Left-leaning cable channel MSNBC – home to Rachel Maddow and other Trump-bashing anchors – was derided on Monday for the worst rebrand since New Coke after announcing a name change to MS NOW.
The head-scratching acronym for My Source News Opinion World was mercilessly mocked. Social media users quipped the ratings-challenged network’s new name stands for “Majorly Skewed News Overly Woke” or “Most Surely No One Watching.”
Others simply started calling it “BS NOW.”
MSNBC was forced to change its name – and create a new logo, which features a red-and-white striped flag on a blue background – as part of the upcoming spinoff by parent company Comcast to a new publicly-traded company called Versant.
The spinoff, slated for the end of the year, strips away the cable channel’s ties to NBC and the iconic Peacock symbol.
“I don’t know what’s worse, Versant or My Source News Opinion World. Whoever came up with these names deserves to be shown the door,” one former media executive told The Post.
The space between MS and NOW left many baffled, with one joking it stood for “Martin Scorsese ‘n’ Olivia Wilde.”
Attaining the MS NOW domain name may also prove tricky. A current website for “msnow.com” is for something called “Motorized Snow vehicles (SnowMobile)” that features text written in Korean.
Meanwhile, typing “ms-now.com” into a browser redirects users to meal-delivery service Marley Spoon, which is affiliated with Martha Stewart.
The Post reached out to MSNBC for comment.
The move comes despite NBCUniversal executive Mark Lazarus, who will become Versant’s CEO, assuring rattled MSNBC staffers that the network wouldn’t change its name and logo – as many feared – after the $7 billion spinoff was announced last November.
“I know there was some discussion with the MSNBC name, so you can take that off of your worry list on things,” Lazarus told staffers during a meeting in January.
The about-face raised concerns.
“It doesn’t set a great precedent for management to change the name after promising staffers it wouldn’t,” one company insider told The Post.
“It’s not a way to boost trust in the new company and its leadership.”
The changes led one X user to dub it “one of the worst branding disasters in media history. The logo looks like it belongs on a discount computer from 1998, not a serious news network. Absurd.”
Conservative activist Robby Starbuck also went for the jugular, writing on X: “I just want to meet the absolute bandit who got MSNBC execs to fork over tons of $$$ for this logo and a name that reminds you of multiple sclerosis.”
MSNBC President Rebbeca Kutler promised a massive marketing campaign for MS NOW “unlike anything we have done in recent memory.”
“During this time of transition, it has become clear that our brands need separation, and NBCUniversal decided to retain ‘NBC’ and the peacock,” she told staffers in a memo Monday morning.
Kutler, who replaced Rashida Jones earlier this year, tried to assuage concerns, telling staffers that the rebrand “allows us to set our own course and assert our independence.”
MSNBC has been working to build out its own newsroom operations separate from NBCUniversal over the past eight months.
It has hired dozens of journalists from CNN, Bloomberg, Politico, The Washington Post and several other news organizations.
The network will be referred to as MSNBC over the next few months as it wraps up this process.
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