And what they realize is actually they've just been busy separating the companies," the first MSNBC staffer said.
"And now we're going to start to figure out what we actually are going forward and whether that's global coverage, whether that's liberal stances, whether it's having more Republicans on our air, more debates, I think we're not there yet," they continued. "I think it's interesting to see branding come out before we've actually had the discussion of who we are. I guess they've got to have it because they've actually got to happen to go on TV, but we haven't had the network-wide discussion about who we are. You know, our ad campaign is, ‘This is who we are.’ I think most people in the building would wonder who we are."
MSNBC spokesperson Richard Hudock forcefully pushed back, telling Fox News Digital, "We’ve made it clear—repeatedly, on the record, both internally and externally—that the direction of the network is not changing. Full stop."
Memos sent by Lazarus and MSNBC president Rebecca Kutler also assured staffers nothing would change beside its name.
"While our name will be changing, who we are and what we do will not," Kutler wrote. "Our commitment to our work and our audiences will not waiver from what the brand promise has been for three decades."
Hudock similarly declared Monday that "The name is changing, but we are not," insisting on X that all the network's hosts will be "doing what they have always done."
Fox News' David Rutz contributed to this report.